Fogo Island: This Marvellous and Terrible Place

The title of this post is ripped from a book that describes all of Newfoundland as a contrast of beautiful and terrible. Never so much so as on Fogo. The landscape is wild, barren, more like the tundra of the NWT than quaint fishing outport, yet gorgeous, eye popping.

The Inn itself is a teeter totter, balancing old with new, architectural masterpiece with cozy comfort, perfect and imperfect, hard edges with soft and warm textiles, colour anarchy and stark white. It's a marvel. Nancy and the girls do not contain their excitement to be there.

It's Na's birthday so we've slept late and had prezzies, all the while enjoying the view from bed. Floor to 20' ceiling windows face the Atlantic. An iceberg is stuck on a shoal not too far off.  A basket of coffee and juice, baked goods and preserves has been left at our door. Proper livin'.

We are treated today to an episode of The Nature of Things up close and personal. A fox is skulking at the side of the long gravel drive to the Inn. Dark brown and tan with a bushy tail. Not like any fox I've ever seen, yet unmistakable. He is anxious as we slow the car to a stop, not 15 feet away, but he doesn't care to leave. Something in the tall grass has caught his eye. Pounce. Straight up and nosedive down. His reward, a field mouse, is tossed casually back onto the road still wriggling. Then, on the route to the village of Fogo, caribou -- a cow and calf -- are grazing in a lowland off the main road. The cow is mottled brown, molting perhaps? The calf is silver gray. They are unmoved by our picture taking, heads down and munching.

We happen upon a museum. A fishing stage with all its original equipment, a net loft, stable, and workshop. The tour guide is a recent hire. It's his second day and he's enthusiastic, happy we've stopped in. Local warmth that you only feel visiting small places as he and a neighbour lady take us through the buildings and equipment, she trying to recall from her childhood how to properly tie the knot used in weaving fishing nets. We are given the proper instruction on preparing brewis, a hardtack dish still popular in outport communities. Brewis are steamed, not boiled, served with cod, of course.

A not very successful late lunch in a local cafe and back to the Inn to rest before supper. Frances and I have managed to catch colds so the rest is welcome.

Supper is amazing. Some of the staff are Vancouverites come for the outport experience. Rabbit and beet salads to start, turbot for Na, porcetta for me, lamb for the girls. The desserts include leaves and flowers, sea buckthorn (a tart orange berry), and partridgeberry (like a wild blueberry), foraged from the land around the Inn. Gwynneth Paltrow and boyfriend are tucked discreetly in a corner table. The staff are giddy, our girls are starstruck, but everyone is respectful.

Our nightcap is a film in the Inn's own cinema. There is a link with the NFB I don't fully understand but which I know my pal Chuck will catch me up on. They're showing The Grand Seduction, the tale of how a little outport harbour secures a doctor by, among other things, learning to play cricket (badly). It's a fitting reminder how marvellous humanity can arise from terrible circumstances. Oh, Newfoundland. Oh, Fogo Island, you marvellous, terrible place.