View from the Mountain

The Moose Camp on the Newfoundland Barrens

Back in the fall of 1973, at the age of 24, I was in my second year living in an old farmhouse in St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia along the Bay of Fundy.  It was nearly 1,300 miles to the home where I grew up in Mount Airy, North Carolina.

Today technology seems to be everywhere.  Smartphones, smartwatches , and laptop computers that find out anything given a good Internet connection. Back in the seventies, there were no cellphones, no Internet, and certainly no laptops, iPads, or portable Garmin GPS devices to guide you.The only technology we had was compass which we used with detailed topographic maps. Reading maps and using a compass were skills I mastered in Boy Scouts and honed while working on my pilot’s license.

Beyond technology we had faith in our abilities and the people we trusted with our lives.  Perhaps it makes the adventures a little more exciting to recall because there were no safety nets and we were over 1,800 miles from friends and family.My new wife, Glenda, also from Mount Airy, and I were looking for a new place to farm.  I had been thinking about homesteading in Newfoundland.  Back before the Internet, research required actually visiting places. Since the place the department of agriculture recommended that I check out was a remote valley, the only way to get there was by bush plane.

I really needed to get on the ground and feel the soil not just fly over a frozen landscape like I had already done before I married Glenda.In preparation for potentially living in the bush, I had already passed the written test for a pilot’s license and completed my solo flight. I had also flown into the Alaskan bush a few years earlier. While the Newfoundland bush plane flight was a first for Glenda, she handled it well in spite the challenges of trying to land in a windswept box canyon. Strong crosswinds eventually forced us to give up trying to land down in the valley. Plan B was quickly hatched, and we landed on a small pond up on the barrens.

There was a moose camp (pictured above) on the pond but that was the closest thing to civilization for twenty miles on one side and over three hundred miles on the other. There is a good reason the mountains of Newfoundland are called barrens, but the terrain is not nearly as even as it looks. However, we were young and foolish so we bravely stepped off of the float plane onto the dock which was covered with moose and caribou parts, partially wrapped for a trip home.

We were soon met by a number of angry American moose hunters who were suffering from a severe hangover after celebrating the previous evening with some ladies of the evening who had been flown in for the occasion.  They were convinced we had come to steal their hard-earned moose carcasses.  I managed to convince them that we were just recent college students and the only thing that we had which would shoot was a camera.  They relented and allowed us off the dock and into the wilderness. 

We had agreed to rendezvous with the float plane in four days. We headed off into the barrens with our packs on our backs. I had assured Glenda that we would find plenty of wood in the river valley.  Unfortunately we were now in the barrens, and I would soon be regretting that I had ignored Glenda’s unrelenting advice to bring a gas stove. I am still hearing about that mistake. Our three-mile hike across the barrens to  the edge of the valley  we hoped to see was both arduous and long.  While the barrens look level, that is deceptive.  The vegetation covering the boulders and rocky soil grows to a height that makes things seem level. But when walking through it, the ground is uneven and often disappears between the hidden rocks.

After a few hours of hiking we made camp on the edge of the valley in a cleared area.  It was the flattest area that we could find, but it was also marshy.  It did not take me long to realize that I made a huge mistake by not bringing a stove.  There was no wood on the barrens.  Of course we had not planned to be on the barrens.  If things had worked out like we hoped, we would have been camping in a valley of trees.  As it was, we were high on the barrens, and there was no wood beyond blueberry bushes. We spent three nights in our mountain tent in rain that was barely above freezing.  With no stove, we survived on Ez-Cheese (Cheese-Whiz) and some snacks.

On the third morning, we decided that we needed to start making our way back to the small pond by the moose camp where we were to meet with the float plane that would hopefully take us back to civilization. Glenda had almost given up hope of seeing civilization again.  She had shed a lot of tears in the three days, but I was confident we would make it back to Corner Brook.  The day we decided to break camp and leave was about as foggy a day as one might imagine finding in the mists of Newfoundland.  Landmarks were barely visible, but fortunately I had gotten us to our camp on the edge of the valley using a topographic map and taking compass readings frequently and recording them on the map.  We actually had far less trouble than we expected getting back to within sight of the moose camp on the pond.

We worried about what kind of reception we might receive there, but it turned out that all the drunken hunters were long gone.  The only inhabitants left were a couple of university professors who were moonlighting as guides.  They invited us for lunch of caribou chops and moose tongue. They were waiting for their float plane to pick them up.  As lunch was cooking they heard the Beaver float plane that was to take them home.  They did not even bother turning the stove off or removing the almost done food.  They grabbed their gear and ran.  Over their shoulders they told us to enjoy the camp and turn the oil off when we left.

