Road trip — higher ground

It’s always been a lure to me — up. Just up.

See a hill, and I want to know what the view is from on top.

Parts of my life I’ve been in good shape, other parts, not so much. But high ground calls me, and I’ll fight flies and sweat and sun to get there.

Last week, I was on a rock perch high up behind Western Bay, looking down across the curving bogland brooks, with Clifty Pond off to the left, loomed over by the cliffs that give it its name. (Reaching the top of those cliffs is a job for another day.)

But even earlier than that, the high ground was the lump of soil and stone that stands between Adam’s Cove and the resettled community of Bradley’s Cove.

It looms against the sky from the beach in Adam’s Cove, and you find your way there along the old trail, now worn down to gravel and stone from rain’s erosion and the constant break-up done by ATV tires.

As you near the bottom of the hill, the path fills in tight on both sides with alders: you can walk the grassy ridge in the middle, or choose to travel in the wheel ruts, with the pollen-laden alders constantly brushing your sleeve.

At the old sheep grate across the trail, you turn uphill on an even-older track, following a failing wire fence that’s meant to keep the sheep in and which runs halfway up the hill before falling over a cliff to the sea. That’s only about two-thirds of the way up the hill, so you might catch your breath and look at the stocky spruce tree that’s rooted itself in — and grown out of — the red rock cliff, its roots exposed in a way that makes it look like it’s holding on for dear life.

This time of year, you can walk the cliff-edge behind the tree and count the broken-open gull’s eggs that some predator has collected and eaten from, laid out like a natural version of the spray of coffee cups that gathers exactly one coffee’s distance away from the drive-thru.

It’s a good place to stop. Your legs are probably burning by then and the next part’s the steepest. Almost everything that grows above ankle-deep has stopped by then. You’re on the deep shag carpet of ground juniper and beaten-down blueberry, of partridgeberry and occasional cotton grass. Dig into the ground there and you’ll find all the roots knit together like a fibrous sweater, overlapping and knotting and sharing the work of tying the whole thing down.

Then, finally, you’re on top of it all, and the open end of Conception Bay stretches out in flat there in front of you, high enough up that, except on the windiest of days, the water is rendered perfectly flat. I’ve seen icebergs from that high ground spot, a small clearing in the turf from past bonfires, and I’ve seen whales there, too, but this time of year, you start to hear the soft whistles of seabird chicks calling to be fed, and you get to see the parents bending back in on through the updrafts to pinpoint their way onto their own particular nests.

If it’s sunny, you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, close your eyes and see only the flaring red of the blood inside your eyelids, and imagine that everything is all right with the world. Paradise.

Show me a hill.

I’ll climb it.

See a hill, and I want to know what the view is from on top.