Newfoundland -- Be Prepared For Jokes, Moose And Friendliness

NORRIS POINT, Newfoundland - "Did you hear the one about the Newfie who locked his keys in his car?" asked my guide, Mark Tsang, an admitted Newfie himself.

"It took him an hour to get his family out."

I was standing with the self-deprecating Newfoundlander beside a dark, flat-topped mountain called Gros Morne in this easternmost Canadian province, watching a trio of moose.

Several hundred yards away, five caribou grazed, white humps I would have mistaken for rocks without a guide to correct me. A bald eagle wheeled overhead. It was early October. The 700-square-mile Gros Morne National Park, named for the 2,644-foot mountainous rock in the middle of Newfoundland's west coast, appeared otherwise deserted.

I crept closer to the moose, angling for a photo in the dim light. Gros Morne means gloomy hill in French. It looked about as bright as a blackboard.

The moose, three of the 125,000 that comprise the highest concentration of live Bullwinkles anywhere, eyed me, perhaps 20 yards away.

"That's close enough," warned Tsang. "If one puts his ears down, get to the car, fast."

I'd heard the horror stories. Up here, gangly 1,200-pound moose routinely contend with cars. The cars usually loses.

"The temperature is 5 below Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit)," reported the skipper of the Western Brook Pond boat tour earlier that afternoon.

The word "pond," as used here, could be another Newfie joke. This pond is 10 miles long. It's really an inland freshwater fiord, 540 feet deep and kept in cold shadows by towering 2,000-foot-high, waterfall-laced cliffs.

The most unusual aspect of the park is a geological feature called the Tablelands.

The Tablelands once were below the ocean floor. Two-thousand-foot-high slabs of the upthrust crust of the inner earth, known as mantle rock, make up the flat gray, lifeless outcrops. To experts, these unusual rocks lend credence to hard-to-prove scientific theories of plate tectonics - the constant, slow shifting of huge continent-sized masses, called plates, under the surface of the earth.

The Tablelands were accorded international environmental protection in 1987 as a World Heritage Site - on a par with Yellowstone and Egypt's pyramids.

"The geological history of North America is visible in Newfoundland," said Tsang, as we walked a short trail. Every rock seemed to contain a fossil from an ancient inland sea.

Signs of more recent life in this little-visited and lightly populated area seemed harder to find. Tsang called Newfoundland "one of the most exotic wilderness areas in North America."

I was beginning to agree. It certainly felt remote.

My personal, unscientific theory about why Newfoundland has remained exotic and not overexposed is because of the weather. It's glorious when the sun shines - which is rarely. Otherwise, it's one of the most wickedly exposed seacoasts anywhere.

During my fall visit, the tiny wood-frame fishing villages scattered throughout the park were mostly obscured by rain and clouds.

In most of Canada's other national parks, residents have been relocated. Within Gros Morne, several communities, such as Norris Point and Trout River, which is farther south and close to the Tablelands, have been allowed to remain.

They're characteristic of modest villages found throughout western Newfoundland. The interior of the island has never been developed. It's practically uninhabited, with few roads. Tiny fishing villages, called outposts, are strung along every cove and inlet that offers anything resembling protection from the rugged surf. "It's so beautiful here," said Tracy Oldford, a native Newfoundlander from St. John's, the island's largest city. She was a guest at the Sugar Hill Inn, with her husband, Todd. "It's like we're the only ones in the world."

"We were kayaking in St. Paul's Inlet and we came across 30 dolphins," said Todd. "They wanted to play. I had to beat the paddle on the side of the kayak to keep them away."

"Doesn't the dark weather bother you? The rain? How do you Newfoundlanders still smile without seeing the sun?" I asked.

"It's the quietness we enjoy," Tracy said simply. "We've lived elsewhere in Canada, in Halifax, Toronto, and on Prince Edward Island. There's nowhere else like this."

Perhaps it's all the rain that chiseled the faces of some of the local people I saw, like private Grand Canyons.

A tidy cemetery occupies a prominent site in each little town in western Newfoundland. Names of infants and shipwreck victims are too easily found among white crosses.

Cod, the historic lifeblood of Newfoundland's coves and harbors, were once so plentiful in these waters that they impeded shipping.

Eighty-pound cod were not uncommon. In this decade, commercial cod fisheries have closed due to over-fishing. Centuries-old lifestyles ended, which is why resilient, thick-skinned Newfies, like Mark Tsang, and Vince and Marina McCarthy who own the Sugar Hill Inn, are not joking at all about staking their futures on tourists. ------------------------------- IF YOU GO

-- Accommodations in small inns and motels around Gros Morne are available in the villages of Norris Point, Rocky Harbour, Wiltondale, or Trout River. The centrally-located Sugar Hill Inn, P.O. Box 100, Norris Point, Newfoundland, A0K 3V0, 709-458-2147, is well-situated for park excursions.

-- Mark Tsang operates a company called Discovery Out-tripping Company, 23 Dove's Road, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, A2H 1M2, 709-634-6335.

-- For general information on Newfoundland, phone the province's tourism office: 800-563-NFLD.

Steve Cohen is a Colorado-based freelance writer.