60 for 60

I never envisioned my 60^th birthday. Which is not to say that I did not expect to live to this point, but the concept of turning 60 has always been intimidating. And so, it was vacated from my thoughts until my later 50s.

   While aging is not something I have thought about historically, mortality has long been on my mind. As a kid, I had chronic and severe asthma, which frequently resulted in asthma attacks and extended hospital stays—I vividly recall one asthma attack where the doctors were talking in hushed voices, concerned that I was not responding to treatment. By 60, both grandfathers had had heart attacks and were on the downward slide toward early deaths. One of my grandmothers was soon to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Many of my parent’s aunts and uncles were gone by 60.

   Understandably, as I reached my later 50s, my own 60^th birthday became a prospect filled with dread. During the spring of 2023, while hiking Sargent Mountain, I had an epiphany: Celebrate the year! The whole year! Undertake a series of adventures, bucket list goals, and other ambitious objectives to demonstrate that I am not bound to my grandparents’ fate. Sixty in all, one for each year of my life to prove my vibrancy to myself.

   60 for my 60^th.

   I have created a document to guide me through my year, a sort of keepsake that I can one day hand off to my daughter. For anyone interested, a somewhat abbreviated version is available here: PDF of "60 for 60". While it is mostly prose, it includes a smattering of photos of my life, as well as a checklist of the 60 things I want to accomplish in my 60th year. And throughout the year, I will be making regular blog posts here, as well as tagging them on Facebook. Enjoy!

On Halfmoon Island, Antarctica, 2015.

 

Zeeee-up!

I first posted this to the Maine-Birds listserve back on May 4th, 2009:

For months I have been occasionally looking at field guides with my now two-year-old daughter, Anouk. I would tell her stories about my experiences with the various birds we look at, including my interpretation of their song. To Anouk, a Black-capped Chickadee is, “Pappa, dee dee dee.” American Crow, “Taw taw,” (she pronounces her hard “c” and “k” as “t”). Red-breasted Nuthatch says, “Ang ang.”

Well, yesterday morning we went outside shortly after she first awoke. The dawn chorus was in full swing: Hermit Thrush, Black-throated Green Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Pine Warbler, Blue-headed Vireo. Then Anouk informed me, pointing to the tree-tops, “Pappa, zeeee-up.” Sure enough, my first of the year Northern Parula. I nearly fell over! And she was right, too!

Confessions of a butt-sniffer...

This posting was written a few weeks ago, but I am only now getting around to posting it....


Hi, my name is Rich, and I am a butt-sniffer. I last sniffed a butt just a few minutes ago as Anouk lay sleeping in bed. Thankfully, it was only farts.

Actually, I am concerned that butt-sniffing is a behavioral gateway: kind of like smoking pot is supposed to be a gateway to more hardcore drugs, sniffing butts is a gateway to worse actions. I have become desensitized to all manner of bodily emissions.

When I comment that it was just baby farts, there is no longer that tell-tale lie in my voice that I was actually the culprit.

Runny nose. Wipe it on anything handy: my sleeve, sock, my own fingers and then wipe them on my pants.

Changing a pee-filled diaper at night is an act of desperation: desperation to change it as quickly as possible so as not to wake the baby and to get back to sleep as soon as possible myself. Wiping her little pee-soaked fanny...forget-about-it. Just change the damn diaper, and quick. Are my hands dirty afterwards. I don't know (and I don't care), I am too exhausted to care about anything except the one thing I can't have: a decent night's sleep.

Poopy diapers? See above. Fortunately, with one exception in her 21 months of life, Anouk has never pooped at night.

Vomit. Fortunately (for me) Anouk seems to only like to vomit on Natalie, and those efforts have been voluminous! Which is not to suggest I have not come in contact with this particular textured fluid, but we will not talk about cleaning up after sick family members (yes, plural) on the coastal steamer to Francois, Newfoundland. As I lay in bed writing these thoughts, Anouk just had a little gag reflex and a few teaspoons of regurgitant came up. Wipe it up with the ever-present rag, toss the rag in farthest reaches of the nightstand (so it is still within reach should I need it again), flip the soiled pillow over, and call it good.

Sleep. What is that? I am getting so conditioned by a little girl who does not sleep through the night that even when she is asleep, I am on the edge. Lately I find myself waking in the middle of the night, checking that everything is okay in our little nest, and then lying there for an hour, sometimes two, once even three, trying, desperately wanting to go back to sleep. Natalie and I take turns with baby duty at night. Tonight is my turn. It is only 9:00 p.m. and I have been in bed for an hour-and-a-half. I'm wide awake, hence playing on the computer with email. I will probably drift to sleep just about the time Anouk decides it is time for a crying jag, or worse, a screaming fit.

I think I am getting senile, though. Anouk will arise for the day anywhere between 4:30 a.m. and 7:00. She will lean over to me, pat my chest, and say in the absolutely most sweetest voice ever, "Papa." Within 15 minutes of waking up, I will be alert and ready for the day (albeit a bit bleary-eyed). Half an hour after she first greeted me for the day I will have completely forgotten that it was not many hours ago that I thought the notion of eating your young was an increasingly reasonable idea. Tomorrow (Saturday) we will go birding on a Downeast Audubon field trip and many people will comment on what a cute baby she is (Heck, isn't EVERY baby cute?), and I will be one proud papa.

Musings on Darwin's 200th birthday...

The anniversary of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday seems an appropriate time for me to finally update our blog. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, yes, we are home from Newfoundland (we returned to Bar Harbor at the end of October 2008). Anyway, here is an edited version of one of my recent postings to the Maine-Birds listserve….

The other day I was sitting at my desk in my home office, working on my book, tentatively entitled A Prairie Home Naturalist. Although blue skies beckoned, I diligently remained put. I have strategically placed all of the bird-feeders in our front yard so that they can be observe from my desk. The feeders had been active all morning with the usual suspects: Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Common Redpoll, Downy and Hairy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, Mourning Doves, Dark-eyed Junco, American Goldfinch, and Pine Siskin. Later that day, when I went out to get the mail, a Brown Creeper was in a dead spruce in the side yard.

I keep a running list of all our “greater” yard birds – that is, birds that have been seen either in our yard, or from our modest 4-acre property. It would take some effort to come up with a precise tally: I could more easily tell you what birds have NOT been in our year than which ones are actually on the list. So, imagine my surprise when movement out of the corner of my eye turned out to be a flock of 12 turkeys! This is DEFINITELY a new yard bird for 285 Knox Road! I only wish 21-month-old Anouk could have been here to see them. She would have said, “Ta too, ta too!” Anouk is learning both English and French, and the Francophone name for turkey is “dinde,” pronounced something like “dah doe.”

Anouk, born April 29, 2007, has become my most regular birding buddy. When she was mere hours old, she and I sat in a chair at the Mount Desert Island hospital, rocking gently back and forth. I was telling her about the birds I was seeing out the window. For her first spring, we routinely awoke with the sun and went for a walk down the Knox Road. I pointed out the various warblers, describing them to her, trying to imitate their songs.

When we were in Newfoundland this past May through October, she always wanted my binoculars, so I taped together two toilet-paper tubes and a lanyard for her. Ever since, when I tell her we are going birding, she goes and gets her “binoculars” and says, “All set.” I have many fond memories of sitting on the ground in Newfoundland, my spotting scope adjusted as low as it would go – which was the perfect height for a 31-inch tall person – and sharing the view with her.

Now, one of her favorite activities is to stand on the living room couch and look out the window at the feeders. When she says, “Dee dee dee,” I know the Black-capped Chickadees are there. “Ang ang” is for the Red-breasted Nuthatch. “Ja ja” tells me the Blue Jays are present. And “Zzzzz” is for the Dark-eyed Juncos. We are working in “Perchickory” for the American Goldfinch, but that is a lot of syllables for a little mouth.

I have been keeping a life-list for her, which I intend to compile for her second birthday. I imagine Anouk is one of few people in Maine with three hummingbirds on her list: Ruby-throated, Calliope, and Green Violetear. She has seen pelagic birds galore, including touching a Dovekie we found on the road in Newfoundland and a Leach’s Storm-Petrel that was stranded on a ferry on The Rock. When I carried the Dovekie back to the ocean, she watched my every move as I released it. And the storm-petrel so captivated her, I think she still remembers it.

She has seen King Eider, Common Murre, gannets plunge-diving, hundreds (maybe thousands) of Sooty Shearwates crowded to shore by a fogbank rolling in. Snow Buntings at Sand Beach were intriguing. Chasing Herring Gulls is always great fun. Cawing back to the crows is a favorite pass-time. And she has been packed up Cadillac Mountain to the hawkwatch. Despite all this, the feisty Black-capped Chickadee is clearly her favorite. “Dee dee dee.”

