Back From The Dead

Gander, NL: dry, windy, sparse, low to the ground, with one-story strip malls lining every street of the downtown, and each strip mall lined with once-bright aluminum siding. Dollar stores and fast food chains and boarded up windows and faded advertisements for businesses that folded last decade. Cracked pavement and rust and ominous flocks of seagulls. Imagine an entire town that looks like Main Street in Dartmouth. It made/makes me depressed, like driving through Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska', and I mean no offense to anyone who lives there or is from there or likes it there or whatever. Apparently I am a Colby snob now. I guess it really isn't so different from any other struggling Atlantic Canadian town - Port Hawkesbury or Trenton or Greenwood - except that I am required to travel to this specific one for work. And those crazy seagulls - they might be unique to Gander, too.

Thing is, within minutes of town is the massive and beautiful Gander Lake, and a series of awesome trail systems, and what looks to be thousands of hectares of unspoiled wilderness. If you are an outdoorsy person and have free time and have packed more than your shitty business casual work shoes - this would be heaven for you, provided you can deal with the town itself. And while I do consider myself an outdoorsy person, I failed to meet my last two conditions as listed in that previous sentence, and thus did not find Gander to be heavenly.

In the end, Gander, I suspect it might be me, not you.