What do you make of the serendipity in situations that unfold in ways that almost seem intentional, as though moments were designed for perfection and you just happen to be there? This happens so frequently for Caroline and me that we joke about how it was in the early travel plans when I was working out the logistics of what should be where, including the wildlife, sun, shade, and when we should round corners to emerge upon a perfect scene playing out on the stage before us. Waking at the Island Inn Bed & Breakfast in Ingonish Beach, Nova Scotia, we were up, packed, and downstairs before sunrise. Out on the veranda, awake even before us, sat one of the owners. I’d stepped out to see if there was a sunrise view, but all I found were trees until he told me that I should get moving down the hill of their yard over to the left, where there was a perfect location to catch the sunrise. This is that spot. The sequence of events, needing to be awake before sunrise, walking outside instead of grabbing coffee first, the owner sitting out front, him seeing my DSLR and understanding what I was looking for, it all came together in a way that was quite serendipitous to me.
How do you improve something that is already delightful? Double it. Here I am with Caroline looking at me from across the table, knitting my next pair of socks while enjoying a cup of coffee, and on my screen, where I’m getting some writing in while we are waiting for breakfast, is Caroline looking at me from across the table in Brackley Beach on Prince Edward Island already six days ago. Hmmm, six days ago, I fell behind in documenting our vacation, at least to an extent, as we do have the photos and notes on my phone that explain where they were taken, and on occasion, there are useful tidbits written there. Such is the luxury of having a phone with a stylus for writing on the screen. I try to keep up with the preparation of photos so they can be uploaded, properly tagged, and titled within the post they accompany, giving me accurate location data when I finally find the time to sit down and write. With more than six hours onboard our ferry this afternoon, I plan to write like the wind if I can resist being distracted looking out over the Gulf of St. Lawrence during our crossing to Newfoundland.
Breakfast was running later than hoped, putting us on a bit of an edge due to our self-awareness and abundance of familiarity with our greatest personal weakness. There was just no way we’d get in the car and resist stopping for photos, which would further delay our arrival at the ferry terminal, risking our trip to Newfoundland. Our visit to that seemingly remote island in the Atlantic starts after we land at Channel-Port aux Basques on the southwestern corner of the island. We will spend a week traveling the breadth of Newfoundland before ending our stay in Argentia, southwest of St. John’s, on the eastern side of the island. If we miss our ferry today, we cannot just catch a flight from Halifax to St. John’s and race over to the opposite side of the island to take up our planned visit – we’d be toast. On the other hand, if something goes wrong on the other end of our visit to Newfoundland, Caroline could fly out of St. John’s and skip across North America to Phoenix while I weather the situation and figure things out from there. The imperative nature of this calculus demands we do this flawlessly. Yes, there is tension, but not so much that after enjoying our simple and delicious breakfast and jumping in the car, we aren’t already pulling over for a photo within ten minutes of heading south.
There’s no denying that a viewpoint overlooking the coast, such as this one right here, may not present itself again. Yeah, we’d better stop for this photo, too, but only this one. While we’re at it, why not bring up a song, say something like An Innis Aigh (The Happy Isle) from the Rankin Family to fill our eyes with tears and put giant lumps in our throats? That was a great idea, Caroline; maybe we should try listening to it a second time, or worse, let’s bring up Fear a Bhata from the Corrie Folk Trio with Paddy Bell, and we can pull over and properly weep. It turns out the Rankins, as they are also known, were from Mabou on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, and the song, An Innis Aigh, is a traditional Scottish Gaelic language song. All versions of this song can render tears from those with sensitive hearts, be careful when and where you listen to it.
“Yes, Caroline, I know. It is an impressive causeway and maybe the shortest ferry ride we’ve ever taken, and this is a spectacular view of it all. Fine, but I swear, this is the last stop before reaching North Sydney.” I promise this is how I remember the conversation, so let me stop my editor, who will likely feel like she has something to correct here by blaming the incessant need to make these stops on me, but SHE’S LYING. In these moments, I’m the voice of reason. She was hung over from soft serve. I know unequivocally that my version of everything is always correct. I can already hear her brief retort, “Pfft!” [Pffft indeed – Caroline]
We were both in agreement that we could afford this stop as that bridge there, the Barra Strait Bridge, connecting us to Boularderie Island, meant that we had plenty of time to reach the ferry, which was now only 20 minutes away. And, of course, we were good and early among the first cars to line up at the terminal.
Get ready for it. This is my Frankfurter with two wieners. You probably think I mean Wieners, as in Austrians from Vienna, but no, I’m referring to the “his and her” hotdogs with ketchup and mustard that are supposed to be celebrating not only today’s ferry crossing but last year’s ferry trip on a ferry in Norway when we had two pølse (pronounced “PUHL-seh”) which were topped with crispy onions that truly set them apart and caused these to fall a bit flat. That, though, is getting ahead of myself, as there was supposed to be not only an innuendo about Caroline’s wieners but also that two hotdogs have four ends, and there’s this joke about bratwurst having two ends that I was going to try fitting into whatever it was I started to write here, but that’s starting to feel superfluous to this belabored attempt at humor, so I think I should just quit. Under her breath, Caroline whispers, “PUH-lease.”
This is a perfect follow-up to the last paragraph: the Low Point Lighthouse. No kidding, that really is its name at the tip of New Victoria on our way out of Sydney Harbour. Next stop, Newfoundland.
