Welcome to Wreckhouse

survival choices in windy places

Several days ago, I drove through Newfoundland’s Wreckhouse during a high wind warning.

I have thoughts about the experience; trying to leave Canada’s easternmost province by car in the wintertime feels surprisingly relevant for navigating this current sociopolitical era.

Wreckhouse Wind Warning is an attention getting name: Wreckhouse is a geographical area within the Codroy Valley on the west coast of the island of Newfoundland. Wind whistles through a mountain passage, occasionally at hurricane force, and in the days of the Newfoundland Railroad would sometimes twist railcars from the tracks and deposit them in a ditch.

Wreckhouse gusts occur from several directions, and in fact the winds can shift direction entirely, making variability part of the overall difficulty of navigating this stretch of road. The biggest problem for drivers, however, happens when the winds hit vehicles perpendicular to the direction of travel.

Sounds like a bad time!

And it is.

But Wreckhouse isn’t an out of the way curiosity- instead, like the molasses swamp in Candy Land, it’s a place you must successfully pass through if your objective is to get your car off the island between mid-September and May.

And this past weekend, I needed to do exactly that. With my SUV.

I had tickets for the ferry on Saturday night. I have been trying to get home to my family for the Thanksgiving holiday. And yet the winds were so intense, not just at Wreckhouse but all the way to Port aux Basques and also offshore, that Thursday night ferries, all Friday ferries, and Saturday morning ferries were canceled.

The Saturday evening ferry, however, was on ‘standby’ status. And if I missed it, the next chance to leave would be Monday, weather permitting, and behind in line from everyone who had missed a boat across the prior three days.

Information that might also be relevant: I drive a lot, mostly highway. Together our family has logged hundreds of thousands of auto miles, and we’ve seen some crazy stuff out there through 46 US states and 6 Canadian provinces. Aside from one instance of grand theft auto, we’ve traveled incident-free, but over the years we’ve dodged ladders (2), an airborne mattress, tire shrapnel, a partial load of dirt clods (those bounce!), and a set of flying dresser drawers complete with underthings.

Also, I’m from Wyoming. This means not only a guaranteed familiarity with long distance highway driving across spare landscapes, but some comfort with rapidly changing weather patterns, and above all, with wind. High winds. Extreme winds.

In short, while I take risks seriously, I also have some confidence behind the wheel, and it feels earned.

Thus, off to the ferry I went, twelve hours early and during what the weather app advised would be the least-worst part of the day. Happily fortified with coffee and a great sandwich from Harbour Grounds, I felt alert, curious, and hopeful about how the day would unfold.

For the first half of the drive between Corner Brook and Newfoundland’s southern coast, I found myself wondering,

Is this Wreckhouse? How about this?

Finally I reasoned that if you have to ask if it’s Wreckhouse, it isn’t Wreckhouse.

That turned out to be correct: the wind, the real wind, hit suddenly and unquestionably, and at that point the only thing to do was hold on tight and try to find the other side.

I wish I had a picture for you, but instead I chose to live.

Imagine the very worst day on I-80 near Buford, Wyoming, and then add so much airborne water that it’s like driving through a high-powered car wash.

It was at times nearly impossible to see, and there was so much force from the air, and so much water flowing across the road, that the wind made me hydroplane sideways. The grip on the wheel needed simply to overcome the countervailing force was physically exhausting. The noise- the roar of the wind and the sounds of my car frame encountering it- was unbelievable. The force of the air not only shook my car, but began to peel up the edge of the hood. At one point I looked right and what had been mountains and a plain had become a jagged edge of pale grass and beyond it, the gray sea, its waves whipped into a tessellation of demonic-looking peaks.

The entire landscape was otherworldly.

And the physical experience was insane.

There was one other car on the road, a black Yukon from Nova Scotia. We did it together. He let me lead, which was hilarious.

The intensity wasn’t continuous- there were spots of near normal driving, with some light rain, and then, coming around another corner, or facing wind that had suddenly changed direction, the car would be violently buffeted and the whole thing started again.

During this 45 minutes, I gave myself guidance aloud. I laughed maniacally. A few times I screamed and kept screaming.

And eventually, I made it through.

And then I sat in the ferry parking lot, virtually alone and still buffeted by hurricane force winds, and I cried.

Why is the world so crazy. Why is living in it so stressful. Why do we do dumb things, and why aren’t clearer alternatives available?

Why, indeed, and in the days since I have realized I have some thoughts.

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This entire thing is not something I feel comfortable recommending. Wreckhouse 2024 was immediately added to my ‘top three worst drives ever’ hall of shame, and in a way that concerns me: the other two ‘worst drives’ were winter weather emergencies caused by rapidly worsening conditions exacerbated by other people’s lack of preparation, but this particular scenario was known to me beforehand. I was literally warned about it, by text and by sign. Further, I took it upon myself the night before to do some additional research- I was prepared to make a new plan as needed.

Given the totality of information I had on Friday night and Saturday morning: my ferry was expected to leave and there was only one way to reach it; Wreckhouse is most dangerous to high-profile vehicles and most of them would be off the road due to the warnings; the winds were slated to pick up in early afternoon and worsen across the evening, the best guess I knew how to make was to go ahead strategically on Saturday morning.

And knowing what I now know of the experience, I think I probably chose wrong. ‘Stupid’ is the word that comes to mind.

But I also know why I chose wrong, and it’s complicated. Further, I’m truly not sure what ‘right’ would have been, logistically speaking: it is winter, there is only one ferry and only one road to reach it, and if I needed to be back in the States with my car, I had to figure it out.

And I realize that rather often and in very different-looking scenarios, this is the choice landscape that we confront. That’s particularly true in seasons of real danger, where getting collectively to an end point matters a lot and none of the ways of doing so seem great.

When there’s a known risk on the clearest path to a directly desired outcome, and the alternatives also involve risks both known and unknown and lead to less desired or murky outcomes, choosing the known risk to the clear destination is a pretty typical human leadership response.

We simply don’t have great heuristics for engaging alternatives based on a precautionary principle, especially when the impacts picture gets cloudy or chaotic as more possibilities are considered. For a recent large-scale example, consider Covid-19: inclarity about dangers, paths, and possible outcomes was what the battles about covid policy and our underlying public goals were centered on. We don’t have good tools to wrestle well with a scenario in which ‘plan A is definitely dangerous but it seems to lead directly to point B, where we want to go; an infinite number of other plans are also available, many of which are probably safer but we don’t know how or when we’ll make it to point B if we do those other things.’

And unfortunately, this post isn’t me telling us how to do that wrestling better. I frankly don’t know how or whether we will. But I do know that when paths to other possibilities appear hopelessly complicated and other destinations are unclear, our brains and our communities are likely to simply say a fast yes to a known danger in hope of quick deliverance.

And I suspect that all of this matters a lot for how our conversations with one another will unfold amid backdrops of alternating and increasing urgency.