Farther Along

 We didn’t think it could get any better!

 Newfoundland has always been the best place in the whole world to live. We’ve always known that.  Others are discovering this too, and Newfoundland is dressing up for the visitors. Newfoundland’s dress up clothes are very nice. Not in “come hither” clothes like Bar Harbor, Maine, or glitzy like big cities, but sensible, practical clothes.  There are nice sea food restaurants to be found in most small communities;  there are good craft stores.  And, thanks be, many of the craft stores don’t carry Newfoundland mugs, with the handles inside the cup, or cans or Newfoundland fog. In Newfoundland’s newfound pride, many Newfoundlanders are politely telling visitors that they’d prefer to be called “Newfoundlanders” instead of “Newfie”. 

 “Better” for us means outdoor stuff, and, in this specific instance, hiking trails.

 Gros Morne has always been a Mecca for hiking enthusiasts. For some the short, easy hike into Western Brook pond is enough to satisfy the need for exercise and beauty combined.  For others, the more physically fit and adrenalin junkies, nothing but climbing the mountain itself and looking over Rocky Harbour and Ten Mile Pond will suffice.

 Carol and Piqa and I discovered the trail behind the Discovery Centre this summer.  On the way up we met a couple from Ontario. Says he:  It’s the most spectacular view I’ve ever seen in my life.  Says us (to ourselves):  He’s from Ontario; what does he know. It was one of the most spectacular views we’ve ever seen in our lives.  (Piqa’s life has been fairly short; she’s a six month old Weimaraner.)  Carol enjoyed the pitcher plants; Piqa found a seal bone. This Lookout Trail is a compromise between Western Brook and Gros Morne.  Uphill, it’s about a hour and twenty minutes for two old codgers like us. (Carol is 53, younger than I; but I’m much more immature.)  It’s an hour back down the hill. About twenty minutes of the trip to the lookout is through a mountain meadow, impressively beautiful as the entire time you’re looking out toward the tablelands (some of the oldest rock on Planet Earth), or out over Bonne Bay (so deep and still that marine biologist can study many different layers of marine life) .  Moose will often look up casually as you threaten to graze on their pasture, but there’s plenty for all. 

 Those trails have always been there. 

 Now, thanks to ingenuity, hard work, volunteers and governments grants, just about every little community and outport has developed a trail system to offer to visitors.  Drive through any outport. You’ll see the signs. Newfoundland has seascapes and landscapes; it has flora and fauna; it has moose and caribou; it has 500 Peggy’s Coves. The old folks are discovering that people actually want to walk on the old trails, from community to abandoned community, out to the point, around the head.

 In our never-ending quest to make sure Piqa gets her exercise, and in her never-ending quest to make sure we get ours, we drove to two small outports and discovered two new trails. 

 Tilting is a tiny outport cuddled snugly in the Northeast corner of Fogo Island. We found a well marked trail there.  It starts by winding through the tuckamore and abandoned gardens. It’s quite walkable.  On our scale of difficulty, one being the equivalent of strolling around a ball field and five being a six hour hike up the side of Gros Morne over shale and rocks, this would be about a two and a half. We met an old skipper there. He was sitting down on the side of the trail digging a hole with an old spade. He had planted a rosebush the day before; now he was moving it because he didn’t like where it was.  He pointed out a few pine trees to us that his friends had planted. We chatted; Piqa had no manners.  Through the woods and the gardens after about 20 minutes, the trail wanders along the coast, on flat and rounded cliffs.  There are sawhorses along the way, to sit on. You’ll also see the occasional lobster pot placed for photo ops. One sawhorse actually had a piece of driftwood attached, curved, looking like a horse’s head.  Such is the care and pride that these trailmakers and tenders take in their trail and their community. The hike took about an hour and a half.

 The next day, still making our way to St. John’s, Piqa took us to Salvage (pronounced with the accent on the last syllable).  Salvage is at the end of a road in Terra Nova National Park leading through Eastport out to the coast.  Another very tiny, clean and welcoming community. There are no knickknacks in the lighthouses here. It was Sunday morning, around 10:30. We could hear music. Loud.  It was a brilliant Newfoundland fall day; the music was pleasant. But where was it coming from?  As we approach the church, the music got louder.  It was coming from the steeple; it was country gospel, wafting around the entire cove.

 Right at the end of the road we found our trail. There were several actually. It wound out around the coast, up the hills overlooking the community.  Plenty of boardwalk; well marked; dry.  The end of the circle  brought us to a headland overlooking the harbour, the ocean, and a couple of small islands.  Piqa was so thrilled with it all she had the zoomies for about 10 minute. (The "zoomies" are when your dog goes on a mad tear, like a runner's high.)  It was so bright, so clear, and the air so invigorating that I started to get a headache. I don't have the energy for a zoomie.  If anyone was of a religious inclination, the words of Farther Along might have seemed a too happy coincidence, and perhaps you would understand why people had lived here for centuries.  (Salvage is one of the oldest continuously populated communities in North America.) They continue to live here in a life style that all those folks from up-a-long are just now discovering.  There were 22 land surveys done in Eastport this summer, all by folks from Ontario and the United States looking to buy homes and land. 

 Piqa thinks she’s in doggy heaven, the gospel tunes adding to that belief. We, on the other hand, pause to reflect on what our island is becoming.  A tourist Mecca without the tourist traps (yet). Filled with a polite and friendly people who haven’t yet learned to inflate prices during peak months, restaurants with checkered plastic table cloths, quality dinner theatre, and great seafood.  Only a few years ago you couldn’t buy a good meal of seafood in Newfoundland. People used to close their doors and windows when they ate lobster; lobster was what you ate when you were poor.

 And hiking trails, the wonderful pastime of both young and old. Nowhere are they better than Newfoundland; nowhere are there more; nowhere else will you meet the old skipper planting a rosebush; nowhere else will you hear the community being serenaded by Linda and Emmy Lou and Dolly. You’d have to go a lot farther along.

 It just keeps getting better.