Bare, rugged, rock
12 July 2009
Newfoundland is a volcanic rock. Bare, rugged, rock, looking as if it has just been pushed up by giant fingers – wrinkled, sticky skin, the ancient flesh of a weary fisherman. The rock – striped between the striations of stony outcrops, inkwells of sepia pooling in the dips as if the whole island had just, only just, emerged from the sea, like droplets on the back of a great turtle just lifting itself out of, or perhaps just sinking back into the ocean.
The fortunes of Newfoundland come and go, but you get the feeling it is only just keeping its head above water. None of it is very high. What they call a mountain out here would be regarded as a small hill by most of the world (except perhaps the Dutch..), and inbetween all the slight bumps are ponds (lakes to us) and pools and bogs and marshes and fens. On the rocks, lichens and mosses struggle to find a foothold. Once they have, they start to form soil, and larger plants can establish. In a few inches of soil, brave trees: black spruce, trembling aspen, larch, pine, fir grow as they can, battered by the wind, buried by the snow, soaked by the saltwater. In Canadian terms, trees are small here. None of the huge westcoast towering forests, just trees struggling to survive; straggly, bent, or cut down for building as soon as they grow tall enough and straight enough. It is not the most beautiful or most awe-inspiring landscape I have seen, but look a bit closer between the trees, glance down at your feet as you sink into ancient bogland and the world is full of jewels…
The provincial flower is a pitcher-plant, for example. The flower is about 20cm tall and bent over like an umbrella, inspecting its pots: red and green vessels tempting small insects into a watery lair. The theme continues with the sundew – tiny stalks hold up a minute spoon covered in little sticky lollipops. A fly tastes, and the spoon bends round as the lollipops engulf their stuck victim. Caribou lichen is the stuff model-train enthusiasts paint green and use as trees by the track. It grows in profusion here – dry and crunchy in the sunshine, soft and bouncy when there is any moisture in the air.
The staff of Terra Nova National Park are without exception cheerful, helpful and knowledgeable. They range from scientists and ecologists, to carpenters and ‘interpreters’ who explain the wildlife to visitors, write and perform shows during the evenings and run programs during the days on anything from edible plants to archeology.
Newfoundlanders are not all convinced by the Park. There is strong local feeling about all sorts of issues like salmon fishing, sealing, roads and water use, and one of the strange anomalies is that the park covers only the land and intertidal zone of the ocean. The sea is not part of the park, so any visitors entering by boat are not registered and cannot easily be watched. The park is being steadily destroyed by ‘alien invaders’ too. Unwanted plants are seeding themselves too freely, and moose and snowshoe hares have no natural predators but attack the vegetation to a point where it cannot recover. During my stay here, work is progressing on ideas for controlling the moose population and preparing for prescribed burns to regenerate areas of black spruce.