by Pat Ardley
We had twelve crew for twenty-four guests.
The next morning, the vacuum packer packed it in. It was supposedly overhauled during the winter at a cost of five hundred dollars. Casey tried calling the company but they were closed for the weekend. He looked the machine over again and fixed it for the time being. Then the espresso machine had a broken heater. It too, had been overhauled in town, in this case for only three hundred dollars. Then Marc told me that the switch was broken on the meat slicer. I lay down to listen to my relaxation cd.
We didn’t have crab for the last dinner for our group of guests. I think this is the first last-night’s dinner in twenty-nine years where we didn’t serve crab. Remember how one of our guest’s favourite afternoon trips was to drop crab traps and then return the next day with you to pull them? It was just one too many things to try to organize. But still, all the guests are happy. There are so many fish, and the weather is wonderful. The food is great and the crew are all working so well together. Steve even organized smoking the salmon, and Casey and Steve keep the smoker going all day Sunday. Jessy is fantastic with the crew and has a way of keeping everyone busy, yet happy.
The Fisheries biologists came in again today to leave brochures about whale-watching and a poster to tack up by the cleaning table about the tagged salmon head recovery program. Steve talked to them. Casey and Steve are making sure that the bait runs are covered, as well as the lunch runs for people who want to continue fishing through lunch. I’m still having trouble sending e-mails. I finally found out that I have to change the settings for the outgoing mail, but I have no idea how to.
Jessy and another staff member cutting, vacuum packing and flash freezing salmon. Twenty-four guests can catch a lot of fish.
We had our first big changeover day with people coming in and going out. Our long-time guest Mark had been at another lodge in the Queen Charlotte Islands a month earlier and told the owner, “Nope, you’re still not as good as Rivers Lodge!”
Crew were working so well and the guests have been impressed. The guests love to watch as the crew rush the heavy fish boxes out to the waiting boats to deliver them to the airport when we hear the airplanes flying over. Still a well-oiled machine, thanks to Casey and Jessy and our amazing crew.
The outgoing guests told all the incoming guests that the fishing is fantastic and that they had a wonderful time. So now all the new guests arrive already happy. At 5 PM your mom called and asked, “Are you smiling? You have to smile for the guests.” So that’s what I’m doing—I just kept smiling and smiling. I don’t want to scare everyone off the floats never to be seen again. Next season depends a lot on how good my performance is.
Love always,
Pat
One Step at a Time
Dear George:
The new group is in and very pleased. I ran around with wine and liquor orders, placing bottles in electric coolers in each guest’s room. The BC Liquor Distribution Branch has changed the rules and I can no longer offer liquor to guests, unless I get a liquor licence, and I’m not going to do that. The document with liquor rules is an inch thick and I don’t think it’s worth the trouble. We have always put liquor on the bar, beer outside in the beer fridge, and wine on the tables with dinner for guests to help themselves to, but we can’t do that any longer. But we can be part of the delivery service as long as guests order and pay for the liquor. More people sitting in windowless rooms thinking up ridiculous rules, so now the beer fridge is called the bottled-water fridge.
Casey visits the guests at the dinner tables every evening to talk about the next day’s plan. Big shoes to fill since you had always done that. Steve stays up late and shuts the generator off, so I am able to crawl into bed and not sleep. I run through things that need to be done and finally start to practise simply breathing in and breathing out.
I worked on the computer again. I had filed all of your letters in Netscape and then found out that I needed to be in Outlook, so I spent another three hours re-filing all the letters. Then I spent some time answering letters from people who had written to us in the spring. I was close to panicking and took some more Rescue Remedy drops. Any little thing sets me off and I feel like I’m going to freak out. The Rescue Remedy seems to smooth out the activity that gets rocketing around in my chest.
So far, we are doing all right with the water supply. I wasn’t sure if the recent heli-logging in the hills behind us would mean more or less fresh water this season. It’s still coming down the hill well enough, especially after last night’s hard rain. The first rain since I got back. The air smells so fresh. I can’t enjoy it.
I’ve had my dear Erica and my dear Bonnie here to stay with me at different times. They are helping me keep the top of my head on, as well as helping clean and do laundry and visit with me over coffee. What would I have done without their presence? They have been amazing and really buoyed up Casey and Jessy, who are also working so hard at keeping me from exploding or imploding or maybe just slipping off the side of the dock and sinking quietly with the weight of my sadness.
I had to call the airline. They pulled a dirty trick and sent a different plane than my regular chartered plane and loaded other people and freight on it, without giving us a discount. Our friend Al McDonald is still sending off our charters from Vancouver and meeting them on their return, and he will keep track of the people and freight on the rest of our flights.
As Bonnie was climbing onto the plane to return to town, she said, “You have to feel the pain.” But I really can’t go there—it might just tear me apart. There are so many things to do: advertising, licences, bookings, food orders, goddamn liquor, gst, bank, wages, airplanes, marketing, lodge upkeep. Also, I see new things that need doing, like the woodshed roof has a crappy old tarp where it was leaking, and one of the guesthouse roofs has rust on it. The flowers are not as good this year—I just didn’t get to them. Good thing Erica and Bonnie helped. Now I have to take pictures of some of the guests with their fish to go on our website … shit, shit, shit!
