My Kingdom For A Southern Drawl Pt. 1

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“Can you imagine that,” Jim says. “When a moose walks out in front of you, it's all legs, right? So when you hit him, he falls right on your windshield.” I ask him how much a moose weighs, and say I've heard it's about 700 pounds. “800 my young man,” he laughs. “He's all legs. Anyway, this thing falls in through the windshield and buddy crashes into the ditch. He wakes up in there and the moose is still alive believe it or not.” I taste a shudder in the back of my throat, like licking a battery and shrug it off. “This thing starts thrashing,” he says. “Because obviously he's scared, and going like this [to illustrate, Jim weaves the wheel back and forth, sloshing us all over the wet pavement and upsetting oncoming traffic] trying to get out.”

I stare out the window at the hills I am reluctant to call mountains, only because I want to seem less like the softened city dandy I've let myself become. “Snapped his neck,” Jim says. “With the antlers. Never walked again.”

Newfoundland is exactly like everyone says it is. The houses are pastel multicoloured and pop off the hillside. Driving is a nightmare; streets intersect at bizarre angles and while everyone maintains that they're marked, I see no evidence to support this. The weather is perpetually a blue-grey cloud, constantly encircling the island that breaks only on special occasions and holidays. When the sun does appear, it's almost as if it's done so by accident. It tips its hat, and apologizes to the dampness like its just walked in on a party it wasn't invited to, and is gone within moments. At no point does there seem to be any sunrise or sunset, it's either a light grey a.m. or a black humid night. Unlike some places, you can't smell the water that surrounds you, even in the small fishing villages, hostile and doe eye'd.

Jim drives myself and my friend Alex around the various parts of the city, making sure we are able to take in a much of the place as possible before returning to Toronto. “George street would be a good place to go tonight,” he says. “Things pick up there around midnight. Last call is still 2 or so, but no one really pays attention to that. Most people will clear out around four or five.” We're told George street is where everyone goes. We're tired though, and have more modest goals than bar-hopping. “We'll get lunch in a minute,” says Jim, pointing off North. “First I'm going to take you boys to the iceberg.”

I'm remarkably quiet the whole trip. Usually, it's impossible to shut me up. I'm either making some stupid joke or listing off my to-do list to deal with when I get home. In Newfoundland though, I'm quiet. At Signal Hill, I send Blackberry messages and lean into the wind on the top of the tower. It holds me up, and this feels less remarkable than it does impossible, so I feel sick and stop. “Be careful up here,” the gift shop clerk warns. “People try to get a good view and fall down off the cliff onto the rocks.” I take note. Someone starts to tell me how the other day they saw a gull fly out of a pack and pick a starling off of a telephone wire, and how they had to run over and scream at it and kick at it to get it to let it go. Seagulls aren't supposed to eat starlings. I get the distinct feeling that I am going to die in this place myself, but everything looks so nice I decide that I'm comfortable.

At Cape Spear I wander through the gun batteries built in World War II and kick brittle hunks of rust. I step up on what appears to be a cross between a canon and a mortar but since I know nothing about weaponry I just assume that it's used to blast holes in things. No one is really sure whether or not it was ever fired. Moments later we're standing on the most easterly point of North America. “So,” Alex says casually. “This is the end of the world huh?” I laugh and get my picture taken next to a plaque making a stupid face and read more signs recommending I don't fall to my death on the rocks below. The wind here is even worse, and the raindrops dig into my pores. We enter a lighthouse. It has fantastic natural ambient light for photos and every tool looks like a prop from a horror movie. Despite this, a tour guide points out where people slept on bales of hay and makes jokes, likely the same jokes they make every single time a tour group comes through.

When we get to the iceberg, I want nothing more than to jump in the water and swim over to it. I know this is a bad idea, but I am so compelled to do so, I cannot speak until I'm ushered back into the car. Jim tells us a story about a man he knew who used to take pictures of icebergs, who fell over the edge of a cliff. They found his car on Monday, and his body on a Thursday. It seems, Newfoundland is a collection of beauty and casualties.  

Comments

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That shooting thing looks like a giant carrot.
That's what she said.
Ohhhhhhhhhh.

I like your pictures, dinosaur man.