We’ve never known people like the people here. To begin with, they’re unbelievably friendly and unfailingly kind-hearted. When we first arrived on the hill, we were gifted with everything from work clothes to free welding. Our mailbox post was a gift, as was the roof bracket that secures our stovepipe, and oftentimes our dinner was compliments of a kind neighbour. When we ran out of wood our first winter, a team of snowmobiles arrived, firewood in tow, driven by concerned individuals who, like everyone here it seems, expected nothing in return for their quite substantial efforts.
Simply amazing…an experience so rare as to be priceless in our city-dwelling existence. And I have to say that in the face of such kindness and generosity, I was—and am—filled with great pride to be able to stand up and say “I am a Newfoundlander”.
We have learned that life can be very harsh in rural Newfoundland. The weather is extreme, the land itself is untamed and the living is often difficult. Yet, though they have known the hardest of conditions, Newfoundlanders are an easy-going lot, quick to laugh and always ready to celebrate life. And while they are fiercely proud and protective of a distinct culture that is theirs alone, they nonetheless welcome the stranger as a friend.
Perhaps it’s the longstanding need to pull together for survival that engenders such spontaneity and acceptance and the willingness to lend a hand. Or perhaps it’s got to do with being surrounded by water and more or less forgotten by the world. Whatever the reason, the inhabitants of this island are a breed apart
We’re thrilled to be counted among them.
After being so long in the city, living in the woods is the experience of a lifetime for us. Each and every day we are surrounded by the pure essence of life, that “force that through the green fuse drives the flower”. The fundamental rules of survival are played out all around us in their most basic form, and we are reminded of what it truly means to have life…and of its transitory nature.
One particular instance several nights ago really brought this concept home to us. In the deep stillness of a moonless night, in the wee hours of darkness that precede the dawn, we were awakened from our dreams by a sound we at first couldn’t identify.
The first screams had us dragging ourselves up from the deep, and by the time we were fully awake, the night was filled with screams, barks, howls, shrieks and wails. It was an unholy racket, like nothing we’d ever heard before—enough to make a person believe in banshees—and it was coming from right behind the house.
And then it dawned on us. The coyotes were hunting, and they had cornered their quarry in the woods not fifty feet away from us.
Sitting there in the dark with the predator/prey drama unfolding so close by, the eerie sounds of life and death loud in the night, was one of the most extraordinary experiences. I thought about the power of these night hunters and of the terror of the hunted. I thought about the cycle of life and death all around us and of our own place in the order of things. And I thought about how I wished my children could hear this and be as amazed as I at all that was contained in this moment.
The howls and shrieks and screams stopped as abruptly as they had started, and in the silence there was a loss. Once identified, the horrible sounds had become a thing of beauty and wonder. How true is this for so many things in life?