Artist in Residence
19 July 2009
This has to be the best job in the world.
For those to whom I didn’t explain, I am not just here on a jolly, I am the official Artist in Residence for Terra Nova National Park, Newfoundland, for the month of July.
It’s tough, but somebody has to do it. I get a little cabin to myself – somewhat 1950’s in decor,
and the water system gets airlocks every hour or so and splutters and kicks its way along, delivering a pleasant-tasting, but distinctly brown-tinted peaty water into my glass.
Behind me is a little weather station, collecting data from the park, and to one side the cell-phone tower, though ironically I have absolutely no cell-phone coverage as I am on the wrong network.
Other than that, just trees, snowshoe hares, squirrels, and the odd moose. Down the drive the coastguards sit and wait for calls, round the corner is the hub of the park – the compound – surrounded by wire fences and somewhat resembling a prison, where the scientists, ecologists, interpreters, managers and ‘Res Con’ (resource conservation) people sit, work, phone, have meetings, count, identify species and run the park.
As artist-in-residence, I am warmly welcomed by everyone I meet, and they then usually break off whatever they are doing to explain some intricate detail of their work, tell me where the best rocks are found, organize a place for me on a boat that is going out to the coast, find me a radio for when I am dropped off on some remote peninsular, get me a lift to some part of the park I cannot walk to, etc etc.
The year’s list of all the scientific projects going on fills a large part of one wall of a room.. Today, if the weather cooperates, a team specially flown in from Alberta and Quebec will carry out a prescribed burn in a remote area of the park. Burning is necessary for regeneration of the forest, too many years’ suppression of fires has led to a change in the ecology of the park, but local residents are obviously worried by large fires, so the process has to be tremendously well-planned. It is fascinating talking to some of the ‘firestarters’, about techniques for control of fire, preparation, the equipment used to start fires, but ultimately they depend on nature playing along. A large patch of burned forest by the highway is testament to a prescribed burn which got out of hand a couple of years ago.