Erica, one of my dear friends, came to the lodge to stay with me to help ease the pain of losing two members of my family.
How is it possible that I have been left with this place? This is your thing not mine. I finally found your guide licence. Casey needs it so he can fill in last year’s creel report to make the licence valid. Robin Cooper, who works for dfo in the summer, came in to pick up the fish-tally sheet and let me know that he and his family will be the caretakers for the lodge again this winter. What a relief. They will be here to stay by the end of September.
Casey and Steve tried to hike to the lake by going around the bottom of the hill that’s on the other side of the bay, instead of going over it. They used flagging tape to mark the way, but they overshot the lake and ended up in the lagoon. Then on their way back, they ended up at our water system instead of where they left the boat. So much for flagging tape, I thought. Jessy had to row over and rescue them. Yay Jessy!
Again the guests are leaving happy, but there is so much sadness from the new guests that I find that I cannot carry theirs too, despite them heaping it on my shoulders when I stand at the front to greet them.
The hot-tub heater is leaking again. Salt water feels so good, like an effervescent bath, but it wrecks everything in the pool. There are pinholes in the heater, so water is spraying all over the place. Marc and Casey are able to kind of fix it. So far the boat motors have all been good. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other.
We took Marc out in the boat one evening to watch a humpback whale that was lazily rolling at the surface right in front of our bay. Jessy had grabbed her Yorkshire terrier, Salty, and sat him on the wide engine cover at the back of the boat. Casey stopped the boat and shut off the engine as we drifted along with the tide, surrounded by a sunset-painted sky and damp evening air. Jess’s little 14-pound dog suddenly noticed the massive bulk of the whale as it rol
led again. Salty started vainly barking a ferocious warning to the behemoth to stay away from the boat and his girl Jess. I thought we should rename the dog David!
One of the resort owners came by and said his wife thought I might like a trip to the beach with her one day. I could feel myself start to panic at the thought. I think I’m afraid that I might lose the tenuous hold I have on my emotions if I were to do something relaxing. Late afternoon is a bad time. There is some internal clock that starts to wind up, and I can feel things going wild in my chest, zinging in all directions at once. I know you should be here by now for us to have our coffee and chat. And it’s been far too long since I talked to my darling June on the phone.
The manual that your Marilyn transcribed from your voice memos and printed out for us has been invaluable. Even though Casey and Jessy worked with you all their lives, there were still some details that were in your head only. Well, a lot of details. With some jobs and repairs that we managed throughout the summer it felt like we were working in Braille, always just barely able to figure out what to do next, and then next, and next again. But the manual was very helpful, so thank you for doing that, I know it wasn’t easy. And thank you for looking over our shoulders and helping push us in the right direction.
I spent hours on the computer bringing our accounting up to date. What a job! I have to have it done for the gst report, which is a few weeks late, but that can’t be helped. I haven’t done any computer accounting for way too long. I need to get new price lists printed for next year, but the US rate is so volatile that I’m afraid to do it too early—or too late.
My big brother, Jimmy, arrived today! Such a wonderful bear hug. He needs a place to live after escaping a bad relationship and is also mourning our dear sister June, so I’m happy to provide a place for him to rest and rejuvenate.
We start warning the crew that there may be a shortage of water if we don’t get some rain soon, so staff showers are overboard now. We have had one night of rain in the last five weeks. Marc came over and told me the hot-tub heater is leaking again. I finally ordered a new one and it will be here on the Monday flight.
It rained in the afternoon for ten minutes, which was enough to get our bottom tank to overflow again. We will last a little longer. It has been pouring rain in Vancouver every day and we got ten minutes’ worth.
Marc came over again and said the big outside fridge wasn’t working, so Casey went over to see why. He looked at the on-off switch, flipped it back on and the fridge is working again. He’s just so smart!
Jimmy has kept us amused with beautifully written stories of his adventures since he arrived here. Including his flight to the lodge in the “bucket of bolts” Goose airplane, his trip with Casey in Sportspage looking for guests in the fog, and dumping himself out of a canoe, just as the Goose arrived to bring in new guests.
More family and friends here. Even though our guests are happy and familiar, it’s still nice to have my private friends to talk to. I can relax with them a little. Not a lot, because there are still guests around to look after, crew to keep hopping and a very fragile mind to keep hold of.
It started raining in the middle of the night and it was socked in and rainy all of the following day. Three of our group of guests had been stuck in Detroit because of bad weather, but they finally landed on a scheduled flight, in our bay at about 3 PM. The pilot had told them that he was heading straight back to Port Hardy with the rest of the people on board who had been hoping to fly in to Dawsons Landing. He said, “This is the last stop I’m making today. I can’t see a thing out there!”
More happy guests leaving, more guests arriving. The problem is that so many people arrive so full of sadness that I end up clenching my teeth and digging my fingernails into my hands wishing a skyhook would come and whisk me away. No, what I really want is for you to come and rescue me. You always have before.
