Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon

by Pat Ardley

  Jess went to the shop, put on a pair of your gigantic old cork boots, collected a pike pole, a couple of heavy staples and a sledgehammer, and then she clumped around in the boots to scrounge up an extra boom chain. She then went out onto the back walkway closest to the miscreant stiff leg and hauled it into place with the pike pole. By now, it had begun to rain so hard that the huge drops ricocheted noisily off the water at least a foot back toward where they had come from. Drenched but determined, Jessy tied a buoyant rope with a small loop in it to one end of the chain, dropped it down through the hole in the end of the stiff-leg log and then caught the loop underwater with the pike pole, dragged it under the hole in a stationary float log, then hauled the chain up inch by inch and around the stiff-leg log in order to fasten it with the staples and many swings of the heavy sledgehammer. The slack in the chain allowed the stiff leg to have a bit of give for tide changes, while remaining very much locked in place. She appeared in the house midway through the job, dripping and shivering with cold, to fetch a life jacket. The old cork boots were digging in and providing trustworthy grip, but the damn boots were so big and heavy on her feet that she kept toppling out of them and nearly ended up in the frigid water several times.

  Jessy fixing one of the the stiff legs after the big storm. “I am woman, hear me roar!” I’m so proud of my chip-off-the-old-block daughter.

  Why is there blank flagging tape on equipment and water lines, valves and hoses? What does the flagging tape mean? Write on it! And now, neither of the toilets work, and I can’t figure out how to get water to them. There’s probably an airlock in that line too. Not the biggest problem though, we have lots of buckets for scooping sea water to flush the toilets.

  Then three days later the propane tank for my room heater and hot-water heater at the back of the house ran out of fuel. No hot water in my bathroom sink, and even on the warm days, it was nice to have the other two pilot lights going to keep the dampness out of the back of the house. This means that the hundred-pound propane tank is empty. Why is there duct tape on one of the propane tanks by the workshop? Why doesn’t anyone write notes?! We have extra tanks but I wouldn’t be able to get a new tank into position to change them. I’ll amend that to say: it would be a lot of trouble for me and Jessy to wrangle another tank from where the full ones are, down the back walkway, and then across the foot and a half of water to the little platform behind the back of the house. Not impossible, but a lot of trouble. This is not the biggest problem either, since we could have used the hot water in the kitchen sink to wash our hands.

  Then the next day, the kitchen sink clogged for the first time in ­thirty-five years. I tried using a plumbing snake outside the house at the outlet pipe, but the coil wasn’t long enough. I had pictured a pilchard wriggling its way up the pipe because the bay is full of them, and the outlet from the sink is just slightly underwater. We had to take the pipes apart under the sink and jam the snake down the pipe about ten feet. We finally broke through whatever it was that stopped the drain, and then I flushed it out with two kettles of boiling water.

  But the biggest problem was when the last of the water in the green tank stopped running in the taps! I went to the woodshed and brought a case of bottled water back to the house to make coffee in the morning. We had a leisurely breakfast with tea, coffee and cinnamon buns, and finally worked up the enthusiasm to find out why the water in the green tank ran out. Jessy rowed the little boat to shore where the tank is and climbed up beside the creek that was tumbling happily down the rocks. The water was just dribbling into the green tank, so she climbed a little farther to the natural pond that collects our water. The pipe coming out of the pond was clogged, so very little water was coming out of it.

  She unclogged the pipe, and right away there was a steady stream of water going into the green tank. Next, we undid the filter on the water line behind the house. There was lots of water coming out of the hose at that point. Jessy did that one up and we undid the filter on the line going into the kitchen. Lots of water coming out there as well. All the taps were open in the house but the only tap that water was coming out of was in the bathtub. No water in the bathroom sinks, and no water in the kitchen tap. Yes, this is the biggest problem. It’s really hard to get along without fresh water running into the house. While we were trying to sort this out, it suddenly started raining hard and I ran and quickly put containers under the eaves to catch as much rainwater as I could.