Of Caribou and King Eider

I was certain this would be the morning. We are eight days into our three-week stay on Fogo Island, off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland, where caribou, they say, are prolific. “Any caribou yet?” Shirley asks each time she sees me. No, but that’s because I still don’t believe they exist. Shirley, who takes care of Anouk so Rich and I can get some work done, declared a few days ago, “I saw some this morning on my walk.” And yesterday at the harvest festival, she tells me her husband Mart called from camp to announce with relief that he got his caribou; it was the last day of the season. Fifty permits were allotted this year up from last year’s 25. The population is on the rise, perhaps because the newly introduced coyote on the mainland (what Fogo Islanders call the island of Newfoundland) is driving them out. Shirley’s son tells me of the time he was coming home from hockey practice and had to wait for several minutes as a whole heard was crossing the road. “They kept coming and coming and coming….” Our landlord Basil saw some this morning on the road near the beach. Even Rich came home from his run the other morning saying he saw a few up the creek by the edge of Tilting, the town we have settled into this month.

The habitat looks right, I tell myself, with berry brush-covered hills, and boreal fen amidst rocky outcroppings. It is a stunning landscape, the tuckamore – impenetrable weather-stunted spruce-fir forest – lines some of the hills, standing short enough to see the view beyond and tall enough for its limbs to paint the direction of the wind. Caribou, I promise myself, will make an appearance on our hike today. My binoculars are around my neck. Even Anouk on my back is ready with her own binoculars: two toilet paper tubes taped together with a string for a strap Her daddy made them two days ago and she won't take them off. They have become her most prized possession! She, too, is hunting for caribou.

And so, we look. My eyes swivel between horizon and trail, horizon and trail. I am losing sight of what’s more important, seeing caribou or keeping me and my baby upright. “There!” cries Rich… but then he continues, “There was once a caribou there.” ARGHHHH. He got me. We’ve played this game all summer with whatever wildlife is known to frequent certain parts of Newfoundland. Moose, humpback whale, ptarmigan, caribou…forever the elusive caribou.

The trail comes around a hill and into a cove. The wind is howling. Waves crash on the ledges and rocks at the entrance of the cove. I know if I asked a local fisherman, he could name every one of those ledges. The sea being the main highway for generations, the features under water are more important to name than any hill or hummock on land. Waves in the distance horserace their way towards shore where they lift and curl into a translucent blue tube. I bump into Rich who has paused along the trail to put his binoculars to his nose. It is shorebird migration season.

“How much do you love me?” he asks with a grin in his voice. “How much do you love me?” he repeats. My heart joins the horserace. “You see a caribou? You really do?” “How much do you love me?” He asks one more time…. I look at his binoculars. They are not pointed to land. They are pointed towards the cove, where those waves are crashing in the shore. I lift mine and look. “KING EIDER!” There it is, a male King Eider in winter plumage. His head looks pink, his bill an oversized shnoz. He is smaller than his Common Eider cousin. Darker. He swims with a female common eider. A winter plumage Black Guillemot darts among them. A bit behind, on the back side of the waves, two Red-throated Loons. Up on the hill flying by in a flock, Snow Buntings. But in the middle of it all, yes, it really is: a King Eider.

This week, well this whole summer actually, I have been desperately hunting for caribou. Though my hunt has become frantic this week on Fogo Island, it pales in comparison to my multi-year search for King Eider. I have wanted to see a King Eider since I was 21, when I first started guiding kayak tours on the coast of Maine. I had read a bunch about Common Eiders, information to pass on to my kayaking customers. I had learned about the King Eider and how, if I was lucky, I might see one mixed into a raft of Common Eiders in the late fall. They looked so cool in my first Peterson's Field Guild to Eastern Birds. So northern and bright. Since then, I have searched for this colorful sea duck to no avail. What luck, I thought a few years later, to meet, fall in love with, and marry an ornithologist. He’ll help me find a King Eider. And so he has, many years later, on an island off the northeastern tip of Newfoundland where King Eider apparently swim in a sea of would-be caribou…

Vive l’isle de France!

It is 9 AM and we are lining up at the start of the “Trail des Collines,” a race and hike along the barren hills of a small island off southern Newfoundland. Anouk is perched in her backpack pointing excitedly to the dogs lining up with their owners. “Attention à vos oreilles!” shouts an organizer as he points the gun to the air and shoots. Klick. The crowd of a 100 bursts into laughter at the failed gun start, especially in light of the previous remark about watching out for your ears. People stumble forward wondering: “On y va ou pas?” Do we go or not? “Non, non, retournez à vos place, on recommence…" And so, we return to our places and the race starts over. Gun in the air… and this time: POW! The race has begun!

Before I go much farther, I think I need to clarify that this wonderful event took place not in Newfoundland (though within sight of it) but in France. Now if this sounds crazy, it is time to pull out your Atlas and brush up on geography and history. The French island archipelago of St. Pierre and Miquelon lies within sight of Newfoundland’s south coast (on a clear day!). It is the last stronghold of the French Empire in the new world, negotiated out of British control by an enterprising French government who sought to lay claim to some portion of the great North Atlantic fishery in perpetuity. Perpetuity being a fisheries myth – the islands are also subject to the cod moratorium that has decimated Newfoundland’s economy – St. Pierre and Miquelon are facing major challenges of their own. The islands are totally dependent on “la metropole” (which is the local French people’s way of referring to the other, bigger stronger France across the ocean) for most aspects of their existence, along with container shipments from Halifax and St. John’s, though even these seem unreliable.

All these societal challenges, however, were totally lost on us as we hiked through the spectacular barrens of St. Pierre Island with our new friends Christelle and Yanis, and one of their two boys Oihan. It was the other son, Elouan, stuck back at home and not allowed to hike, who unintentionally helped foster this friendship. Back in June, Elouan had a ruptured appendix that went from bad to worse and he was shipped to the Janeway Children’s Hospital in St. John’s. Elouan ended up spending several weeks in the room next door to Anouk’s when we were in for her burns. Our two families were pretty intrigued by the fellow Francophones next door and struck up conversations. It is hard for friendships to flower under hospital circumstances but Rich and I commented several times “they seem like our people” (our perhaps not very PC code for anyone who appears to have a similar lifestyle and political views, anyone with whom we’d love to spend more time, given the chance).

Christelle and her family welcomed us into their homes and lives as if we were long lost friends. Her Papa provided the shuttle service after the hike, her sister Janick and brother-in-law Geroges offered wine and dinner of caught-that-day mackerel, and Oihan and Elouan offered Anouk true friendship that has her still smiling days later (if we say the name Oihan, she gets the warmest, cutest little happy friend smile, a smile she had not shared until Oihan!)

I love St. Pierre. When you wander the streets, which we did both by bike and on foot, there is no sign of economic challenge and I would not have known had our friends not explained. Instead, La Place Charles DeGaulle is crawling with flirting teenagers (including two girls who taught Anouk how to kick a soccer ball) and mothers pushing baby carriages. The stores, when they are open before and after lunch, are full of activity, and the bookstore (the one store that emptied my wallet) has an adult and children’s selection that implies the populace is active, and thriving. Lunch at the café was packed with residents and tourists alike enjoying a delicious taste of the old country: gallette aux pallourde – or savoury scallop crepe – pour Natalie, steak frite pour Rich, et salade de tomates pour Anouk…

A great time was had by all. For me this three-day trip was like a vacation from sabbatical, if that makes sense. I did not take a single note, did not speak into my recorder to capture a single detail, did not type a line, and asked only limited questions about tourism or fisheries. Instead, I enjoyed a few days in France in the company of new friends, and gathered through conversation and experience that St. Pierre, though very much France in the New World, is faced with similar issues that resource dependent cultures face the world over. Transitions and trepidations about the future are the norm. But the hiking is fantastic. The wine is pretty good too!

Traveling fools

As several of you fine readers and vicarious adventurers have pointed out in emails to Nat and me, it has been quite a few weeks since our last posts. Hopefully Nat’s posts of earlier today went some distance in alleviating concerns that we might have fallen of the edge of the Earth (granted, it is not far from here) or may have been abducted by aliens (although I did see some sort of unidentified flying object a few weeks back – it was flying and I did not identify it…) or that we entered the witness protection program or that we had a catastrophic failure of our Local Access Portals That Obviate Personal Struggles (LAPTOPS) or some other equally time-wasting reasons for getting on with this missive.

Since my Tilting Rare Bird report we have traveled countless kilometers (well, not entirely countless, we have the COW’s odometer’s trip meter set), visited St. John’s, Come By Chance, South Brook, Fleur-de-Lys, La Scie, Jackson’s Arm, Port au Choix, Birds Cove, Pistolet Bay, Bide Arm, Green Point, Barachois Pond, Burgeo, Francois, Red Indian Lake, Davidsville, Musgrave Harbour, and Gambo, some for the first time, some for the second time, St. John’s for the umpteenth time, to name more than a few.

The slow start I got with my bird list has been improving along with all this travel. And although I have not had much dedicated birding time, my binoculars are always strapped around my neck or within reach, so I would like to think that few birds escape my notice.

