Alexandersmap

    Tag: Signal Hill

    • Iceberg Season

      This morning I was thinking about icebergs.  It’s iceberg season in Newfoundland, with more than 1200 released from sea ice and parading past the ruggedly beautiful eastern coast.  Icebergs are big business as tourists flock to see them, much as tourists flock to see Great White sharks now on Cape Cod.  The world has a curiosity about icebergs that goes back to the day the Titanic sank.  There’s something mystical and romantic about these roaming islands of ice marching from their icy prison in the north where they’ve been locked away for millennia to southern waters where they reunite with the blended waters of the world.  Romantic until you run into one anyway.

      Scanning the iceberg sightings this year made me think about my time on Signal Hill in December of 2017.  Signal Hill is impressive without the draw of icebergs floating by you, I can imagine the crowds there on a Saturday with an iceberg floating by.  My time there, documented early in this blog’s history, was memorable but certainly not crowded.  Little did I know at the time that I wouldn’t be back there again any time soon.  It remains on my short list of places I’d love to get back to.

      Environment and Climate Change Canada tracks iceberg activity and states that most of the icebergs that you see in the North Atlantic are calving from glaciers in Western Greenland, with between 10,000 and 40,000 icebergs annually.  I had no idea there were that many in a season.  To be categorized as an iceberg the ice has to be at least 5 meters above the sea level.  That’s the starting point, and icebergs get much bigger from there.  Those that miss the 5 meter cut are still navigation hazards.

      So icebergs triggered my wanderlust affliction, which is always lingering just below the surface.  Surely a trip to Labrador and Newfoundland in April would be a great mix of Aurora Borealis and icebergs.  Frankly I wonder why I haven’t done this trip already.  So much to see and do in this world, and two things I’ve always wanted to see are just out of reach this season.

    • Fogtown

      Fogtown

      A few weeks back, with time to kill before my flight home from Newfoundland, I drove to the top of Signal Hill and walked out to North Head.  Signal Hill offers stunning views of St. John’s Harbor and The Narrows, and East to the Atlantic Ocean.  It’s a place I’d love to linger at on a warm summer day.  But this was December, and the wind stung as I took in the view from the top of the hill.  Not a beach day at all, but the overcast skies cooperated enough to give me a view.  Looking out at North Head, I noticed a couple of red Adirondack chairs in two spots along the North Head Trail, cleverly placed to draw the eye, give walkers a place to rest a spell and at that moment to stir my wanderlust.  Not very far at all, perhaps 20 minutes or so, and despite the wind and the raw day I felt the urge to visit those chairs.

      In the time it took me to walk down the boardwalk stairs and out to North Head the fog that gives St. John’s it’s nickname rolled in fast and hard.  The last couple of people out on North Head hurried past me on their way back to their car, leaving me alone out on the trail, with visibility rapidly decreasing and nothing but the blaring foghorn marking the Narrows to keep me company.  That foghorn reminded me of the horns blowing on the Wall on Game of Thrones as the White Walkers approached, and frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one walking out of the mist towards me.  Or perhaps the ghosts of Leif Erickson, the lost-to-history Beothuk tribe, the French or British soldiers who fought here in the last battle of the Seven Years War or maybe just the countless tourists who stumbled away from George Street long enough to walk these cliffs before me.  

      Alone out on North Head with the fog swirling and the horn calling out its warning, it was easy to imagine them all marching by me, and the moment stays with me still, almost a month later.  I hope to visit St. John’s many times over the years ahead, but we all know that men make plans and God laughs.  Here’s hoping that fate brings me back for a longer spell next time.