  We tried hooking up a hose to the valve behind the kitchen stove and sucking on it to pull the airlock through. You used an air pump somehow, but I couldn’t even begin to figure out where it might be. Jessy sat on the bottom step of the porch and just about turned her face inside out trying so hard to pull the airlock out. Then I got a ladder and climbed up with a jug of water and poured it into the hose. Maybe if we backfilled the hose, then dropped it down low it would draw the water and airlock out at the same time. Nope, that didn’t work either. And of course I was working under the eaves, up the ladder as far as the hose would reach, with the water running off the roof in sheets. We decided to take a break at that point and have lunch. We would try to get rid of the airlock at around 10 PM when it was low tide. There might be a better chance with better gravity behind the water flow.

  As I was writing that last little bit, I could hear water start burbling into the kitchen sink. It’s a start, and maybe when the tide goes out for four more hours there will be more than a trickle.

  Two hours before low tide, water and air started spitting and burping out of the kitchen tap. Jessy and I cheered it on and, over the next couple of minutes, all of the air blew itself out of the line and water started pouring out! We are back in business.

  We had Casey’s kitten with us. Kitty was too young to stay at the lodge over the winter, even with caretakers. She needed to be looked after. She and my dog ran circles around each other, playing all day long. The kitten would come back to town with us.

  Somewhere along the line the kitten had knocked one of the wires off one of the six-volt batteries that were hooked up together to make the twelve volts needed to make Casey’s inverter work. The inverter works when the generator is off so I can then use small 120-volt electrical appliances, or in this case, the internet and telephone or TV. One day, the internet wasn’t working so we looked at the mass of wires going in all directions at once to modems, routers, batteries, phone jacks, power bars and a few other electrical bits that I don’t know anything about. I noticed a wire disconnected from a battery terminal. I had no idea how long the wire had been disconnected but the battery hadn’t been charging for a while to be completely out of power. The connection had been tenuous at best. It looked like a wad of green gum where there should have been metal, and because we had been using the inverter for days for the TV, dvd player, my computer and printer, and the phone, the power had drained out of the batteries. The kitten was very lucky that she didn’t knock the open positive wire from one battery into the negative terminal on the other battery, which could have made for a quick and explosive exit from this world into the next.

  I thought I might know how to fix it. I poked around in the mechanical shop to find tools to remove the messy end of the wire and could only find needle-nose pliers and some kind of cutting tool with weirdly shaped scissors. Then I looked around for the little part that gets pushed over the end of the bare copper wires, gets crimped on, then sits over the terminal and the butterfly nut gets tightened on top. There were dozens of these things that were too small, as I searched drawer after drawer, shelf after shelf in the office and various workshops until I finally found the one and only terminal connector in the entire lodge that would fit the bundle of copper. You would have gone straight to it!

  I used the scissor thing and sort of cut and twisted the wire apart from the ruined end. Then I stripped the plastic wire coating back an inch from the end and rolled the copper wires as tight as I could to fit them into the little connector.
I crimped the plastic part and wrapped the connection with electrician’s tape. Then I lifted the connecting bar from the terminal on the positive side of the second battery and lowered the connector on, replaced the bar and screwed down the nut. There was a little life left in the batteries because there was a bit of a spark when I first attached the wire. But it didn’t explode so I figured that I had done it properly.

  We finally arrived back in town and were looking forward to the winter ski season. The 2010 Winter Olympics would be in Vancouver and Whistler in February. It was going to be so exciting. Then just before Christmas I got a call that Casey had been taken by ambulance to the hospital. He had fallen through a roof he was working on here in Vancouver, and had broken his back. He had moved into our garage just a few weeks before, right after—thank the Lord—permanently leaving his contentious and combative girlfriend behind. We moved him into the basement rec room so I could dance attendance on him, and he started on the long road to recovery. Workers Compensation was amazing with rehab help once the bones were healed enough.

