Canada and Nature Hike to Butterspot
August 29, 2002
On our last sunny day in Newfoundland, we decided to take the 6.6-kilometer hike to Butterpot Hill, where we hoped to obtain a great view of Placentia Bay and the woods, lakes, and barrens around the town of Holyrood. The winds, rain, and clouds of the previous few days had given way to full sunshine and still winds. The midmorning temperature hovered around the mid-50 F temperature – perfect for hiking. The air had the feel and smell of approaching autumn.
At first, the alternating gravel and boardwalk trail was wide enough to walk side by side. While walking I was reminded of the story about the boardwalks. When folks lose their jobs and apply for unemployment payments from the provincial government, they must qualify for this “dole” by spending a certain amount of time working on some project that is deemed important to the province. Building trails is one way of qualifying, so Newfoundland has lots of really excellent boardwalk and trails. Some extend for miles across the bogs and fens and as wooden stairs up rocky hills. During June and July, many of these trails extend through places where blackflies breed, so insect repellent is essential. But sometime in early August, the blackflies disappear and hiking these trails are pure pleasure.
To maximize the pleasure, we try to experience the trails using as many of our senses as possible. We smell, observe, hear, feel and even taste our way through natural systems. We know for sure when we have entered a Balsam Fir grove by the wonderful, Christmas Tree aroma emitted by the fir. It can be even stronger and more pleasant when we enter a grove that has recently been attacked by Spruce Budworms or where recent logging has taken place. Pat has a particularly sensitive nose for the aromas of nature such as flowers, trees, and animals – so she usually alerts me to new olfactory experiences.
As we hike, we try to be visually alert for any movement that might suggest a bird in flight, a mammal running, a fish swimming, an insect flying or a snail crawling. Since there are no snakes in Newfoundland, there is no need to worry about snake bites. There are also no Grizzly Bears in Newfoundland, but there are a few Black Bears, and occasionally in winter a Polar Bear comes ashore from the ice, where they hunt seals. During our travels in Newfoundland and Labrador, we have read three stories of Polar Bears coming into towns looking for food. In most of these cases, the bear ends up dead, mounted and now resides in the city museum. When a policeman sees such a large critter wandering down a street where children play, his first reaction is to shoot the bear. Then he will worry about justifying his actions to the wildlife folks later. It is illegal to shoot Polar Bears – except in self-defense or when they pose too great a risk to humans.
Another way that we use vision to observe nature is through the lens of our camera. We have probably shot over 3000 digital photos in the last two months. Shooting that many photos means that even if we are lousy photographers, we will get lucky with a few.
Listening for wildlife is a little more complicated for me because I cannot hear the high-pitched sounds of small songbirds. So I depend on Pat to hear them; then we can both search for them visually. Every year, Pat improves the repertoire of bird songs that she can recognize. She has an especially keen ear for the sounds of hawks flying high in the sky. Her hearing skill greatly improves the numbers of birds and other animals that we see. Especially when she also mimics the call of the loon and screech owls. By making a pishing sound, we often attract warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, chickadees, nuthatches and such. Boreal chickadees are particular suckers for this sound and will perch only a few feet away.
The sense of touch is used less frequently than the previously mentioned senses. However, it came in handy when picking blueberries. Sometimes, when clusters of ripe blueberries are available, a small handful of maybe 6 berries can be picked with a single grab if the appropriate touch is used. Too heavy a touch and immature berries will be pulled along with the ripe ones. Too light, and some of the ripe berries will be missed. Possibly the expert with the optimal touch in berry picking are the bears that use their lips to pick the berries. They eat jillions of the luscious berries to prepare for hibernation.
Another way that the sense of touch could come in handy while hiking would be if we ever got lost in the woods on a dark, cloudy night. It would be necessary to feel our way out of the woods. We have no plans to experiment with this procedure. What would we do if, in the dark, we touched some large, furry animal that growls?
The sense of taste also comes in very handy when exploring. There are the obvious ways we use taste such as to sample the blueberries, strawberries, serviceberries, bakeapples, pin cherries, cranberries, and partridgeberries of the boreal berry patches. I have also tasted the bright blueberries produced by the Blue Bead Lily and the Timberberry, which are fairly bitter and may even be toxic in large concentrations. But the watermelon berry is reasonably tasty and tastes like an uh – well like a watermelon. While writing this story, I realized that I have never tasted a wild elderberry. An oversight that must be remedied. However, I set the limit when it comes to tasting wild mushrooms – some are just too toxic for comfort. But usually tasting a leaf or bud is acceptable if the amount chewed is very small. When tasting my way through the forest, I simply spit out the remains without swallowing – sorta like a wine judge after each taste.
Anyway, as we traipsed through boreal bogs, fens, forest and barrens to Butter Pot Hill and attempted to experience nature using all of our senses, we had a very good time. We started early enough so that the early birds were still active, the length of the hike was long enough to give us some exercise, but not tire us excessively and the blueberries were ripe. As we passed through the bog, we found the few blueberries there were not nearly as sweet as others we had picked in other places. The lowlands were covered with the typical boreal forest trees – Balsam Fir, White Spruce, Black Spruce, Yellow Birch and Mountain Alder. As we approached a boggy area we remembered one of the features of a bog that grows out over the edge of a pond. The moss, sedge and other plants grow out over the water until it forms a mat thick enough to support small black spruce. But then, as the black spruce grow, the mat becomes too heavy and begins to sink into the water. Although a black spruce can survive with “wet feet” or its roots in some water, if it sinks too deep into the water, it will drown. So one feature of boreal forests is that it is common to find patches of dead trees that have drowned due to this sinking process.
As we passed through the bog and began to climb Butter Pot Hill, the height of the vegetation decreased rapidly with elevation. By the time we reached the top, only miniature plants could be found in the barrens or tundra. We found blueberry bushes no more than an inch tall but producing maybe a couple of normal-sized blueberries. Other plants such as willow trees, bunchberries, goldenrod and junipers, no more than a couple of inches tall, were fully mature.
About 11,000 years ago, there were glaciers covering these hills and valleys. As the glaciers slid over the surface of Butter Pot Hill, they dozed the soil and loose rocks from the hilltop, leaving mostly bare granite rock. Slowly, some soil formed in the crevices and swags and a few plants began to invade. Blueberries seem to enjoy this environment. With lots of sunlight and little competition from other plants, the blueberry plants thrive and produce some of the sweetest morsels of gastronomic delight imaginable. We ate blueberries till we were full, then picked another quart or so to take home.
The view of the countryside and bayside towns and harbors from the top of Butter Pot was exceptional. We could see all the way out to Bell Island through the clear air and sunny skies – where a ferry had carried us from the mainland, so we could explore the high cliffs and crashing surf of this iron mining community. To the southwest, we could make out the town of Holyrood where we had our mail sent from Texas to their tiny post office. After 17 days, it had not yet arrived, so we were forced to cancel our reservation on the ferry that would take us back to Nova Scotia.
The return hike was fairly uneventful. We saw no charging bull moose, no bears were irritated when we ate their berries, no storms lashed the hilltop and we did not slip through any floating mats of the bog covering the dark, cold waters of the pond. Today was a time for simple pleasures, and we had more than our share.
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