 |
|
Online FavoritesSpecial Issues
Photo Galleries |
Terminal Ice (Cont.) THROUGH DENNY CHRISTAIN I met a St. John's captain named Ed Kean. When the ocean still held lots of cod, four generations of Ed Kean's Newfoundland ancestors fished for them. Ed has an all-purpose 75-foot boat with twin diesel engines and a five-ton crane amidships. The boat's name is Motta, which he says is Inuit for "boat." He uses it for a miscellany of jobs. When a ship undergoing repairs offshore needs a large part ferried out to it, Ed does that. If a film crew shows up wanting to make a nature documentary for Japanese television, he takes them around. April through September, when icebergs are
Before I knew what Ed looked like, I recognized him from his walk. He walks with the rolling gait of a sailor, feeling the floor for a moment with each foot before setting it down. Until I met him, I assumed that this nautical way of walking was extinct, or a conceit of literature. Ed roll-walked across the lobby of the Holiday Inn, where I was staying, and shook my hand. We'd arranged to meet there so I could go out on his boat and watch him gather iceberg ice. We drove out to where he docks his boat, in a little harbor northeast of St. John's. Fishermen seem to have an accent different from the crisp, clipped speech of other Newfoundlanders; as near as I can tell, it's part Irish, part Cockney. "Beautiful day for 'arvestin' oiceberg oice," Ed said, as he scanned the blue sky. Also on board the Motta that day were two crew members, both named Tony, both tanned dark brown and with deeply lined, sun-reddened eyes; Denny Christian, hoping to see an unusual iceberg Ed had promised to show him; Denny's wife, Thelma, an iceberg enthusiast like her husband; me; and a producer-director, a cameraman, a soundman, and an on-camera personality named Kevin, all from a cable television show called The Thirsty Traveler. This show began on a food network in Canada. In each half-hour episode it visits a different part of the world and samples an emblematic local alcoholic drink. In just the last few weeks, the crew had done sake in Japan, tequila in Mexico, and ouzo in Greece. Now they were doing Newfoundland, and iceberg-water vodka. The ocean rose in gentle swells as the Motta headed south along the coast, past an island called Bell Island. Denny joined me at the rail and said that the water we were on used to hide German submarines. Twice during World War II, a U-boat came into this narrow stretch between the island and the shore, waited for an opportunity, and torpedoed boats loaded with ore from the Bell Island iron mines. On clear days when the light is right, you can see the sunken tankers on the bottom. Scores of sailors died in the attacks, and each time the sub got away. Denny pointed to the coastline, indented all along its length with big and little coves. "People used to say that sometimes U-boats would pull into one of the coves, and then the German sailors would put on civilian clothing and come into St. John's and go to the movies," he confided. After we'd been dieseling for a couple of hours, Ed pointed to an iceberg straight ahead. Another hour and a half passed as the berg grew larger with almost undetectable slowness. At about a quarter-mile, you could see that the berg was immense, tabular, and completely brown on top; at a hundred yards, it looked as if badly financed developers had abandoned a housing project on it while still at the bulldozing stage. Dirt and gravel and large rocks were strewn all over in heaps and piles. Denny said he had never seen this much glacial till on an iceberg. The sun was hot by now, the wind had become brisk, and the melting edges sent mini-avalanches of gravel raining down. If an iceberg can be described as having a fit, this one was. Rocks clacked and splashed all around it, little waterfalls streamed from it every few feet, pieces of ice fell off the sides and shattered and bobbed. When iceberg ice melts quickly, the bubbles released from it make a sound like soda water fizzing. A piece of ice as big as a bedroom fell splintering into the sea, and its myriad fragments, when they came back to the surface, fizzed full-throatedly. With a rifle, Ed fired a couple of shots at the iceberg. The idea was to knock loose a conveniently sized piece. From the white cliff, some ice chips flew, but nothing big fell down. After the second shot, Thelma shouted that she had seen a fox—that an arctic fox had come to the edge of the berg, peered over, and ducked back. Denny said it happens sometimes that foxes and other animals get stranded on icebergs when they drift free. All of us stood and waited for the fox to reappear at the ledge of dirty ice and gravel 30 feet above the boat deck, but it didn't. Thelma kept saying that she was sure she'd seen it, and that the fox had looked miserable and skinny. After some to-ing and fro-ing at the request of the TV people—approaching the iceberg now this way, now that, for the best angle and light—Ed motored around to its shoreline side. Acres of ocean dotted with iceberg pieces extended in all directions. The Tonys launched the skiff and began to harvest; securing nets around unwieldy car-size pieces of ice floating in 41-degree water can't be as easy as they made it seem. As the cameraman filmed, Kevin, the on-air person, gamely jumped into the skiff and assisted with the net-handling. Overseeing from the deck, Ed supplied his own dialogue: "Oh, you'll 'ave to do better 'n that, boys!" he sang out when they brought a smaller-than-usual piece alongside. The air filled with the pleasant click of grapples, the substantial thumps of boated ice, the whining of the crane, the slap of the waves. During a lull, an iceberg piece too big to bring aboard drifted up beside the Motta's stern. This piece was about the size of six parking spaces and almost level with the water. It had a section like a pulpit rising from one side. I lay facedown on the stern and leaned my head over to within inches of the living ice. At this distance it glistened with the dull, wet gray of cubes in an ice cube tray, and its surface was pitted with little depressions. With a push I could have slid onto it and drifted away. Just as I was thinking that, a corner of the stern knocked, not hard, against it. In an instant, the entire piece of ice split in two. The section with the pulpit angled precariously upward from the water and then rotated its former top to deep below. The movement had the succinctness of a wall revolving to reveal a hidden door. It sent a sympathetic, shivery rush from my spine to the backs of my knees. Ed filled the hold with iceberg pieces and piled others on the deck. Late in the afternoon, he headed for port, first making another close pass by the big iceberg. Thelma was watching out for the fox, and she and Denny and one of the Tonys caught a glimpse of it near where it had been before. They said it was running along the edge of the iceberg, trying to keep up with the progress of the boat. Thelma wanted to call the Humane Society and get them to send a helicopter to pick up the fox. Its prospects did not look good out there, miles from land and with no company but the gulls. Thelma stayed in the stern, scanning the iceberg with binoculars, as we motored away.
|
   
TODAY'S NEWS UPDATE!
Kelly Slater on His One Track Mind<... In One Track Mind, a film by Chris Malloy, surfing greats sit down to talk about what has ... 
The Spoke Word: New Winter Cycling ...
RAPHA Classic Softshell Jacket, $375 Rapha is quickly establishing itself as the Savile Row ... advertisement
Vacation PackagesMore Travel Deals |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- Home |
- Travel |
- Gear |
- Bodywork |
- Culture |
- Videos |
- Podcasts |
- Photos |
- Archives |
- Feedback |
- RSS Feeds |
- Subscribe to Outside Magazine |
- Join/Login
Partner Sites:
- Away.com |
- GORP.com |
- Orbitz |
- Cheaptickets |
- ebookers |
- HotelClub.com |
- RatesToGo.com |
- asia-hotels.com |
- Outside's Go
©1994-2008 Mariah Media Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction of material from any pages without written permission is strictly prohibited.
Reproduction of material from any pages without written permission is strictly prohibited.