We have a group of German- and Spanish-speaking people here. I could hear some yelling that I didn’t understand, but got the gist of it: a boat was broken down and drifting near the rocks. Casey was out on his sailboat and Steve was up in the bush. Those two are essential to the smooth running of the lodge. Big mistake letting them go out at the same time! Just as I was heading out, Casey came around the corner and took my place in his bait-run boat and sped off. He is amazing when something needs to be done. I sent Jessy out in another boat to swap for the one that wasn’t working, and Casey came back with Jessy and was towing the broken boat. The hub of the propeller had spun out because of fishing line around it. The guests thought they had such a big fish on their line and the whole time it was just the line wrapping around the prop. Casey changed the propeller and the boat was good again. So much less hassle than what was in my imagination. But from now on, both Casey and Steve will not both be away from the docks, unreachable, at the same time.
The vacuum packer stopped working altogether. Casey worked most of the day trying to figure out what was wrong. He talked to the man on-call for the company who happened to be driving down the freeway into New York City. Then Casey took photos of the machine and e-mailed them to him. The end diagnosis: the machine was toast. First thing Monday morning I called the company in Vancouver, and they put a loaner machine on that day’s flight to the lodge. There were only a few fish that didn’t get vacuum packed but they were flash frozen in plastic bags. They would still be an amazing product to take home since it’s the flash freezing not the bag that makes a superior frozen fish fillet.
We had a group of people arrive to film an episode of TV’s Get Out! With Shelley & Courtney about fishing at Rivers Lodge. It was exciting to have them here, but Casey was run off his feet tending to all their needs over and above everything he was already doing. They got some excellent shots of our guests catching fish and of Casey telling tall tales, so I think the episode will be a winner.
Our waitress suddenly quit with six dinners still to look after. Well, six lunches and six dinners for our last two groups of salmon-fishing guests. She had no real reason, other than I think she probably knew, before she even started to work for us, that she was going to leave early to have the long weekend in town. I don’t understand some people. Jessy stepped in and added waitressing to her dock-manager duties, and of course she did a great job.
After our last group left, we spent a couple of days working feverishly with several of the crew who would also leave shortly, to go back to school or to their regular jobs. Jessy headed to town very much alone, for her first year of university. Only Casey, Jimmy and Bunny, our beloved breakfast cook, and I were left to look after the river-fishing guests who came in for the September fishing up the Chuckwalla River at the head of the inlet. Ah, this is what the creel report is for—guiding freshwater fishermen.
The guests took turns fishing in the river with Casey—since he could only take three at a time—and fishing on the ocean out where we usually fish. Casey was again run off his feet because he was up early with the guests, then running them up rivers all day, cleaning fish and gassing boats at night and sorting out fishing tackle and repairing fishing rods. On top of all that, the freight boat came in at 2 AM, and Casey spent two hours dealing with it. He was enjoying the river-running though and took lots of beautiful pictures to share with me.
Bunny made breakfast and cleaned the guests’ rooms, then started closing down the rooms that were empty. Between us, we made lunch and washed all the rain gear and the tons of laundry left from stripping all the extra beds. I made dinner, paid the bills, filled out the forms for the fishing licences and derby tickets for our hatchery and collected and packed my office files, my pantry goods and my own gear and put heaps of belongings away.
Bunny and I went to the island to pick flowers for the table. We stood admiring the beautiful lodge from this perspective across the bay. She turned to me and asked, “Where would you even start to build something like this?” Where indeed, I was thinking. One day I’ll tell you the st
ory.
Jimmy has been washing fishing tackle and putting it away for the winter. Walking, walking and walking because, of course, all the storage rooms are so far apart. He also helped when Casey came back and helped when the ocean fishers came back in. One day he tried to take lunch out to the guests who were fishing on the ocean but was freaked out by the huge waves near Fitz Hugh. He came back to the lodge, so I hopped in the boat and delivered the lunch.
June’s family flew in on the flight that took the last guests and Bunny out. The lodge was one of their favourite places to be, and we have had a lot of fun together here over the years. We had a little ceremony and sprinkled some of June’s ashes on my garden island. They spent most of the time out fishing, but one afternoon Casey drove them all to the store for provisions. It was the first time I had been completely alone in four months, and I stood outside the lodge and screamed and screamed at the world and the injustice of life. Then, with no one there to hear me, I cried and cried and sobbed and howled. It had been locked up inside me for far too long, and once I let it go I had trouble reeling it back in. Then I finished packing up twelve boxes of office work, my clothes and gear that Jessy had left behind. I drove the boxes over to our airplane float to wait for the next freight boat.
There was still so much to do to finish closing down the lodge. Casey worked on the fridges, freezers and plumbing, while Jimmy and I washed and dried everything that was left to put away, clean and dry. Jimmy had been sitting or sleeping a lot over the summer, and was a little disconcerted by the work that we suddenly had him doing. He started calling me Boss Ratchets, after the head nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
