Hard to Get To, Harder to Leave

“Moose,” Dustin Cormier says, pointing his mitten toward a rocky buttress half-covered in fog. I take a second, lift my goggles off my face, squint. I’d been holding on to Dustin on the back of a snowmobile for an hour. My ass is freezing. My face is numb. We were happy to get off the snowmobile and switch to snowshoes.

Two days ago, we were in northern New Hampshire. After a solid day of driving, an overnight ferry ride, a ten-mile skidoo, and now a half-mile of plodding through marsh and frozen streams on snowshoes (skis are worthless in thick fir and spruce traps), we’ve reached the throat of Western Brook Gulch in Newfoundland, Canada. The gulch lies on the eastern side of Parson’s Pond, but that’s a misnomer, as it’s really a ten-mile long lake. Here the water unfolds in a labyrinth of smaller ponds, fjords, and gulches. On the western side of Parson’s, perched on a sliver of land separating the freshwater