A quick sketch of the avian highlights thus far: Snow Geese flying over Rose Blanche; a Port aux Choix King Eider; hundreds of Sooty Shearwaters pushed in ahead of the oncoming fog bank at St. Vincent's, perhaps to feed on the capelin which had recently arrived; Great Blue Herons in the Codroy Valley (according to a recent newspaper article, they were actually documented as nesting, a Newfoundland first); a Cooper's Hawk in St. John's; a dark phase Gyrfalcon in Port aux Choix; hundreds – more likely thousands – of shorebirds (perhaps my favorite family of birds, especially Ruddy Turnstones) in the past few weeks; a Parasitic Jaeger off Fogo Island; Bonaparte's Gull in Port aux Basque; a Roseate Tern in Elliston; a Dovekie, that littlest of Atlantic alcids (the family that includes puffins); Red-necked Grebe and Bank Swallow in Burgeo; Common Grackle on the road between Port aux Basques and Rose Blanche; and Northern Harriers, Sharpies, and Merlins aplenty. I regularly see both crossbills, especially the White-winged, which I always enjoy. A surprise has been how long it has taken me to see Pine Grosbeak this trip; my first one was not until 19 August. This is said to be a common bird hereabouts.

In Burgeo last week we camped at a Sandbanks Provincial Park, which is nestled in "tuckamore", a scrubby natural community of nearly impenetrable Black Spruce and alder. For three days the warblers were nearly dripping off the branches: Palm Warblers were the most abundant, with hundreds visible in the span of 15 minutes. It was a good test of my fall warbler identification as there were so many warblers, eleven that I identified: Tennessee, Yellow-rumped, Palm, Bay-breasted, Blackpoll, Black-and-white, redstart, waterthrush, Mourning, yellowthroat, and Wilson's!!!

After a few fog-bound days in Francois (I am glad Nat ‘fessed up about her outbound sea-sickness), the weather finally cleared (which is a relative thing here in Newfoundland) the morning we took the coastal boat back to Burgeo. The three of us spent almost the entire ride on the exposed bow, taking in the sights that were hidden from us just a few days earlier. As the boat steamed a few kilometers from shore, we saw quite a few raptors, mostly Sharp-shinned Hawks and Merlins, but we also had a Peregrine Falcon. (These off-shore sightings just further excite me for a future project to study the role of off-shore islands in migration – Little Mount Desert Rock, 25 miles south of Bar Harbor, out toward the middle of the Gulf of Maine, complete with a lighthouse and a refurbished light-keepers house, is the perfect site.)

As I have long espoused, the trick to seeing birds is to look for them, and spending so much time in the great outdoors helps.

Total Newfoundland birds: 136

Return from the media blackout!

We are back in St. John’s for doctors appointments (again) for both Rich and Anouk. We’ve been in a bit of a communications blackout so here is the update and hopefully we’ll be back in internet writing mode for awhile!

Let’s start with health…. Anouk is a happy camper. Her burn site is stable, a fully closed wound. Not so pretty to look at and still very itchy at night, but otherwise, doesn’t limit her in any way (unless you consider waking up every couple hours to scratch limiting…perhaps more for her parents, sigh). She’s been wearing the pressure garment for a couple weeks now and seems to have gotten used to it. I am resigned to the fact she probably has permanent scars…she seems un-phased by the whole thing. She knows when we are talking about her arm, her burn, her scar, any of it (in either language, English or French) because she promptly points to it with a very serious look on her face.

She is a comprehension sponge right now! I tell her a word once and then she seems to know it and can point to that thing immediately (this morning it was etoiles, or stars, in a book, which she then recognized in another book). These last couple weeks, she is all about tickling, she especially LOVES to tickle her daddy’s belly when he changes into his pj’s at night! Big teeth are coming in. Hair is covering her head (curly in back, straight on top, white-blond all over). And she only has a couple inches left before she won't be able to stand in the camper’s bed anymore! She loves looking at the pictures of our friends and family back home. (Those of you involved in making that awesome photo book for us, she loves it!! Lately it is the picture of herself in Joel Avila’s backhoe that has her attention. She points to it, then herself, then it, then herself, and on and on, and gets awfully excited whenever she sees anything resembling a tractor or backhoe now….) Dogs continue to elicit the highest pitched squeal, with motorcycles a close second. Any words you ask? She’s got "Non" down pretty well, with the correct French accent and everything. Ma and Da are new discoveries too, which make her really smile big when she sees that she got it right. And the best of all, she loves to give us hugs, real honest to goodness I love you hugs. Last year when we came up to Newfoundland for the course I co-taught, Sean (one of my co-teachers) was once holding her as a baby and sighed peacefully saying, “Ahh, better than valium.” I think toddler hugs may be even better!

Speaking of Sean, I think Rich had mentioned earlier that we had a wonderful time in Bonavista with Sean, his wife Carolyn, daughter Sarah, and his in-laws Minnie and Lyndsey. We’ve had the good fortune of seeing Minnie and Lyndsey a couple times since then. And in fact, they are babysitting the boat for us. Yes, you read that right. We have left the Sea Grant 18-foot Lund in their driveway. Yes, I know, I was so so so excited to spend lots of time on the water this summer, so what gives??? Well, health and safety prevailed. Given Anouk’s burn, and Rich’s limited motion (he is ok, don’t get me wrong, but he IS slowed down a bit, though he would probably rather I keep my trap shut about it), it felt unsafe to head out to sea…. I wasn’t sure I felt confident enough to be skipper with a limited co-skipper and a very-eager-to-move toddler in a very small boat in unknown waters. Call us wimps. We’d rather think of us as safe and alive! Yet, I must admit, it was pretty sad driving away from the Russel’s waving goodbye to Minnie and Lindsey and the boat for a few months. The boat has never touched Newfoundland waters (though it was getting pathetically familiar with Newfoundland roads, another reason we left it behind). Sigh....

As a result, we are taking every opportunity we can get to get on the water other ways. The most recent foray was a ferry ride out to Francois, a tiny outport accessible only by boat tucked among the fjords of the South Coast. This was SO cool! Before I get to the cool part, I might as well admit before Rich gives it away, that I did indeed get sick as a moaning dog on the ferry out. Big seas, according to my belly; not so big according to the engineer. Anouk, too, revisited her goldfish snack…. Daddy alone kept his lunch, and managed to take care of Anouk while I took care of myself. So much for priding myself on being a seagoing chick (reminded me of another time I got sick on my sister’s boat about ten years ago, but that’s another story). Anyways, it was a four-hour ferry ride to a community that never has seen a car. Concrete and wooden boardwalks spider their way throughout the community of 130 year-round residents, houses nestled at the base of huge cliffs. Had the community not been there, already settled into a vertical stacking of homes, I don’t think I would have imagined this landscape ever could have been settled. I went for a short evening walk and, though Francois is literally in the middle of the Newfoundland coastal wilderness, the community is so compact and boxed in by the cliffs that as I was walking along a path right by windows and doors, I felt like I was in a fish bowl. By the end of two days, I beleive we had seen nearly every resident, and were certainly on friendly chatting terms with several.

Boomerang to the other landcape extreme…. Now, it is city-living for a week. We are back in our oh-so-familiar campsite at Pippy Park and taking advantage of the University Library and the internet connection at the bookstore. A veritable cornucopia of communications options! We are hoping this is our last city visit for the rest of the sabbatical, but who knows what the doctors have in store for us this week. We’ll keep you posted! Cheers to all.

Northern Peninsula, Family Style!

The following post was written by Natalie August 22 in anticipation of Internet access which, obviously, never happened at that time:

Greetings from Burgeo on Newfoundland’s south coast! It has been three weeks or so since Rich or I have taken the time to update the blog, not least of which because we haven’t had access to the internet all that much. We’ve been too focused on being present in Newfoundland to seek out public access sites! Were to begin when I know I only have about 20 minutes available before the Burgeo public library closes? How about a few highlights of the last weeks….

We’ve had a wonderful visit with my brother Renny, his wife Edie, and three of their sons: Mark, Liam, and Matthew. Anouk absolutely loved having her big cousins to play with -- a gang of three perfect toddler entertainers! It was a blast touring around with the family, including visiting L’Anse aux Meadows where remains of the Viking settlement of 1000 years ago have been found; a bike ride into Raleigh, a small Newfoundland outport attempting to make a go of tourism by showcasing their fisheries and craft heritage; a roller-coaster ride of a whale watch tour that netted my second ever sitting of White-beaked Dolphin (the first had been the night before from the St. Anthony Lighthouse!) and lots of Humpback Whales which look larger than life when you see them surfacing within 5 foot swells; a visit to the Grenfell Mission celebrating the work of a turn-of-the-century doctor who single-handedly affected the health and spiritual well-being of northern Newfoundland and Labrador; “Little Neddy on the Heady,” a gut-splittingly funny theatre production of Newfoundland song and stories for kids; a boat ride up the once-was-a-fjord-but-now-is-a-stunning-freshwater-pond West Brook Pond in Gros Morne National Park; about 23 Moose in just 5 days (Edie I hate to admit defeat but I do confess your vehicle count was higher than ours…); and finally, a visit to Conche, a French Shore community that artistically celebrates its French ancestry though no French is spoken by residents today.

When I say artistically, you need to understand that this town inspired me to take up embroidery, something I told the women working on the immense tapestry depicting their town history that my mother would practically faint upon reading (um, I guess it is safe to say that I, unlike my very talented mother, have never been real active in the domestic arts, but what these women where making was so cool that even 17-year-old Matthew was inspired to try his hand at it).