It was nice to spend the night in a place with some beds and where you could stand up. Glenda did not seem to mind the walls decorated with Playboy playmates.  Anything was better than the mountain tent. The next morning, we awoke to clouds and not a very nice day for a ride in a small float plane.  Being in the bush waiting for a ride back to civilization was a little different. in the seventies. There was no way to communicate, and we just had to trust that our pilot would come and retrieve us instead of selling our LandCruiser and leaving us to hike out or struggle through a long Newfoundland winter. The daylight hours of our proposed pick-up day moved slowly.  There was not even a hint of airplane engine. Thoughts of being stuck 20 miles from the nearest road quickly ran through my mind, but I held onto to the belief that we would be retrieved.  Late in the day just as the light was starting to dwindle, our Cessna 185 on floats winged its way between threatening clouds and the rocky barrens to make a landing on the small lake.

Quiet Waters of the White Oak River

For fifteen years I got to live a dream of being on the water where I could slide a kayak in the water and go fishing. We also had a skiff on a lift, but piloting a skiff is work compared to paddling a kayak. There is little that compares to being on the water when the water is near perfect. Every stroke is magical.  When winds, tides, and river current cooperate, you are in a zone that few people get to sample much enjoy many times.

Once you have tasted a perfect morning or afternoon on the river, you keep going back trying to grab another piece of perfection. The experience hooks you. It is the river seducing you.

For me it was just the pure relaxation that comes  from floating around between the oyster rocks on a blue sky day when the wind and tide conspires to make life easy on the river.  Though I often used the word paradise to describe the Crystal Coast, no one should be lulled into thinking that all days are like the one in the picture. There were a lot of days when you get back to the dock almost sore from fighting the river and tides.

Sometimes those perfect days are pretty hard to find even for those of us living here. I was one of the lucky few who could take an hour or two to go kayaking if things are not too busy at work. Making up some work later in the evening might have been required, but that was a small price to pay if you hit one of those wonderful days on the White Oak River. Some days I would even catch a flounder, drum or trout and bring it home for lunch.

My kayak was rarely more than ten feet from the water and I just launched from our backyard.  Depending on the wind and tide, I could paddle to the middle of the river in ten to fifteen minutes so there wasno putting my kayak on a car and driving thirty minutes to get to water.  We kayaked nine to ten months out of the year depending on the water temperature.

The biggest enemy of kayaking on the coast in a big coastal river is wind. The more experience you have kayaking, the more wind you can handle assuming you have a kayak that can also handle it.  In my fifteen years there, I kayaked exclusively in a small area of the White Oak River.  I rarely went very much north of our inlet, Raymond's Gut, and I never kayaked south of Jones Island, the island at the bottom of the map.  I knew my part of the river very well, but even I could get beat up the wind and tide.

A Wednesday in July 2014 , I had a few hours off and there was hardly any wind in our inlet.  I learned early that the lack of wind back at our house in the marsh meant nothing when it came to wind on the river.  I also figured out the best way to understand what was happening on the river was to paddle out there and check it out.  

I had a couple of close fishing spots that I could usually wet a line even in windy conditions. I headed out that day and I figured out before I very far into the river that it was a lot windier than it appeared from home.  Even with all the wind and waves, I was determined to fish a little. Three or four casts were all that I needed to decide that I needed to change location and work my way back into Raymond's Gut, fishing the marsh edges as I went.

I did that and fished for twenty to thirty minutes with no fish and headed back to my dock less than five minutes away. The next day during my morning walk around our boardwalk in the neighborhood, I took a couple of telephoto shots and the river appeared a bit quieter on Thursday morning.

That evening my kayak went  in the water and I headed out on another journey. From the attached map you can see my trip after I got in the river and turned on my GPS recorder. While it was by no means an easy paddle, it was beautiful out on the water and I was determined to get to my rocks and fish. I got there made one cast and the skies opened up.  I was one wet person by the time that I got back to the dock.  Once I got inside, I stopped to take a picture.  Instantly I realized that I had answered a question no one wants to answer, "How do you give a kayak a bath."  The answer of course is “go fishing in the rain.”

I used a cloth to wring out a couple of inches of water inside the kayak.  It is good that I had a short memory.  I was back on the river chasing fish that next weekend.  Often it took two or three times to hit one of those perfect days on the White Oak. It was worth it because the river is truly magical when you find that perfect combination of water, calm winds, blue skies and a slack tide.

That happened to be the only time I got wet  while kayaking during our fifteen years on the coast.  If I look back, it is was also the first time I have ever been wet from rain while kayaking in over twenty-three years.  I wish I had been as lucky with wind as rain. I also caught enough fish over the years to declare that I had just enough luck in fishing to keep me happy.

Your Bubble Shouldn't Define You

We all grow up in something of a bubble of our parents’ opinions and the ideas that surround us. I am grateful that I had Chet Huntley and David Brinkley instead of FOX News. I am also pleased that my mother would often take the opposite side or opposing candidate just so we could debate.  Still race was something of mystery until I was well into my teenage years.

As an elementary school student I once rode the bus to Winston-Salem. When I got on the bus, I ran to the back of the bus to sit in the back seat only to be told I couldn’t sit there because I wasn’t black.

