Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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From a distance, it looked like just a chip of ice, particularly as it was alone on a wide, empty sea, framed by an equally wide, empty sky. As we approached, the blip of white began to take on a bit more character, at points looking like a delicate dragon lifting out of the waves. But it still looked rather small. How deceiving appearances can be!

The boat had set out from Saint Anthony, the largest and perhaps most important town in the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. Within at least a hundred kilometers of the town, you start to see signs on the Viking Trail advertising all the amenities that Saint Anthony has to offer - including full hospital services (which had more significance than I expected). I imagine it was even more important when there were no roads in this part of Newfoundland (which was the case until the 1960s!). This is where people come to shop and bank and perform other errands. Of course, it’s also a major hub for tourism in the tip of the peninsula, including the whale and iceberg tour I took.

It was also the base for a colorful character I learned about on this trip: Sir Wilfred Grenfell. Grenfell was a British doctor-missionary who first came over in the late nineteenth-century as part of a medical mission to Labrador; soon he had decided this was his life’s calling. He returned and began to set up a whole network of medical facilities (hospitals, nursing stations, etc.) across Labrador and northern Newfoundland, enticing other physicians to join him or getting donors to fork out some cash. He branched out in his social service efforts and began to open orphanages and schools, and even helped set up agricultural and crafts operations. From what I can tell, he pretty much tried to do everything to improve the lives of people in these parts. While I don’t think he was the most modest of men, he seems to have done much good and is still revered around these parts. Now there’s a whole complex of Grenfell museum properties, including a large interpretative center on his life and work and his home set up on a hill above the town. There’s also an interesting set of ceramic murals at the hospital founded by the doctor.

But my main goal was the iceberg tour. The northern coast of Newfoundland is known as Iceberg Alley, since these chunks of Greenlandic glacier float on the currents sweeping past the island. I had already seen small ones trapped in the Straight of Labrador on my way up the Viking Trail, but the boat tour promised to get me up close and personal with one of the bigger ones in the area.

The day could not have been more perfect, warm and sunny - and most importantly still! The freezing temperatures I had been told to expect on the open sea did not materialize; indeed, I was able to stay atop the ship’s cabin the entire four-hour journey, soaking in the salty air. Sometimes the trips pass migrating whales, but all we saw were seabirds (including my favorite, puffins) and on the distant shore, a moose. But the star attraction was the iceberg that had lodged into one of the large bays south of St. Anthony. Double-pinnacled, it seemed to morph into an infinite number of shapes and reflect an infinite number of shades of blue. It struck me as the ship circled the towering ice (at least a hundred feet high), listening to the piped theme of Titanic (I am not kidding - these Newfoundlanders have a great sense of humor), that I have done a lot of icy tourism of late. Just this spring I was hiking across a glacier at the other extreme of the Americas, in southern Patagonia. I guess I am soaking up the cold before heading into the desert.

I realize just what a cliché it is to talk about the “tip of the iceberg”, but it also struck me watching the shape-shifting ice that it was a good metaphor for Newfoundland. There’s much more beneath the surface than meets the eye. I have been here under a week and I am already wishing I had many months to explore.

I will just have to return.

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Comments

[Ami]

The iceberg is S.T.U.N.N.I.N.G. Also, I want a copy of Photo 26! I think you ARE soaking up the memories of cold weather, storing them like a weather camel to help you through the hot, dusty years in Sudan. :)