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Published: September 20th 2006
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We mulled over whether to stay in town somewhere or try to find a campsite. We opted to sail up the Fiord (as beautiful as western brook in gros morne) to a spot called Frenchman's Cove that someone, we thought, had said was a sandy beach and a nice place to camp. Once again, our accent / language barrier led us astray. The cove, about two miles from Grey River, was a rocky beach, with really nowhere to camp. Maybe beach meant rocks to Grey River folk? We didn't know. More pressing was the rain, increasing now to a torrent. The forecast was for 'intermittent showers' so we sheltered, sort of, crouched under a tree for an hour or two, but the rain refused to stop. Ok. We set up tent in the one flat spot we could find, a grassy island in the middle of a brook flowing out into the fiord. We were concerned about the tide, but there really wasn't anywhere else to go. We read in the damp tent, hungry, cursing our decision to leave Grey River as the water level rose higher and higher. The rain was positively torrential now and the brook had turned from
a tiny stream into a full-fledged river. Damn. It was about 10:30, we were trying to stay awake, and the water was still rising. There was no doubt about it. We were camping on a tidal flat. The subsequent fording of the thigh deep river in the dark clutching our sodden tent was... really fun. We ended up camping literally on top of some lowlying bushes, or something, which stuck up through our tent floor. To make matters worse, Fully was anchored so far out to sea now we couldn't even see her, and a worried Rob dragged her and her rock anchor all the way into the new shoreline in the middle of the night. We sort of slept in a puddle while the rain continued all night. Newfoundland, you win again.
We woke up to more rain and a foot of water in the boat. that's a lot of rain. We had to wait for high tide to go to Grey River. Rob tried to make me stay in the tent for warmth purposes but i started to go a little stir-crazy in the place where i'd been sleeplessly stuck for about 12 hours. The upside was that
escaping the tent made me absurdly happy, despite the rain. Its, well, drawbacks aside, Frenchman's Cove was a beautiful spot. The fiord walls were now alive with thousand foot waterfalls, literally everywhere. One i could see fell about halfway before losing its footing on the rock, drifting sideways in the wind, and resuming its course in varying other places on the cliff. I'd never seen that before. Like a lot of things, i don't have pictures of these amazing waterfalls because it was raining so hard when i saw them.
We pedalled back to Grey River with our soaked gear.
Maybe it was our dejected moods or lack of sleep, but Grey River was different this time. We needed a place to dry out our gear and we were offered the use of some baiting sheds. The smell was outrageous so we opted for the "firehall" on the wharf at the centre of town. The Firehall was essentially a place where people put their garbage and drink beer, but it was dry. It was still raining and we were incredibly cold, but at least we could cook and eat, finally.
So we were happy but incredibly conspicuous. My time in
newfoundland has taught me many things--that as an Ontarian i'll always be conspicuous in an outport, any outport. But, despite my Ontario raised fear of sticking out, this isn't a bad thing. Everyone I've ever met in Newfoundland has been unbelievably kind and generous, opening up their homes and their hearts to me in a beautiful way. So i guess i figured Grey River would give us something, teach us something, maybe make us a few friends if we stayed there long enough. But it wasn't so. I don't know what it was. People were shy of us, and we were shy of them, and past the occasional polite exchange we never really said enough to each other. hell, it was hard to say much to each other that was mutually understood. I wondered at times whether we outstayed our welcome, if people didn't want strangers encamped at the centre of their town. According to the kayak accounts we'd read, Grey River is a common place to get stuck. Or maybe it was the fact that they thought we were crazy and naive to be sailing newfoundland in our boat. From our vantage point on the wharf we were able
to observe small parties of folks coming down to see Fully, the main attraction in town, one outporter acting as guide, waving their more tremulous companion over to our boat where they both stared down (our tiny craft was about eight feet below the docks edge) in disbelief, shaking their heads, discussing with each other, then turning to stare at us, then shaking their heads again. Some people merely made declarations like "i wouldn't step foot in that thing in a million years" or "you couldn't pay me to take that into the ocean" while others seemed to think it best if they isolated me, as the female, more approachable member of the party and give me their warnings in private. One man listened politely to Rob's cheerful explanation of how the boat worked, seemingly satisfied, before taking me aside to tell me, in no uncertain terms, not to go out on the ocean in Fully ever again.
Great.
Other than that it was just odd to be at the centre of a town that you don't understand, where you don't know anyone, and where even a conversation is an effort, because your understanding of language is so different. Oddest
of all was the way in which everyone in Grey River takes walks, and by walks i mean they walk around the town in groups of twos and threes, which is nice. But since the town is so small and your only other option for walking would be to scale a mountain essentially, they are stuck doing laps. The wharf is the turnaround point for these laps that people were doing, so the same people walked by five, eight, twelve times in a row, talking, giving us a friendly wave, certainly, but never more than that. Rob, who hadn't slept at all at Frenchman's Cove, had to ask me a couple times if he was seeing things because everything felt like deja vu or like being stuck in the movie Groundhog Day. Maybe i'm exaggerating but this place was doing something to our minds.
To make matters worse, we could see that out at sea, just beyond the mouth of the fiord, it was a sunny beautiful day. It was just Grey River that was sunk in the, well, grey clouds. When the sun finally did burst through in the afternoon (us scrambling around to lay out our wet gear)
in didn't last long before dipping below the fiord walls, casting Grey River into a premature shade. I liked Grey River, i think, but it really was topographically at least, a hole.
We were homesick for Fully, for the ocean, for the feeling we'd had of moving and going somewhere, doing something. But the weather forecast was sketchy, our stuff didn't seem like it'd ever dry out, we'd been told never to go back into the ocean again. and there was a ferry coming in. When Rob turned to me and said that maybe we should just pack up and get on it it started to really feel like game over. No francois, no hermitage.
And then the sun came out. The primitive beings we'd become were completely fooled by the sun into thinking that all things were, well, sunny. Suddenly we were smiling again, talking about hermitage again, and best of all our stuff was drying. We found a spot out of town to set up our tent and we were out like lights before the sun went down.
We left Grey River the next day as completely clueless as we'd arrived in it, with no understanding of who its people were, how things worked, what it was like to live there, what made things happen. I regret that, but then, how could it have been any different?
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Neville Higgins
non-member comment
life at Grey River
Hi Tamara I enjoyed your travel blog. Nearly 30 years ago I lved at Grey River for 20 weeks (over three years) doing field work for my PHD. I am an Australian now but born n New Zealand. I did my PHD in St John's NFLD working on economic geology.I studied the mineralisation at Grey River spending many days underground and many days scaling that cliff to map the surface and eat berries! It was an unusal place with electricity only connected a few years before we arrived. It took me 2-3 weeks to understand the accent - very old english with thee's and thou's. Ovre the 3 years I did field work I got to know the people very well.My field hand was a "Frank Lushman" but half the townspeople had that same name! They were very hospitable (lots of ST Pierre rum) - took me into their homes and their lives. I really enjoyed it a lot. Anyway it was great to see your photgraphs. The reason I discovered your blog because I am planning a trip back to show my family where I spent that time...I am not as brave as you guys - we will catch the ferry along the coast! Can't wait to see that coast line and Francois and GR again Ciao neville@higginspsych.com.au