I can remember when I was fourteen flying back from my all-white male boarding school in Tennessee.  It was the first time that I would be heading back to my dad’s big house in Mt. Airy instead of my mother’s small ranch in Lewisville. Alfred, the husband of dad’s maid, Mertha, had driven my mom to the airport.  We stopped in Winston-Salem for lunch at the K&W Cafeteria. 

As my mother and I were starting to enter K&W, Alfred, who was black, turned and started to leave. I asked him why he wasn’t joining us for lunch.  He said he was not allowed to eat there.  I was floored.

Over the next week, Alfred, his wife, Mertha, my mom and I had most of our meals together at the kitchen table.  Obviously, I was still clueless about race with one set of rules at home and another out in the world of 1963.

Three years later I took my first trip around the country.  The first trip taught me more than you could eat ketchup with eggs.  It was a big country with lots of different people but it was unlikely that I was going to meet any of the different ones at McCallie, the all white military prep school my parents had shipped me off to in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I would, however, meet some at Harvard.

There was probably not a more privileged place to be in 1967 than Harvard. We figured it out pretty quickly.  Someone would ask where you went to school and you would say Cambridge. Most times it didn’t work and people still knew immediately where you went to college. Still Harvard was a very different world than McCallie, beyond the sprinkling of different races, we went to school with Radcliffe ladies. Boston and Cambridge were a different world than Chattanooga which was decades from its rejuvenation.  McCallie was on Missionary Ridge just a few miles from downtown, but downtown was often hidden in smog and smoke from the factories.

At McCallie the only way to get from one stop to another was to hitchhike. At Harvard, I had my car for longer trips but the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) subway was a revolution. You could go downtown, to the airport, and all sorts of places for little money. Being on the Red Line even though it rattled our room in Wigglesworth freshman year was still eye-opening. Just walking through Harvard Square exposed you to more diversity than some see in a lifetime.

There were three things that really opened my eyes once I got settled in Cambridge.  The first was having a car to go places in New England. My sophomore year, I came back with an original Ford Bronco that my uncle had helped me buy secondhand from a vet in Michigan.  I had gone with him to Michigan to buy it and drive it back.  Traveling with my uncle Henry was almost as eye-opening as a couple days in Harvard Square. He didn’t believe in motels and had private homes where he could rent a room when passing.  We stayed in one on the way up.  I came close to freezing that night.  Still once the old Bronco got to Cambridge in the fall of 1968, it and some stop-leak for the radiator were to be the keys to exploring a lot of places including Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts even where there were not roads.

The second thing was going from being a barely politically interested student to one who felt like politics had the potential to save us or destroy us. The anti-war unrest kicked off at Harvard in the spring of 1969. As kids of the sixties we had already been through more heartache than some could take.

Still in the days before cell phones and social media, we were oblivious to what was happening locally when University Hall was seized by around fifty students.  University Hall is in Harvard Yard. Only freshman live in the Yard. Upper class students live in Houses or dorm complexes sprinkled around the area between Harvard Yard and the Charles River.  That evening the students took over University Hall, four of us were walking from Quincy House up Plympton Street towards Massachusetts Ave. with the plan that we would go to Barley’s Burger Cottage.  As we turned right, our peripheral vision caught a line of charging Massachusetts  State Police with riot shields and billy clubs. We were obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was chased into the doorway of a nearby bookstore where I got a couple of whacks on the back before I escaped and started running back to Quincy House. We all got back to the dorm with the police not far behind us. They tear gassed our dorm’s courtyard.  We were fortunate to have a fourth floor room. It was chilling to hear the sound that we all know, shotguns with shells being chambered.  We’re lucky no one died that night.  The campus was energized with anti-war/anti-administration sentiment. People could not forgive the college administrators for turning the police loose on students who had done nothing. It was a lesson in how it feels to be attacked when you have done nothing wrong.  I haven’t looked at peaceful demonstrations the same way since then.

The third change happened my senior year when my roommates and I became part of Harvard’s coed experiment. Fifty male Harvard students were moved to Radcliffe. Our dorm was the brand new Currier House which housed 275 Radcliffe students. We were spread out throughout the dorm. One roommate and I had single rooms sharing a bathroom. Adjoining rooms housed Radcliffe students.  Our floor had everything from first year students to juniors. It was a wonderful experience,  I met more people who have become life-long friends there than in any other similar timeframe.  I have more female friends from Currier House that I keep up with fifty-three years later than I do male Harvard friends.

The next year, my junior year, with the invasion of Cambodia, the campus exploded again and classes were canceled for the rest of the semester.  We went home hoping to convince people the war had to end. People in North Carolina didn’t want to hear it from us.  They had already seen enough on the nightly news.  By mid-June, I was packing my Dodge PowerWagon for a trip to Alaska.  The PowerWagon would also change me.