  Love, love, love,

  Pat

  I Give the Lodge Up to the Universe

  Dear George:

  While Casey was recuperating and not able to ski or work, he reconnected with a friend, Lindsay, whom he had competed with for the Whistler Ski Team, in ski races when they were younger. She was now the gold-medal-winning guide for visually impaired Paralympian Viviane Forest, racing down the mountain at seventy-five miles an hour while turning around at each curve or corner to make sure her skier was also making the turns. Watching the Paralympic downhill racing was some of the most exciting skiing I have ever watched. Casey was able to keep Lindsay and Viviane well nourished with homemade soups and lots of hot chocolate.

  I cross-country skied every morning at Whistler and then in the afternoon I joined in on the Olympic fun in the village. One day when I was skiing, I stopped at Lost Lake, where there was an opening in the trees. The sky was a deep cobalt blue with a few pure white puffs of clouds. I became anchored to the spot. I flung my arms out wide and, in that moment, gave the lodge up to the universe. I gave thanks for still being able to look after it, but suggested that it was time to sell and move on to my next adventure.

  That night, I woke myself up with a huge guffaw of laughter, sat bolt upright and rejoiced in the freedom and lightness of being that I suddenly felt. The laughter bubbled up again and again, and I knew I had made the right decision.

  The lodge at night.

  Casey is with us all summer, from the time he was released from his intensive rehab to build up the muscles on his broken back. He is a joy to have around, plus he knows the equipment like the back of his hand—just like his dad. And once again, just like his dad, he jogs from one job to the next and is always ready with a smile. Jess and I are so blessed to have him back with us.

  I told my brother Kenny about some of the trials and tribulations I have been going through for the past few years. He was really mad at me for not calling him and asking for help. He was self-employed in Vernon at the time, and summer wasn’t his busy season. He is an awesome chef and has joined our team as the breakfast cook. His wife, Hope, has amazing organizational skills and is looking after the guestrooms. Of course Jessy is here full-time this summer. What a relief!

  We did it again. It’s the end of the summer of 2010. We had lots of happy fishermen, lots of beautiful fish in the freezer. Thank you for sticking around and making sure that we kept everyone safe and happy. Well, I guess the exception was that fellow and his two grandsons. They just weren’t paying attention and ended up driving all the way to the head of the inlet. They didn’t notice that they were still driving after three hours when they should have made it back to the lodge in twenty minutes. It happens. There were lots of other lodge owners and staff all over the inlet helping to look for them. I was coordinating the many searchers with a huge chart that I drew lines across when someone radioed that a bay had been checked. No one looked promptly at the head of the inlet because no one believed someone could make that mistake. Toward the head of the inlet, the hills turn into three-thousand-foot mountains, the channels narrow and the water becomes a milky fairy-tale green—you remember. Reason enough to turn around. They turned around only when they came to the head and could drive no farther. They were finally found when they ran out of gas after they turned back toward Dawsons Landing. They were holding on to a long branch that hung out over the water. Once they were found, Casey and Jessy rescued them and towed them back home by moonlight.

  Near the end of the summer, I drove Sportspage to the airplane dock with eight men on board. I made a perfect two-point docking, casually stepped out and tied up both ends while all the men stood amazed. I wonder at all these people who still haven’t figured out that I’m not just another pretty face!

  Jess and I had our Second Annual Art Workshop Retreat, this time staying till just after Thanksgiving.

  The caretakers are taking a little longer to arrive than we thought because they have had to wait out some bad weather. Casey did an oil change on the generator the day before he left, but we should only put about two hundred hours on it before it needs another oil change, and I have never done one. Something else to put on my “must learn how to” list. Also on that list: how to check the power level in a battery and how and where to add water to a battery. The list is getting longer every day. Once again, I’m glad that Jessy knows how to change the generator oil.

  Love and hugs,

  Pat

  Jessy and I during one of our annual art workshop retreats. We stayed on at the lodge after the fishing season to enjoy the solitude of our beautiful Rivers Inlet.

