The story of Newfoundland
When Lucie started work here, I told her this story.
On the ferry from Cape Breton to Sydney I picked up a leaflet about a guesthouse in a lighthouse keeper’s cottage on a small island just off the coast. We arranged to meet the boatman on a jetty at the end of the world. We stood waiting for him with our luggage. He arrived in a wooden boat with high ends like a gondola. He was taciturn and said that we wouldn't be needing our bags. We put them back in the car and got into the boat. He didn't say anything else. I felt I had put my family at risk. It was unnerving. The sea was very choppy beyond the harbour but suddenly became completely golden and then we saw dolphins so close and whales in the distance. We disembarked onto rocks and he told us that we must walk for forty minutes across the island.
The land that we walked on was what I wanted to tell Lucie about. We walked across a fairytale that no one had ever walked across before, a lattice of black springy roots and branches supporting spongy moss and lichen and procumbent bushes pinned with cranberries and cloud berries.