From a sabbatical project perspective, though the visit meant I cut back on writing time in order to play and cook and hang out with family, the running commentary that any family has about visiting a new place together netted really great observations for my project that I may have otherwise missed. A great time all around! Ok, the library lady keeps glancing my way. I am off. Hoping you are all having a safe and fun filled summer!

Rare Bird

It feels as though we are finally in true sabbatical mode. In the past weeks we have visited the Russells in Bonavista (parents of our friend Caroline Todd, wife of College of the Atlantic’s marine mammologist, Sean Todd); seen the Atlantic Puffin colony and the Puffin Festival in Elliston; traveled around the island communities of Fogo, Tilting, and Change Island (which is on the Change Islands); went to the Fish, Fun, and Folk Festival in Twillingate; visited the old whaling port of Dildo, and, of course, made our regular trip back to St. John’s for medical follow-up (for Anouk and me). We have seen several Moose, although nothing to rival the 83 we saw in two weeks last year when we visited the province. I have gone fishing (remember, in Newfoundland, there is only fish known as ‘fish’ and that is the Atlantic Cod). And I have seen some birds.

Let me rephrase that: I have seen a LOT of birds! Maybe it is just that we are finally venturing further away from St. John’s and the landscape is changing, although everywhere the eye looks it seems to still take in vast forests of Black Spruce on the uplands with peat bogs in the depressions. Maybe it is just that summer has finally hit (June was so called that a Newfoundlander we had dinner (the mid-day meal) with at Masonic Lodge at the Fish, Fun, and Folk Festival referred to it as Junuary) with temperatures consistently in the high 20s (that would be Celsius) province-wide for weeks now. And maybe it was that I have been haunted with that threshold lure of 100 birds that has been eluding me for so long. Whatever the reason, I have suddenly been seeing more birds.

Greater Yellowlegs were seemingly on every exposed bit of intertidal mudflat in Notre Dame Bay; the occasional Lesser Yellowlegs (I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be known as the ‘lesser’ of anything—perhaps they should be named Bigger and Smaller Yellowlegs, or Yellowlegs-With-The-Slightly-Recurved-Bill and just plain Yellowlegs, or Yellowlegs-With-The-slightly-Knobbier-Knee-Joint and Yellowlegs, or we could save a lot of angst, have everyone learn Latin, and simply refer to them by their scientific names of Tringa melanoleuca and Tringa flavipes) side-by-each with the Greater clearly illustrates the size difference. That elusive song I have been hearing for the whole of our travels, that song that is tonally akin to the American Robin, but is not the American Robin…well, I finally managed to find the mystery songster perched cooperatively atop a spruce: a Fox Sparrow. And now they seem to be singing EVERYWHERE! Fledgling Dark-eyed Juncos are falling out of their nest. Literally. Walk in the woods and they are regularly underfoot.

A Common Yellowthroat (15 July) and Roseate Tern (16 July) in Elliston. Yellow-bellied and Alder Flycatchers (18 July) in Chance Cove. Least Sandpiper (20 July), Caspian Tern and Fox Sparrow (21 July), Ruddy Turnstone (22 July), and a Parasitic Jaeger (23 July) while out fishing, all Fogo Island and vicinity. Mourning Dove (27 July) in Twillingate.

The avian highlight of the trip so far, though, is also a life-bird for me (which is particularly exciting because I don’t see life-birds very often anymore).

While we were camping at the municipal park in the village of Fogo, on Fogo Island, I went for an early morning perambulation to the privy to, well, you know. The approach is a boardwalk with a series of single-step level changes. My eyes blurred with sleep (it was about 4:00 in the morning, after all), I stepped forward, except there was no boardwalk, or, rather, it was one course lower. I went keester over kettle, seriously spraining my left foot. @#$%! It hurt, and I eventually struggled back to my feet. By the time I got back to the COW (Cabin-On-Wheels) the inside ball of my foot was swollen and black-and-blue with a nice (or not so nice, depending on your literary interpretation) knot on the top of my foot. It hurt enough to warrant a visit to the hospital. Fortunately for me, x-rays did not reveal anything broken.

So how, you may be asking, does this fit in with a life-bird? Bear with me…. As you may know, one of my many favorite expressions is why use a hundred words when a thousand will do?

The next day we went to the National Historic Register village of Tilting where we met Bonnie, an anthropologist from Rutgers who has been regularly coming to Tilting since her graduate research days thirty-some years ago. Bonnie offered to take us on a hike along the Turpin Trail. Given my bum foot (remember my stumble in Fogo?), which compliments my pinched-sciatic-nerve-numbed right, I chose to stay behind to watch birds. I set out my spotting scope and started scanning the nearby beach and mudflats. Greater Yellowlegs. Greater Yellowlegs. Greater Yellowlegs. Greater Yellowlegs. Lesser Yellowlegs. Spotted Sandpiper. Spotted Sandpiper. American Robin. Fox Sparrow. Dark-eyed Junco. Ruddy Turnstone! I love Ruddy Turnstones! They are a beautiful boreal shorebird that I only occasionally see in migration…and clearly this one is at the very early end of fall migration. I spent a lot of time looking at the Turnstone, scanning some of the surrounding area, but always coming back to the Turnstone.

As I was watching the Turnstone for the umpteenth time, a bird walked in front of it that looked different. Smaller than the Turnstone. Smaller than the nearby American Robin. A bit of reddish in the flanks. Sort of a wedge-shaped lighter border on the side of the head. Clearly a passerine, but what is it? A Horned Lark? No. An American Pipit? Definitely not. B’y, based on my memory of the two Varied Thrushes I have seen in my life, could it be that? Dare I run, er, I mean, hobble back to COW to get my field guide? No choice, I don’t know for sure what this bird is. Look a few more minutes, take a few more field notes to aid identification just in case it is not there when I return. An interminable age later I return with my 5th edition of the National Geographic Guide to the Birds of North America. Varied Thrush. Page 350. NO! IT IS NOT A VARIED THRUSH! But it is so thrush-like!

EUREKA! The red flanks and the wedge-shaped markings on the side of the head are definitive! I am looking at a Redwing! (No wonder it was so thrush-like, it is of the genus Turdus, the same as the American Robin, which is also in the thrush family.) This is a Eurasian bird that, according to my field guide, is known to show up in Newfoundland! I watched the bird for a long time, taking numerous digi-scope pictures (that is where you hold up your camera to the lens of the spotting scope and press the shutter release) and movies.

Uh-oh, I may have watched the Redwing for too long. I hopped (hobbled) in the COW and took off down the road to meet Natalie, Anouk, and Bonnie, who were walking down the road toward me. Oops…

Total Newfoundland birds: 106

Fishing

Every bit of Fogo Island fits my personal definition of an outport: small fishing communities (or former fishing communities), rugged landscape, friendly people, accessible only by boat (in this case, an ice-breaking car ferry). Natalie has been excited about Fogo Island for a long time. For some reason, I could not get my head around the abstract notion of Fogo. However, once we got there, I was smitten! I could stay there a long, long time.

One of the many ways we get to know a community is to eat at the local restaurants. Our first night on Fogo we ate supper (the evening meal) at Beach’s Restaurant in the village of Fogo. Anouk was busy doing her job, serving as the MacSpring ambassador to Newfoundland. She would walk her adorable little baby walk, a wide-legged stance sort of wobbling around, arms held shoulder high for balance. Every woman in the place commented that “she is some cute” or “she is some precious” or “she is some adorable” or “she is some blond…and look at those blue eyes.” Anouk would go up to them, smile, and sometimes take their finger or touch their leg. The men, almost in spite of themselves, would warm up, too.

This opened up a meal-long dialog with the table immediately adjacent ours. Junior and Carole King introduced themselves, Junior offering his hand in friendship, “I’m Junior—that’s my given name—Junior King, and this is my wife, Carole.” Junior works as a medical technician in the local hospital (given our spate of injuries, Natalie has taken to noting the location of every hospital), a local boy who grew up in neighboring Change Islands.

During the course of the evening we talked up a range of subjects: fishing, medicine (Canadian vs. American vs. Canadian), out-migration (Newfoundlands biggest export is its people), politics (we both bemoaned the sorry state of the U.S.’s global standing), and fishing (in Newfoundland, everything comes back to fishing). It turns out the next day was the start of the recreational Cod-fishing season, or, in local parlance, it was the start of the fishing season. In Newfoundland, there is only one fish, and that is the Atlantic Cod. All other fish are called by their common or colloquial names. I had barely made a comment about hoping to go fishing at some point when Junior offered to take me out the very next day.

So the next day, Tuesday (22 July), started off with a virtual cloud over the day: I severely sprained my foot (see the next story…). OUCH! The day picked up with the unexpected finding of a life-bird: a Redwing (see the next story…)! At this point, I really did not expect that we would get to our campsite in time to meet Junior.