  Cue the Grizzlies for a Fond Farewell

  Dear George:

  This ninth fishing season is going to be my last season owning and operating Rivers Lodge without you. I have made up my mind. This is it. I know that there are people out there who want to buy the lodge. We just need to connect. I have done my part. I have honoured your memory for as long as I am willing to. Now is the time for someone to come forward. Someone … anyone?!

  Casey, Jessy, Kenny and Hope are part of the crew all summer. What a relief! It’s so much more fun to have family here! And I can get more than four hours of sleep a night now. Things have been going so smoothly. Until …

  Judas has started to hijack my chartered planes. After the financial crash of 2008, it made sense for me to share some of the space on my charters with another lodge. We both benefited from the arrangement until … we didn’t. I had been chartering the same planes for years and suddenly found out that this fellow from the other lodge had insisted that, if there were ever an overage in weight for a plane load, the airline should carry his passengers and his luggage and his fish boxes first, before my passengers, luggage and fish boxes. It stinks and I felt another knife twist into my back, and right through to my heart with this one. Yes, it’s time to leave the inlet.

  One morning as I sat having tea with one of the crew, there was a blood-curdling scream, “MOM!” Again, I leaped off the couch and, like the roadrunner, felt my legs spinning around a hundred miles an hour. I zipped out the sliding door at the front of the lodge and turned to where the scream had come from. There were four grizzly bears in front of the end cabin! I could just see Jessy’s head poking out of the second guesthouse door. The four faces looked right at her with big yellow eyes, mere feet away. She yelled again, then quickly ducked back in and slammed the door. I grabbed my dog, who wanted to run toward the danger, and I threw her through the doors, slammed them shut, then ran off to get Casey, who was having a nap several buildings away. I was shrieking his name as I ran, so by the time I got to the cabin he knew something was terribly wrong. I hollered that there were grizzlies on the third guest-cabin float, then turned and ran back, grabbing a foghorn out of a paddleboat on my way and blasted it as I ran. I’ll run toward danger for our kids anytime
.

  Casey, always so quick in an emergency, arrived at the lodge at the same time as I did. He was holding a rifle and two bear bangers. He shot the rifle in the air and waited. The mother didn’t flinch. She was intent on pulling up the planks that were nailed down with nine-inch spikes. The very large three-year-old cubs snuffled around her. Casey shot the rifle again. Then he set off a bear banger. The huge kaboom made me want to run away! It was best to build a wall of noise between them and us. Our guests were out fishing, so all I had to worry about was our kids and the crew.

  The mama tossed one ten-foot plank aside and yanked another up and tossed that one too. Then she leaned down and grabbed a dead animal in her mouth—the remains of something like an otter or a young seal—then turned and marched off and around the end of the cabin with the cubs scrambling after her. They swam back to shore and we could hear them bashing around in the heavy bushes, snarling and growling as they tore their prized rotten carcass apart.

  Jessy peeked out of the door to make doubly sure it was safe to come out. She had been cleaning rooms when she heard some loud splashing behind the end cabin. Assuming it was merely a pesky seal up on the float, she lurched around the cabin clapping her hands to chase it off, but instead came, literally, face to face with bears, bumping the nose of the first of the four grizzlies. She was able to retrace her steps backwards around the building and then dove for a door while the mama was still distracted shaking the water out of her fur.

  We were all shell-shocked! Grizzly bears have always been around, but never in thirty-seven years had they climbed onto our floats. We didn’t have much time to process what had happened because our fishing guests were coming in shortly and we had to get ready for them. Casey and Jessy used the fire pump on the area where the bear found her food, and generously sprayed dish soap around to clear up the oily scum that was on the water between the logs. A grizzly can smell dead meat up to eighteen miles away, whereas we had smelled nothing. After the bears left, there was a lot of noisy activity around the lodge: crew cleaning everything, boats coming in full of chatty guests excited over the beautiful fish they caught, the fuel barge fuelling our tanks and planes arriving to whisk our guests back to town. After all that had been going on, I was confident that the bears wouldn’t be back. We had a new box of bear bangers and a few bear-spray canisters arrive on the plane, just in case.