gros morne

Dates traveled: August 28-31, 2018

Gros Morne is one of those “have to” visit places in Newfoundland. It’s by far their most popular park and is home to their second-largest mountain, also named Gros Morne. I heard it was a tough climb that would take the majority of the day, and my over-ambitious self never thought once about turning back.

That hike was probably the most challenging I’ve ever done – about 16k with a super steep incline on loose rocks – and when we got to the top, we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us because we were in the middle of a cloud.

Seeing the landscape gradually emerge as we started our descent was one of those things that technology hasn’t evolved enough to come close to capturing.

This hike, like much of the park and the Newfoundland coast more generally, had a mix of lush green the paths cut through, high peaks overlooking water and smaller mountains, and bare rocks that could make you feel you were somewhere desolate, even though you could turn around and see the exact opposite behind you. It reminds me a bit of when there is a super rich neighbourhood right next to a super poor one – adjacent places, but seemingly polar opposites.

Gros Morne is far from high-population areas – an eight hour drive even from the bustling metropolis of St. John’s – so you can assume that pretty much everyone you come across has traveled from far away just to be there. But as has been seen recently with places like Everest, just because a place is hard to get to doesn’t mean it’ll stop hoards of people from going there if it’s on enough bucket lists.

I find myself caught between wanting everyone to experience Gros Morne because it’s so beautiful it actually can make you take a step back and wanting it all for myself, holding it tight to me so all those millions of people can’t trample on it. There of course needs to be a middle ground – and that’s before even taking into account the privilege that money grants to experience these things – but I don’t know what that middle ground is or how to implement it.

The second hike we did – later that day, actually – was the Tablelands, a geological feature that helped prove the existence of plate tectonics in the 1960s. At its base, you look one direction and see greenery, while the other way it looks like desert sand dunes. The Tablelands are on a fault line that separates two plates (or something like that), and after a rupture at some point, the earth’s mantle was exposed, and viola, the Tablelands were born. Gwendolyn said she heard it felt like walking on Mars, and I’ve never been on Mars, but it was unlike anything I’ve seen before. I played into the marketing and bought a “Tablelands roast” of coffee beans before we left Newfoundland, and I must say it wasn’t disappointing.

Our third hike – another pretty long one – brought us to sheep on a beach. A local farmer leaves them there in the summer and collects them when it gets cold. We passed two groups of people on the way down, both of whom mentioned, in a more indirect way, that the sheep shit was impossible to step around. The sheep seemed indifferent to our presence, maybe slightly annoyed when I asked if they wanted to be pet.

I wonder what people do to entertain themselves when they get bored of watching the mist flit back up the sky.

My amateur photo below captures I think what makes me like the Newfoundland coastal scenery so much. You have all the main features of a great view on a hike: ocean, trees, mountains, other greenery, beach, moss/algae, rock, and even a hint of cliff. Enumerating these things is like whatever: it’s how your brain pulls together the inputs from all the different angles around you, and their smell, how they feel on your skin.

I can see why Gros Morne is popular. The drive alone through it is breathtaking, with altitude changes so quick my ears popped more than a typical plane flight. I found myself envious of the people living in the adjacent towns and the views they had just by opening their curtains, at the same time enjoying the feeling that this place was so far away from me, like I was in another world completely unlike my day to day life.