I can’t tell you what the attraction was, but after Caroline returned from an exploratory run of the ferry, she returned and showed me a photo on her phone that she had taken of this spot onboard where people can bring their pets for relief from those functions that are better expressed outside than in the seating areas. Showing me the photo wasn’t enough, though; she wanted, no, she needed me to see it for myself, and so, here we are, admiring what is likely one of the most peed-on floating fire hydrants on our planet. Is there a Guinness Book of World Records entry for such an accomplishment?
It was good to get out and see things on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, so far from shore that I couldn’t see land. This is my first time so far out on open water, and if Caroline hadn’t dragged me out, I would have kept my nose glued to my screen, transferring remembrances of experiences to my electronic reminder called blog. Maybe the moments out here should be of greater value, and while epiphanies and self-discoveries could be encountered, I try to weigh the value of that against what we will find on these pages or not find if I do or don’t write the events that have already passed. Striking balances for those inclined to all-or-nothing mentalities is always going to be a struggle. It’s a good thing that love has a way of prying stubbornness of purpose to listen to heartfelt words that easily convey that this other person requires your attention.
Taking another break from knitting and writing, we visited the deck with a restaurant for a bite to eat. When the server brought us our meals, I started to complain about this being the worst whale-watching tour we’d ever booked. Just then, a fellow passenger got our attention and said, “Yeah, but what about those dolphins riding the bow waves?” Redemption was achieved, and I thanked the server for not only delivering our food but also bringing the aquatic entertainment at the opportune moment to make our repast truly enjoyable.
What the seas lack in fury, I’m making up for in the storm of writing volumes about the previous days. I’ve been so focused aboard our ferry that I passed 5,000 words in the past hours, and yet, I’m still days behind. Aside from me missing the fluid world of the ocean upon which we were floating, we were also missing wifi and electrical outlets for charging things in a world now absolutely dependent on such necessities. Strangely, I was able to maintain my phone and internet for the majority of our 207-mile journey, which helped me save my in-browser writing and take advantage of my reliance on Grammarly, so my hotspot came in handy for the duration of our afternoon ferry trip.
Approaching Newfoundland and Port aux Basques near the end of the day, I might have been harboring a quiet wish that I’d been able to sit outside and taken in the shift of the midday to this dramatic golden hour sky when poets, artists, and musicians should be finding inspiration in the play of light, shadow, and transitional hues that are painting the world in once-in-a-lifetime scenes of splendor.
While I wasn’t so fortunate to have watched the evolution of such scenes over the sea, I was on hand to capture them for Caroline and I to better reflect on the conditions that greeted our arrival on Newfoundland. What I couldn’t capture was a bit of conversation while in the restaurant. We had our first encounter with the Newfoundlander accent demonstrated by our young server, who confessed that when dealing with visitors, it’s simply easier to drop the heavy accent to avoid the misunderstandings and incessant “Excuse me?”
More than New Brunswick, more than our visit to Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia, the excitement of landing on Newfoundland is creating a palpable energy that says we are arriving in a truly exotic location. It always looked so remote on the map; it was as distant as the moon. Now, so many lifetimes later, we are here at the shore, about to encounter this faraway place that has required serious effort to visit. In a few more minutes, we’ll take our first steps into this place that holds a mystique bordering on the ethereal with its rugged beauty we’ve only seen in photos and expectations, or is that fear of meeting the Old Hag of lore? Maybe some of the appeal is derived from the local whale hunting history, and while we are happy the practice has come to an end, we fell in love with the subject back when we were reading Moby Dick. Then, there was cod, a major industry in Newfoundland from the 15th century through the early 20th century. Again, a book, this time Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky, probably influenced our ideas and love affair with visiting this island as Newfoundland played a crucial role in supplying the world with salt cod, often called bacalao or bacalhau. Then, there must be 100 other forgotten stories, histories, and folklore that have played into our imaginations regarding Newfoundland. Today, we start to realize our dreams of being here.
Little did we know that those dark clouds on the horizon warned of a terrifying gauntlet of treacherous driving to reach Corner Brook, Newfoundland, 135 miles (217km) north of Port aux Basques. Before that ordeal, we were treated to the longest wait for fast food at a little shop called Mary Brown’s Chicken and the weirdest time zone change that moves the hands of the clock only thirty minutes from the Atlantic Time Zone, the only time zone in North America to do so. We are now on Newfoundland time.
To the west, everything looked fine. Under the reassuring view of this calm sky and ocean, we began our long drive to the hotel I had booked many months ago. Good so far.
Due to our long wait for what seemed to be the only option for dinner this evening, we were nearly alone on our drive north as it seemed like the others on the ferry made tracks to get out of this southern port, or so we thought.
After this view of the mountains and the lenticular clouds we admired in the late dusk sky, there would be no more photos of the rest of the drive. Terror set in with rain so hard that it came down in sheets on the darkest roads we’d ever driven that lacked visible lane lines. Combine that with truckers who were still departing Port aux Basques and obviously familiar with driving in these conditions as they barreled past my white-knuckle death grip on a steering wheel that was being jerked about thanks to potholes and puddles that seemed intent on ending our lives this night. Then, when we thought it couldn’t have been any worse, flashes of blindingly bright lightning struck so close to the car that deafening thunder shook it before the full illumination of the electrical storm faded. At barely 35 miles per hour, with emergency flashers going, we crept up the road, begging the universe for a slowdown of the onslaught. We didn’t pull over and wait it out because there was no shoulder, and when a small bit of dirt road on the right did appear, we couldn’t judge how muddy or deep the water was, so we had no choice but to continue the crawl forward in nearly crippling fear. Arriving at our hotel in a trembling state of exhaustion, I wondered what the Gaelic song would be that describes nearly shitting one’s pants during the ugliest tempest ever.
