Tuckamore

Gros Morne means "Big lonely Mountain" and this was during the day hike to reach the top, stumbling through the stunted forest into the glacially scribed U-valley and then up a side scree of small boulders and across a wind-swept plateau to overlook a glacial valley and pond straight down and then descending the other side through the long valley of unforgiving rocks and roots.

This looks like a view of Yosemite Valley but it is actually Western Brook Pond fjord way off through that break in the mountain range. It felt strange with the ocean a few hundred meters behind my back to be looking at something so related to what I always felt was an inland phenomena. Maybe this will be the new Yosemite Valley park playground in 500 years after the pond is filled in with erosional debris from the brooks and soil takes root and villages sprout up of post-canadian natives wearing plastic clothes. Parks Canada offers a boat tour through the pond but the $60 fee equaled several good meals for the wasting Oggy beltline. Furthermore, my "natural beauty" quotient has been reached on this trip and you could show me Ansel Adams photos all night long and I would prefer to ask the guy in the RV next door what kind of engine is in his truck. I've suddenly become that annoying tourist who takes the tour guide aside and asks him if he has read John McPhee's work (that has nothing to do with Canada) and then tries to sound more worldly than he really is.It's a different rock, not the granodiorite of Yosemite, but a true granite and Gneiss, and lacking are the sheer cliffs of half dome. But Glacier Point is replicated here in Gros Morne Park.

I'm experimenting with the exposure setting on my pathetically old 4 mp camera to get pictures in odd lighting conditions. This was at sunset so I set the exposure to -1.5. It still doesn't do it justice.
Here's a sunset picture you can only get if you are about 2 hours behind schedule when descending Gros Morne Mountain. The rest of the hike would be in pitch blackness. Fortunately no one was around to hear my screams of agony when I tripped and my spine tendons flared in anger.

The golden larches are enjoying their climatically prolonged summer which leaves Oggy looking at rolling hills of green instead of the fall colors he promised himself back in St. Anthony. It's too early for Fall here. I plan to plant a golden larch when I get back to the ranch. They aren't native to NH but they won't do any harm either. Tuckamore is the term for a wind-stunted forest of otherwise mature trees and shrubs. I decided it's not a bad name for a boy since he would be called "Tuck" or "Tucker". But that's the romantic in me naming children I'll never have.