Date traveled: August 22-23, 2018
Terra Nova is the eastern most national park in Canada and the first in Newfoundland. It’s overlooked in favour of Gros Morne about a five hour drive away, which makes it a lot less busy.
The first trail we went on didn’t even have a parking lot, & it was one of the nicest. It started thru an old growth forest, only a few dozen metres from the nearest campsite. There was some damage from a fire not too long ago, but from my perspective, that just added to its variety.
The green moss reminds me so much of a lot of the hikes on the west coast. I especially love this look after it rains, like the green screams at you exuberantly, a silent orchestra playing fortissimo. It’s like a shot of screech.
It looked like some of the trees fell after moss grew over their roots like a carpet. I imagine the slow take-over of the bark by lime green feeding on it, like a giant house left abandoned & re-discovered.
The third trail we went on was mostly exposed rock, so it looked completely different even though it was only a few km away. The rockiness reminded me more of Ireland than other trails in Canada I’ve been on, which makes a lot of sense because Ireland is just on the other side of the ocean and the geology is probably pretty similar. It’s interesting to me that to understand new places, we immediately think of other places to compare it to, so our understandings are most influenced by the things we encounter earliest. Make me think of how important childhood really is for a developing brain.
I don’t know what it is about lookouts, but it’s like you *have* to take a picture there. In actuality the hikes up to the looks probably have more variety and uniqueness than another look over water, and maybe it’s because I’ve seen so many pictures of lookouts, it feels almost innate to take out my phone and click a bunch of photos, adjusting the angles slightly, getting in a few different poses if it’s a selfie. In this one the giant pond behind me looks like wings.
We stayed at a cabin in Traytown, next to Glovertown, & did a little drive around Eastport & the other little towns around the park. They seemed more or less like most small towns, except with amazing views. Even though it was the hottest time of the year here, the water was sensationally cold. I think you could last maybe 45 seconds before getting hypothermia or whatever it is when you have to chop your toes off because they’ve frozen.
Scenes like this look so tranquil & beautiful that I just want to live in it, which goes to show that something that looks like it would feel great may not always feel great, and vice versa. I guess I would like to live in the concept of what this image represents to me: a mixture of awe & relaxation.
As much as lookouts have a lot of similarities, one unique thing about the ones at Terra Nova is that you could see you are surrounded by mountains with their own giant pools of water between them, like little lakes instead of valleys. The old growth forest is something I’ve seen before in BC, but all the rock & the mountains rising out of water was new. It makes you feel like you’re on the edge of something that keeps going on forever & that you’ll never reach.
describing space 