By suppertime, time of the evening meal, we finally made it back. The local little kids were at soccer practice in the field adjoining our campsite, so Anouk made a bee-line for them. Natalie later told me that a little boy, all of 3 or 4, was trying to teach Anouk how to kick a soccer ball. Apparently his mother kept telling him that Anouk was too little to know how to kick the ball and the boy replied emphatically that was why he was trying to teach her.

Anyway, Junior pulls up in his pick-up truck and asks if I was up for fishing…or did I want him to amputate my foot…he had a dull and rusty box-cutter with him that he thought would do the job. Marshall, the campground manager, pulled up in his mini-van and asked if Junior was bothering me. Suddenly I was one of the locals, leaning against the car, chatting about the kids’ soccer practice. Marshall asked Junior if he was going out fishing or not, and Junior asked me if I was game. YOU BET!!!

So off we go, to his home about a kilometer away. Junior’s garage may be the fishing equivalent of Natalie’s and my basement: he could outfit and a Boy Scout troop for fishing. I say Boy Scout instead of the more traditional ‘army’ because all of the Wellies he had were made for small feet, not the size 12 canoes I sport. Anyway, he rustles up a pair or felt-lined Wellies, pulls out the felts, and voila, I have boots. Then he gives me one of those jackets with the life-jacket built in…and we are good for bear…or Fish. Junior’s son, Chris, is to join our party. Delman, whose Newfie accent is so thick I need Junior to interpret, comes by to send us off.

We motor out through a narrow channel into the open ocean. Fifteen minutes of cruising later and we spy a wooden dory that two men rowed out to fish. We pull up and they say the fishing is no good, so we cruise another ten minutes, slow, and drop our lines. Junior and Chris are using handlines; they give the CFA (Comes From Away) a heavy-duty rod and open-face reel.

We all are jigging, letting our lures sink ten fathoms to the bottom, then twitch them up and let them settle. Junior catches the first fish (Hey Junior, how much are you going to pay me to not post its size here?), and minutes later I pull in a good sized one: over half as long as I am tall and a good 3 or 4 kilograms. No sooner had I pulled it off the hook, placed it in the fish bin, and dropped my line before I hooked another. And another. And another. Junior was pulling them in, too. In no time flat, between us, we landed ten Fish. Chris did not catch any up to this point; Junior said it was because Chris was fishing on the wrong side of the boat. Eventually Chris did catch a fish: a sculpin. This wide-mouthed, spiny-finned bottom-feeder is not a desired fish and Junior is sure to remind Chris of this fact. We slowly drift into deeper water and we are all catching sculpin. After another hour of chasing Fish, the sun is getting low to the horizon and we head in.

On the way in, Junior says that he is not sure of the regulations, and with me being an American CFA, to avoid trouble, that I should give him the fish. Back at the dock, he quickly fillets (in Newfoundland, they pronounce the ‘t’) the fish and gives me four, which become supper the next night for the family MacSpring.

On meeting a writer

Life in Newfoundland is great. We are still base-camped in a little tiny outport aka coastal fishing village), have been here in Elliston for about a week, getting to know the community and, thanks to Anouk's big smile and wandering legs, making new friends. Had tea yesterday afternoon in the home of a well-known Newfoundland author who shared wonderful stories of her childhood in outport Newfoundland. This was a highlight for me as I had read her stuff and really enjoyed it...something about meeting someone you admire and realizing they are a normal person! And the fun part was that we met her simply because we rode our bikes by her house a few times on the way to a puffin colony and her son popped out and said, "Now where are you folks from..." One thing led to another and I learned whose house it was and the next day it was tea in the front room for all. Wonderful!

We are here for a couple more days. I have had some great meetings with folks involved in tourism planning and fisheries and heritage preservation on this penisula. Yes, remember, this little junket is work after all! Actually, I do feel like I am learning a lot and have been doing a ton of writing too.... (I am writing this from College of the North Atlantic -- yes, North Atlantic, as opposed to College of the Atlantic where I have my office in Maine -- where I have developed a connection and they are letting me use their machines, a nice thing because internet access is sketchy around here, as is cell connection.)

Thursday we head back to the city (St. John's) as both Rich and Anouk have doctor's appointmets. Well, Rich has a PT appointment for his back and leg (which appear to be doing ok, biking seems to help, and we have been doing a ton of it, trying to leave the truck parked as much as possible as gas prices are a bit outrageous...) and Anouk has a check-in with the doc. She is well, still lots of night-itches but nothing alarming. We are looking forward to the doc's ok to stop having to dress the burn site morning and night. She is clearly getting annoyed with the ritual!

Elliston's Root Cellars

Today has been the kind of day that our sabbatical was designed for! We are halfway through a week of base-camping at the Elliston municipal campground on the shores of the North Atlantic in northeastern Newfoundland. This campground is definitely an undiscovered paradise, and hopefully my mentioning it by name in this blog won’t change that! Elliston is just east of Bonavista, the town that Rich mentioned last week where we were warmly welcomed by the Todd's and their parents who are life-long Newfoundlanders. I had heard of Elliston as the Root Cellar Capital of the World. What the heck that means I’ll get to in a minute….

First, let me tell you that before we came here, Elliston was described to me by an economic development guy in St. John’s as a prime example of a town that has successfully zeroed in on tourism as a way to help offset the trauma of the cod collapse. He had a story about how the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) once mentioned Elliston as yet another outport shutting down due to economic collapse driven by the fisheries crisis. Apparently, CBC highlighted the town council’s economically driven decision to turn off the street lights as a symbol of the beginning of the end for outports in Newfoundland – kinda like we in Maine talk about the island communities facing the beginning of the end when the school or post office shuts down. Apparently, the people of Elliston would have none of it. I am still learning the details but soon enough, a community association called Tourism Elliston was formed and things clearly turned around.

Don’t get me wrong.... Though we do have a waterfront view, this is no mecca for the mass tourism type looking for sea, sun, and sex. There IS a beach, an extremely rare commodity in these parts, but from what I can see, the water is so cold that only screeching teenage girls venture in just to prove they can. But Rich and I, academic tourists that we are, love this town by the sea. It is wildlife and history and tea with the locals that keeps our bike wheels rolling! Elliston folks have figured out that they have two really unique things that visitors might enjoy. Root cellars is one of those things and they have well over a hundred that you can visit. Root cellars are just what they sound like: a cellar where you store your root vegetables. Only this isn’t just that spider-filled corner in the unfinished part of your basement. The Elliston root cellars are rooms built up and into the side of a hill. Local rock and mud is used to hold everything together, and a door (looking much like what I imagine Bilbo Baggins’ door might look like, wooden and on a metal hinge) marks the entry into the cellar. If you are standing above the cellar, you have no idea it is under you, as the roof is just part of the hillside. Inside, you find a squeaky clean dirt floor (no that doesn’t have to be an oxymoron) and temperature that stays cool and unfrozen year round. Potatoes, turnips, carrots, beets, and other root vegetables are kept year round. Cabbage gets canned before root-cellar-storage but the rest is secured in wooden bins.

Now this all may not sound like the world’s most intriguing thing to visit but root cellars, I now believe, are so interesting! The Elliston root cellars dot the landscape in this town and their simple presence gives you a flavor of the town’s history. Very cool, and very cool idea on the part of the local entrepreneurial sorts to capture me and my tourist dollars by inviting me to visit their creepy crawley dark places… People sure are crafty in Newfoundland!

I mentioned there are two things Elliston is famous for, and that other is Puffins. I’ll write about that another day, or maybe Rich already has? Guess I better check our own blog…

Thar she blows!

Newfoundland is all about fish (remember, in Newfoundland, fish equals cod; otherwise, Newfoundlanders call it by its common or colloquial name). It was founded on fish. Until 1992, the economy was driven by fish. Most people lived on the coast because of the fish. The local calendar revolved around fish. You get the picture. Whalers have also referred to whales as fish (although probably not Newfoundlander whalers, otherwise they would have called them something else)…so, even though they are mammals, there is that.

Capelin are a smallish fish, distantly similar to Mackerel, and about the same size, too (about 6-8 inches, or about 15-20 centimeters). The Capelin are an important part of the food chain. Capelin runs generally start in early summer, some time in June. You know the Capelin are running because the seabirds are going crazy catching and eating them, the whales arrive and go crazy catching and eating them, and the locals go crazy catching and eating them.

I have gone on a lot of whale watches in my life, but I have never seen whales like I have in Newfoundland!

Saturday we went out on an ecotour with Gatherall’s Puffin & Whale Watch out of Bay Bulls. What a contrast to all of the other bird and whale tour boats I have been on in my life! Quite literally, within minutes of leaving their pier we saw a pair of Minke Whales and a brace of Fin Whales. We didn’t even slow down (every other whale-watch I have been on would have stopped to milk either of these sightings for all they were worth) as we were going on to better whale watching territory.

By the time we reached the head of Bay Bulls, a mere ten minutes from the dock, we were in Humpback Whale heaven! A mother/calf pair were right next to us. Another pair of Humpbacks were within a few hundred meters. As I scanned the horizon with my binoculars, nearly every field had at least one whale; at one point, I had five whales in the field of view. Later, Natalie and I agreed that there were easily between 20 and 30 whales.

We continued on to the Witless Bay Islands Ecological Reserve to look at seabirds. This is the second largest colony of Atlantic Puffins in Newfoundland, with nearly 800,000 birds! The grassy upland slopes are stippled with their burrows. It is amazing to think that this little ten-inch football with wings can dig a four-foot burrow in which to lay its eggs. In addition to the puffins, there are cliff-nesting Black-legged Kittiwakes, Common Murres, Razorbills, Guillemots, a lone pair of Northern Fulmars; oh, and the largest colony of Leach’s Storm-Petrels in the world! Well over one million birds in this reserve!!!

And to top it all off, there were Gatheralls and crew ranging in age from about 10 to perhaps 50, and many of them sang sea shanties and other appropriate ballads. Even the daughter, whom I took to be about 10, and her friend sand a wonderful a cappella duet.

After the tour we continued down the Avalon shore and found a little RV park south of Tors Cove. Given our predilection for wilderness camping, the park was uninspiring: it was all mown flat, covered in gravel, with no natural screening between the dozen sites. We almost chose not to stay, but it was getting on in the evening, time to make Anouk so supper. All of the sites overlooked the southern end of the Witless Bay Islands Ecological Reserve. As we were driving the COW (Cabin on Wheels) to our site, we saw a blow! Humpback Whale! And another! And another! And another…. They were everywhere! We barely were able to focus on dinner for all of the whale sightings, easily 20 whales!

Sunday we made our way to Cape Race. This is the southernmost point of Newfoundland, with treacherous currents, countless shipwrecks, and fog that defines fog. We drove 19 kilometers out a dirt road to the Cape Race light. There is a small interpretive center focused on their history as a communications center, including the first Marconi in the late 1800s (or was it early 1900s?). We also scaled the 84 steps to the top of the lighthouse. We had no visibility, but that just enhanced the feeling of being remote.

We gravel-pit camped about halfway back on the dirt road near the Rookery. Monday morning dawned sunny and clear. From our campsite we were mesmerized by whales. We set up the spotting scope and saw Fin Whales, Humpback Whales, and a pod of unidentified dolphins. It was so hard to know where to look there were so many whales. We eventually broke camp and made the short walk in to the Rookery. We were up on a cliff, perhaps 200 feet above the ocean, looking down on thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes nesting on the tiniest of ledges. The water was littered with alcids, mostly Razorbills, Atlantic Puffins, and turres (the local name for Commone Murre, a food favored by Newfoundlanders). And yes, there were whales everywhere!

It was difficult to pull ourselves away, but we wanted to go on to St. Vincents. Well, that was the plan. We got back to the COW and had a flat tire. DRAT! Fortunately, Toyota loads their Tacomas with a full-size spare.

We eventually made it to St. Vincents and, once again, the whales were everywhere…with one difference: these guys were within spitting distance of shore! We had perfect viewing conditions, too. Apparently the water drops off quickly, which allows the whales to come right on in. The Capelin were definitely running, at times making the water boil. Think about it: there has to be enough Capelin to feed the hundred, maybe thousands, of whales, as well as the millions of seabirds, while still maintaining enough of a population to sustain itself.

Although St. Vincents and area has not capitalized on marketing their whales, the locals enjoy it. In fact, they flock to the beach to watch the whales. It is a real social event for them.

The birds flock to the beach, too. There were hundreds of Northern Gannets, plunge diving into the schools of Capelin, at times mere feet from the shore! And thousands of kittiwakes!

At one point, Tom Hince, a bird tour operator out of Point Pelee, Ontario, showed up with his group. We had met them two days before when I saw a bunch of birders on the side of the road, scopes set up, scanning the islands of the Witless Bay Islands Ecological Reserve. They told me of a reported Little Gull in the neighborhood (no, I did not find it…DRAT!). But I did add White-winged Scoter and Spotted Sandpiper.

During supper (dinner is what Newfoundlanders call lunch), falafel and sweet potato, which we ate at one of the picnic tables at the beach, we had the scope set up to watch the whales. Shortly afterward, the offshore fog bank rolled in quickly. As it was rolling in toward the beach, I saw a line of black birds flying low to the water just in front of it. Being so close to shore, I automatically assumed they were scoters, but their wings were all wrong: they were long and narrow…like a pelagic bird. And then I realized that they were Sooty Shearwaters! Hundreds, possibly thousands of Sooty Shearwaters flying parallel to the beach in front of the fog bank, which at this point was a mere 50 feet from shore and rolling in.

We camped in the parking lot of this beach and all night long we were serenaded by the sounds of whales blowing just off the shore.

A Downy Woodpecker seen during the day Monday helped my bird list.

Total bird species: 92

Gravel pit camping on the Avalon…

Friday night, after we left St. John’s (yet again, this time we were there for my physiotherapy appointment), we decided to head south on the Avalon Peninsula. By the time we finally left the city, it was late afternoon, so we drove about an hour and pulled off the road for the night on Route 13.

What a novelty: camping just about anywhere you want! We passed several other “gravel pits” (some may have been actual gravel pits, others are just cleared areas on the side of the road), with anywhere from one to dozens of campers. Apparently the provincial government is trying to discourage this cultural phenomena, instead directing people to public or private campgrounds, but there is a long history of Newfoundlanders camping in open spaces where they do not have to pay.

Ours was just a little pull-off, but it gave Anouk room to explore. It may not have been the end of the Earth, but it sort of felt like it. The undulating barrens all around us had small copses of stunted spruce and alder interspersed with countless kettle-hole ponds. Savannah Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos sang all around us. Two bird other songs remained unidentified, but I desperately wanted to turn them into a Lincoln’s Sparrow and a Willow Ptarmigan. A lone Pickerel Frog doing its banjo call kept us company until well after dark (which in these parts is about 10:00 p.m.).

The ongoing adventure in Canadian healthcare…

I hope you, dear reader, are not as tired of reading about our ongoing adventure in Canadian healthcare as I am eager to move on from it. Unfortunately, we are getting to see yet another aspect of the system.

About two weeks ago I woke to a very stiff back. No amount of stretching would ease the tension. Two days later, the tension finally eased, but I had pain radiating down my right leg and my right foot was tingling . . . you know that feeling, when you foot feels all pins and needles after it has fallen asleep. I went to a walk-in clinic, waited a long time, was finally seen by a doctor who took all of about two minutes to hear my story and prescribe an anti-inflammatory and a muscle relaxant. I was underwhelmed by his performance. Can you really make a diagnosis without taking time to truly hear your patient out? It was as though his sole job was to push through as many patients as possible. A few days later the symptoms had worsened, so Natalie talked me into going to the emergency room (‘emerge’ in local parlance). Dr. Murphy was not much better, but at least she prescribed physiotherapy.

The physiotherapist took over an hour with me going through skeleto-muscular tests, asking questions, probing, prodding. In the end, she came up with a plan of action to not just address the symptoms, but to solve the problem (I have a history of back issues).

It has been interesting to compare and contrast our family’s different experiences in Canadian healthcare. Anouk has received what I think could be the best care she could have had anywhere; meanwhile, I had two less-than-invigorating experiences, followed by the level of care I would expect.

Birding in a birdless land…

…At least, that is how it feels. I know that there are birds out there. All of the literature on birding in Newfoundland say so. My friends that come here to go birding tell me so. Memorial University of Newfoundland professor Bill Montevecchi talks of some impressive sightings. But I am just not finding all that many birds. Granted, trying to bird-watch from Anouk’s fourth floor hospital room complicated things somewhat during her five-week stay, although I did manage to see a Cooper’s Hawk one fine afternoon. Now we are out and I am trying to make up for lost time.

We went from winter to summer in a blink of an eye. I know the birds should be here, but where are they? What I mean to say is that I expected to be identifying a LOT more birds than I am. Back home in Maine, as we were preparing for this trip, I made a bird-list of all the species I thought I was likely to see. Then I made a list of the species I thought I might see with a little work. And, of course, I made a list of those species I could see if I am really lucky. They totaled 200 species! Well, we are two months into our Newfoundland adventure and I have just barely reached 80.

In terms of birds, it has not been quite so dreary as I may have made it out to be. So far there have been a few surprises. As we drove off the ferry in Channel-Port aux Basques, several Bonaparte’s Gulls were mixed in with some Black-headed Gulls. Our first night in Rose Blanche saw a small flock of Snow Geese fly overhead. In the Codroy Valley we found one, then two, then three, then seven Great Blue Herons, a species that until recently was largely unheard of on the island of Newfoundland. A Tennessee Warbler was both early, and the only one we have identified so far this trip. And an American Bittern on Long Pond in St. John’s was an unexpected bonus.

Then there are some observations that just don’t fit in with my previous experiences. In Pippy Park, the campground we stay at within the city limits of St. John’s, Boreal Chickadee is the common bird (I have always had to work hard to find them on the coast of Maine and in the Adirondacks). As their name implies, they like boreal forests…that is, the forests of the north, which is exactly what we have in Newfoundland. What is even stranger is seeing European Starlings and House Sparrows right alongside the Boreal Chickadees…or, at least, within a few meters of each other.

Some expected (but still welcomed) sightings include:

– Northern Gannets plunge-diving for their fishy food close in to shore.
– Atlantic Puffins flying so close I could catch them with a puffin net (think butterfly net but a LOT bigger) in Bonavista.
– Running on the Grand Concourse between the Fluvarium and Quidi Vidi Lake, seeing the bat-like flight of a Common Nighthawk, doubting it because they are quite rare in Newfoundland, and then seeing on the Internet that one was seen near where I saw it.
– Walking with Lindsey Russel to see his garden and having a pair of Whimbrels fly over (I think both of us were as tickled as the other to see these birds).
– Bumping into birders in the Codroy Valley who were out for a bird-a-thon, then getting invited to their barbeque that evening.
– Seeing many Iceland and Glaucous Gulls…far more than the scattered one or two I see each winter in Maine and the Adirondacks.
– Having a very cooperative Lesser Yellowlegs next to a Greater Yellowlegs so I could readily see the differences.
– Being on the unnamed-in-order-to-protect-the-guilty tour boat out of St. John’s, seeing colonies of thousands of cliff-nesting Black-legged Kittiwakes (I managed to ignore the erroneous narration by the captain who said they were the world’s smallest gull). Natalie, Anouk, and I may have been the only ones to see the lone puffin that trip, too.

For anyone that may be interested, here is my bird-list to date:

May 8th (Rose Blanche) – Snow Goose, Bald Eagle, Greater Yellowlegs, Black-headed Gull, Bonaparte’s Gull, Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Belted Kingfisher, Common Raven, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Hermit Thrush, American Robin, Savannah Sparrow, Song Sparrow, white-throated Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Common Grackle, House Sparrow
May 9th (Codroy Valley) – Great Cormorant, Chimeny Swift, Blue Jay, American Crow, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Yellow-rumped Warbler
May 10th (Codroy Valley) – Canada Goose, Wood Duck, American Wigeon, American Black Duck, Mallard, Blue-winged Teal, Green-winged Teal, Common Merganser, Red-breasted Merganser, Ruffed Grouse, Great Blue Heron, Osprey, Northern Harrier, Merlin, Wilson’s Snipe, Northern Flicker, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, Tennessee Warbler, American Goldfinch
May 11th (Stephenville) – Ring-necked Duck, Northern Gannet, Iceland Gull, Black Guillemot, Rock Pigeon, European Starling, Pine Siskin
May 12th (Stephenville) – Greater Scaup, Ring-billed Gull
May 13th (Stephenville) – Purple Finch
May 14th (Stephenville) – Double-crested Cormorant, Glaucous Gull
May 17th (Come By Chance) – Common Loon, Lesser Yellowlegs, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Evening Grosbeak
May 18th (Come By Chance) – Arctic Tern
May 20th (St. John’s) – Boreal Chickadee
May 22nd (St. John’s) – Northern Pintail
May 23rd (St. John’s) – Red Crossbill
May 27th (St. John’s) – Yellow Warbler
May 29th (St. John’s) – American Bittern
May 31st (St. John’s) – White-winged Crossbill
June 4th (St. John’s) – Cooper’s Hawk, Common Tern
June 5th (St. John’s) – Black-legged Kittiwake, White-crowned Sparrow
June 8th (St. John’s) – Cedar Waxwing, Magnolia Warbler
June 12th (St. John’s) – Great Horned Owl
June 13th (St. John’s) – Killdeer
June 15th (St. John’s) – Common Nighthawk, Nashville Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler
June 28th (St. John’s) – Mourning Warbler
June 29th (St. John’s) – Surf Scoter
July 1st (Bonavista) – Whimbrel

Total: 82 species

Bonavista...

Bonavista. Good view. An apt name for this wonderful community. We traveled there to meet our friends Sean and Caroline Todd, and their daughter Sarah (the Todd’s live in Bar Harbor; Caroline grew up in Bonavista) and Caroline’s parents Lindsey and Minnie Russell.

Bonavista has really gotten under my skin. I love the outport feeling of the community; the small homes with little windows to minimize heat loss during the harsh winters; the narrow streets with no logical pattern to their layout (a very Newfoundland trait); the sense of history that permeates the community. Visiting Bonavista and the Russels, who let us camp in their driveway, made me feel like I have finally entered the real deal Newfoundland culture. Lindsey and I talked at length about fishing, gardening, hunting, his new four-wheeler and snow machine, heating with firewood, etc. Minnie was the consummate host, even insisting on doing our laundry.

Our first night there, Sean took me to me to see Atlantic Puffins. We drove to the lighthouse at dusk, parked, and instantly I was awed by the sight of hundreds, no, thousands of puffins flying around. And they were a mere stone’s throw away! There are not many places in North America, perhaps none, outside of Newfoundland, where you can see this density of charismatic megafauna. And what is even more surprising is that this is not even a large colony!

On Tuesday night, Canada Day, the Russels had us out to their “camp”, an old trailer permanently parked in a barren just outside of town. From the deck around the camper we could see icebergs floating in Bonavista Bay, Northern Gannets wheeling on the horizon and occasionally plunge-diving, Black-legged Kittiwakes (Newfoundlanders call them ‘tickle-asses’ because of how close they fly to one another), and the odd puffin. Sean said that in a few weeks, once the Capelin were running, whales would be abundant, too. Minnie made a wonderful dinner of fish (in Newfoundland, fish is the same thing as cod, all other fish are called by their actual or colloquial name).

Earlier in the day we toured downtown Bonavista. Being Canada Day, the provincially-managed historic sites were open for free, so we toured the Ryan Premises. There are five buildings restored to their original, historic condition, with interpretive exhibits of the fisheries. We also toured the Matthew, a replica of the ship John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in 1497.

Our visit was far too short, but we will be back.

Free at last…

“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.” Martin Luther King, Jr. could well have been speaking for us in his ‘I have a dream’ speech. Yes, we are out of the hospital (sprung Tuesday afternoon)!!! Free at last! It has been a long, LONG five weeks. Free at last!

Anouk is doing GREAT! Her burns continue to heal, which means they are itchy and at times driving her to distraction. There are still months of work ahead, though. We are applying a lanolin cream to her burns, coating them with Telfa and wrapping the whole shebang in 2-inch gauze several times a day. Before we checked out, she was fitted for a pressure garment. This fashionable item (we chose purple for one and teal for the other), which applies constant pressure in an effort to help minimize scarring, will have to be worn for months. We will also have to make a few more visits to St. John's for follow-up appointments. But we are still . . . Free at last!

So what was the first thing we did once we were sprung? We ran a lot of errands in preparation for leaving St. John's and heading north and west toward Bonavista by way of Cupids, Brigus, Dildo, and Terre Nova National Park (don’t you just love their colorful place names?). Another doctor visit, this time for me and my Anouk elbow . . . and shoulder (from carrying mon petite poisson) . . . and lower back. Shopping at Dominion (yes, butter tarts were purchased and have already been consumed). Purchasing a few gifts for some of Anouk’s new friends, fellow patients at Janeway: Brianna, who must be about 9, perked up every time she saw Anouk (and, of course, Anouk just LOVED seeing Brianna . . . an older girl to, quite literally, look up to) and Elouan, a little boy from the French (as in part of France) islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon (Natalie and Anouk loved speaking French to Elouan’s parents) which are between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. And then back to our campsite at Pippy Park. WOW! We spent more time as a family at our campsite this afternoon than we have in five weeks.

Perhaps in unacknowledged anticipation of being sprung, Saturday I ran a 10-kilometer race. At 52 minutes and 19 seconds, my time was not overly fast, but it was an excellent time for me. I employed a combination of strategies I learned from previous running two marathons and one half marathon, as well as my old days of canoe racing. I start off dead last: before the starting gun goes off, I make sure I am at the back of the pack (I want to be the last one over the starting line). I start off slow, warming up, gradually, incrementally increasing my pace. Slowly I start passing people. About halfway into the race, I start putting runners in my sights, speed up just enough to catch them, draft for a few minutes to catch my breath, then pass on to the next person. Using this strategy distracts me from sore muscles and helps make a game out of it. In the end, I finished right in the middle of the 172 runners.

Sunday we went out with a local natural history boat tour operator (following Nat's lead, I will spare the name of the company). Although we did not see icebergs (“hicebergs” in Newfoundlandese . . . for most words that start with a vowel, they add a softly pronounced ‘h’ at the beginning), we saw a couple Minke Whales, hundreds of Northern Gannets, thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes, and a lone Atlantic Puffin.

A few days before we went out, I was listening to CBC radio and heard an interview with the owner of Iceberg Quest, a boat tour operator who had some interesting comments on the economy. Time was, he said, that if they were seeing a lot of great natural history stuff, he would stay out an extra half hour or so. Now, with the rising price of fuel, a two-hour tour is a two-hour tour.

The sun is shining in St. John’s!

The sun is shining in St. John’s! That’s literal and figurative. Yes, the sun is actually shining, and I am sitting outside in a little garden adjoining the hospital. It is actually a great space, terraced down so that you are out of view of parking lots and hospital buildings, but still absorbing the shining sun. We got some good news today too, and that makes the shining sun all the more bright (augh, I am resorting to clichés to describe things…it is high time we spring Anouk from the hospital and get back to the outdoors for some slightly more inspired writing). The graft donor site is on the mend, and the burn sites that received the graft appear to have accepted it 100%. It looks really good, even to me, and I am clearly the emotional one in the bunch. In an hour or so, Anouk is getting fitted for a pressure dressing which, according to our doctor, will help minimize scarring. Actually, she also told us that the jury is still out in the medical community as to their effectiveness but they certainly can’t hurt, and in her experience she feels they work, so why not? Our docs here haven’t failed us so far, so we might as well keep trusting. It might take some days (even maybe weeks) to get the dressing ready, so we don’t know yet how much longer we are hospital bound, but the good news (ok, let’s be honest, the FANTASTIC news) is that this is the first time anyone has actually said to us that they are trying to get us out of here! Sure, we want to stay as long as we need to for the little one, but I am going a bit batty between four white walls.

Fortunately, we’ve had some great diversions lately. A recent highlight was a visit from my parents, Anouk’s Bonnemamy et Bonpapa. Anouk recognized them from Christmas and fell right into swing hanging out with the both of them. She gave her Bonpapa a run for his money one day as he took charge of chasing her in the grocery store while I shopped. He declared her a smart cookie who quickly understood the meaning of “pas toucher” (don’t touch) and actually obeyed. And her Bonnemamy gave her a goldmine of happiness by simply chatting with her and listening to her chat back. In seemed like in their short five-day visit, Anouk’s understanding of French quadrupled!

Which leads me to the next latest diversion. I would never wish a hospital stay on anyone but am admittedly a bit glad that a little French boy named Elouan landed up here. Our new ward neighbor and his family are from France, St. Pierre et Miquelon, to be specific, which is the last remaining bit of the French empire in the New World, located just a ferry ride away from Newfoundland. St. John’s is the closest big hospital for the 7000 or so residents of la petite patrimone. And so, Anouk, Elouan and his family and I have taken to visiting, chatting in French, and swapping Asterix and Marie-Claire (those who might care know what I am talking about; for the rest of you, Asterix is a famous bande dessinee—or comic book—and the second one is a magazine). Anouk keeps steeling Elouan’s balloons so she is gaining the reputation of chipie. This word (that I have not heard since my days at the French school) is reserved for girls and means something like “you sweet but mischievous little bird.” How fitting.

And finally, we had some fantastic family medicine yesterday in the form of a boat ride! Anouk had another get-out-of-jail free pass and it was sunny (oui, Papa et Mamy, il y a VRAIMANT parfois du soleil ici!) so we went to the waterfront to see if there was a way to get out on the water. If there is one thing that brings a smile to my face, it is time on the water. And so we bought a couple tickets for a boat ride which took us down to the harbor, out the narrows, and into the wide open Atlantic. The icebergs were gone, but we saw a few Minke Whales, and a very cool colony of Black-legged Kittiwakes, known locally as "tickle-asses" because they fly so close together, it looks like one bird is tickling the ass of the one in front!

Once you are out of the harbor, it is uncanny how quickly the urbanity of St. John’s disappears. It looked like a totally undeveloped shoreline. I couldn’t help but imagine this waterway back in the great age of sail, when the schooner fleet came back to port with hulls full of fish (in Newfoundland, fish = cod, all other species are named specifically) or seal pelt. What a sight that must have been. I will spare the name of the company who took us out because the interpretation was a bit too sparse for our liking (hard to please a couple of naturalists on someone else’s boat I guess) but as Rich said, on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 9, just getting out on the water merits a nine!

And I came to a really useful conclusion related to my sabbatical project on this boat ride: I am not so much evaluating the specifics of the tourism industry and its content delivery, but more evaluating the role of tourism in helping people move forward since the cod collapse. The two themes are linked but separate and this realization enabled me to relax and have a great conversation with the captain, a former fisherman. For him, obviously, tourism has had a positive impact: he has work and his work keeps him on the water. Yesterday, the sun was shining on the water in Newfoundland, and that is a good thing for everybody.

Butter tarts…

I have recently learned what I long suspected: butter tarts are a uniquely Canadian delicacy, “flaky pastry shells that are filled with a sweet mixture of butter, brown sugar, and eggs.” If you have never had a butter tart, think pecan pie without the pecans.

Growing up, my family vacationed in northern Ontario at Camp of Two Lakes, in Orville, east of Parry Sound. One of the many joys of those summer retreats was a little, hand-held pie: the butter tart. This is a treat I always associated with Canada. As a self-avowed sweet tooth, I have long looked for butter tarts in the States, but to no avail. So it has remained one of the reasons I travel to Canada. As I am sure Natalie will be all-too-happy to attest, each time we cross the border I begin the hunt for butter tarts.

Last June we came to Newfoundland for two weeks. I searched high and low for butter tarts, continuously salivating in Pavlovian anticipation of my not-so-secret passion. ACK!!! Not a butter tart in the entire province!!! Granted, I was distracted by a new, month-and-a-half old Anouk, but still, my butter tart senses could not have been dulled by daddy-hood, could they? I was a wreck! Months of anticipation had built up my desire, nay, my need, for the tart, only to be denied!

Well, now I am sitting in Anouk’s room at Janeway Health & Rehabilitation Centre—Anouk is sound asleep in my lap—while I savor yet another bite. MMM, mmm good! After years of enjoying butter tarts, I now have a tool at my disposal to readily learn more about my favorite indulgence. I Googled ‘butter tart’ and came up with 147,257 hits, so I decided to peruse a few.

According to a 1991 archived CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio story, butter tarts are considered one of only a few recipes of genuinely Canadian origin. Wikipedia states they “were a staple of pioneer Canadian cooking, and they remain a characteristic pastry of Canada.” Canadian butter tart authority Charles Pachter, in the CBC broadcast, described butter tarts thus: “It’s a nice little tart without much pedigree but I know you’ll be amused by its lack of pretension.” Not only are butter tarts part of the Canadian national psyche, apparently they are so Canadian that county fairs in Nova Scotia offer awards for the best ones. Apparently, butter tarts are to Canada what the croissant is to France and the donut is to the United States. There is even a proper stance for eating butter tarts (according to the CBC broadcast, it is standing, leaning slightly over the tart, similar to the stance you employ when using an outhouse . . . hmmm, doesn’t that just get the juices flowing?). No wonder I like Canada and Canadians so much!

Many of the various Web sites I perused state there are many opinions as to what makes the perfect butter tart. Raisins. No raisins. Currant. No currant. A dry and flaky pastry. A moist and robust pastry. So runny it oozes out onto your shoes. Thick as a firm gelatin. Well, let me offer my opinion: the perfect butter tart is whichever one is currently on its way to my mouth!

So what makes a butter tart a butter tart? They are small, fitting nicely in your hand. These are not some fluffy French or nouveau riche pastry, these are a working people’s treat, you eat them with your hands, three, four, five at a time. To experience the taste sensations I am vainly trying to describe here, head across the border to your nearest Tim Horton’s, or go to the bakery section of a Dominion or Sobey’s supermarket. Better yet, make your own. A Web page on boutell.com lists a butter tart recipe from the turn of the last century as follows:

INGREDIENTS:
- 2 eggs
- 1½ cups brown sugar
- ½ cup corn syrup
- 3 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1 cup currants or raisins
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- pinch of salt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 batch pie crust

METHOD:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Beat the eggs well. Add sugar, syrup, and melted butter and beat again. Add the currants, walnuts, vinegar, salt, and vanilla extract and mix vigorously.
- Put a small amount of corn meal into tart tins or muffin pans OR use cupcake papers (the latter is recommended). Place circles of uncooked pie crust into the pans. Fill the shells ⅔ full and bake until pastry is light brown, about 20 minutes. For runnier tarts, cook 15 to 17 minutes.

NOTES:
- Recipe yields two dozen tarts of approximately 10,500 [sic] calories each.
- The tarts should cool before they’re eaten. Store in a sealed container at room temperature. Consume within five days, if they last that long. Freezing is OK but may result in loss of flavor.

One last note: Some recipes use maple syrup instead of corn syrup and lemon juice instead of vinegar. And don’t blame me if you become as addicted to this wonderful little pie as I am.

Janeway Health & Rehabilitation Centre - week 4

Today marks the fourth week of Anouk residence at the Janeway Health & Rehabilitation Centre (a fancy name for children's hospital). After last Thursday's skin graft, we were told the dressing would be changed in five days . . . today. Well, Dr. Akhtar, the pediatric surgeon and her primary doctor, has just looked at the graft and was pleased with the rate of healing. With that he also said we should plan on at least another week in the hospital. I certainly want to do the right thing by our little girl, but I sure look forward to seeing more than the medical side of the province. As you can imagine, a month in the hospital is enough to make anyone a bit stir crazy.

So, when life is less than some good, perhaps things are not going as you planned, and maybe you feel stuck in a rut, it can be hard to change things for the better. Thank goodness we are in Canada! I can run down to the Dominion, or perhaps Sobey's, and buy a package of butter tarts! I will report back after I have done just that....