Monday, October 11, 2010

Chapter 51-Crepuscular development, Hostages and the Suicide Honeymoon

I had a fitful sleep last night. Partly it was because I was worried about what I’ll do to support my family two weeks from now. Partly it was due to too much caffeine intake. But mostly my sleep was disturbed by the incessant squeaking and chattering of some otters below my window.  I stuck my head out the attic window and did the classic, “Hey! Shut up down there!” I even poured a bottle of fresh urine down at them, but they just kept on yipping away, all night.
As I wavered in and out of consciousness I became aware of a mother bear and cub swimming over to the lodge, coming into the guide shack, climbing the ladder up into the attic and just sitting beside my bed, observing me. There I lay, helpless and plump, jammed full of roast pork loin and pecan pie. I was going to turn over and shoo them out, but I couldn’t manage to wake myself up. So I just laid there sleeping and waited for them to eat me. When I finally awoke, they were gone, not even leaving any footprints, which was mighty genteel of them.
Bears are crepuscular after all. (Which is, if nothing else, a helluva swell word.) It means, more active at dawn and dusk, but should not be confused with the strictly nocturnal or diurnal, matutinal or vespertine. As a matter of fact, bears just seem to be active all the time, especially at this time of year, when they go into hyper-phagia, which basically means, they are super hungry all the time, and if there is food, they eat, and eat, and keep eating.
Eagles don’t over eat. They can’t, they wouldn’t be able to fly. All they can do is eat enough to power themselves through the day. That’s why native Indians call a fellow lying Indian ‘Walking Eagle’. He’s so full of shit that he can’t fly. But I digress.
The bears compulsive gluttony reminds me of the morbidly obese obsessing over their plans to go on an all you can eat buffet cruise. It really doesn’t matter where the cruise goes, just so long as that buffet is on board. For it is not enough for a bear to just eat enough. There is no such thing as enough, they need to store up enough fat to last through five or six months of sleep, and if they are nursing cubs, they will be haemorrhaging fat stores to feed those thirsty furballs.  Hence the round the clock search for food.
Of course, all this gluttony is a preparation for five months of hibernation, which is a good excuse indeed. I’ve lately discovered the connection between the word ‘Bear’ and ‘Burial’.  Somewhere in our forefather’s hazy caveman days, the dead were placed in the earth to regenerate and come back to life, just like bears. Perhaps the ancient human remains found with bear bones clutched in their hands and covered with bear skins were emulating the bear’s ability to go into the earth and sleep like the dead, arising with the spring, to new life, resurrection.
Lately it has struck me that I am kind of like a happy prison guard escorting hostages around. People who come here are generally of the ‘package tour’ variety and they have purchased a package. So, they don orange jackets and jumpsuits, just like prisoners and I escort them around with my bear spray and very large knife and policeman style walkie talkie.
Yesterday, I dropped a huge cinder block by the bus, for the elderly to use as a step. I dropped it iinto the mud and a geyser of muck splooshed up into my face. Comedy.
When we get to the spawning channel, I carefully release them from the bus, and usher them up a cattle ramp into a cage on stilts from which they cannot escape. Hahaha! Hostages, we won’t release you till you pay your bar tab and leave a tip!
Also, I think that the epic journey that salmon make would be a very compelling premise for a movie, hell, Finding Nemo was a smash hit, this would be even better! And its true!  Think about it, the movie begins with a wordless epic journey of the hero’s parents swimming upstream and spawning and dying, all set to some heroic music, perhaps Beethoven. Then the tiny boy fry and girl fry are hatched out of neighbouring egg nests and they become friends and swear to return to spawn when they grow up.
The movie could follow their trials and tribulations against enormous odds. As fry, they are preyed on by larger fish, herons and ducks. When they swim out to sea, they must pass through the gauntlet of predators and past the fish farms, where they are drawn in by the eerie lights to be devoured by crazed caged cannibal salmon. Then there’s the onslaught of sea lice that hover around the salmon farms, like millions of tiny vampires, sucking the tiny fish dry.
Then those who finally make it out to sea, must face the perils of dolphins, seals, drag nets and pollution, before finally beginning the journey back to spawn. Actually, this doesn’t sound like much of a Disney comedy does it? But somehow, against all odds, the two little lovers finally make it back to their home stream, past the claws of bears and eagles, lures of fishermen and all. Their happy ending is that they are reunited in laying the seeds for the next generation before their ragged, half rotten bodies give up the ghost and wash downstream to be devoured by various scavengers. Yeah, maybe if Elton John did the sound track and Eddy Murphy and Lady Gaga did the voices. Hmmm.
Anyhoo, the season is almost done; I’m flying out this morning for my final days off. Then one more shift and it’s upwards and onwards to the fabulous unknown.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Chapter 49 Opium, Shame and Bruno’s Reproach

One hundred years ago, this cove was the home of the ABC fish cannery. Where our lodge is now moored, there were a bunch of buildings, docks and accommodations for workers. The Scottish managers lived in modest houses, the Japanese fishermen shared shacks, the Chinese girls who gutted fish all day dwelled in a cramped bunkhouse and the Indian fishing village nearby was of shantytown description. I had heard it said that some of the Asian workers were paid partly or completely in opium and that the shards and remains of opium bottles could be found at low tide. Well I finally found one last week. It is a tiny brown bottle that had at one time been filled with little sticky black balls of opium and plugged with a cork. I suppose that’s one sure way of keeping your employees around, keep them narcotized and addicted to something only you can provide for them. I wonder who had owned it and at what moment they let the empty bottle slip from their grasp. What pipe dreams did they dream beneath the clouds of poppy smoke? What hopes and fears filled their head as they looked out across the same cove I do? There is hardly any record of the lives that were lived here; only rusty old wash basins and barnacle coated machinery provide a hiccup to the amnesia here.
Back in those days, there were many languages spoken in the cove, Asian tongues, native tongues, Swedish and Norwegian and English speaking loggers. Many languages are still spoken here, but they are spoken by tourists who come to admire the wild, not to harvest it. If the sweat and blood covered loggers of years ago subsisting on meagre rations and moonshine could imagine what the future would hold, I’m sure they would have lifted a sweaty and muscular eyebrow in perplexitude; people coming from around the world, to feast and admire the uncut logs and the wild beasts roaming through them. It’s a topsy-turvy world indeed.
This year’s pink salmon run is officially a disaster. Last year at this time, the breakwaters were full of burping and farting seals, the trees were cluttered with bald eagles and I could hardly avoid steeping on salmon as I pushed a skiff full of guests upstream. Last year, we could sit at the platforms and watch hours of uninterrupted feasting, digesting and lolling about by dozens of bears. This year, I catch momentary sight of furtive bears desperately circling the spawning channel, anxiously seeking a meal that just isn’t there.  The eagles know the score, they can see that the river is mostly empty, and they have moved along. Where I saw thousands of pinks last year, now I see dozens or none at all.
Bruno is a big male bear. He has a crescent shaped scar on his right hip. Normally he doesn’t show himself, but salmon season and the promise of an easy meal draws even a big galoot like him out into plain view. The other day he came and graced us with his big hairy majestic presence. He didn’t just visit the spawning channel, he owned it. When he walked into the stream, the 500 pound female who had been sitting in the centre scurried off at a frantic lope and left the scene. Bruno strode to the centre of the stream and looked into the rushing water. Like a king on his throne, he waits for the meal to come to him. The stream should be full of fish. He knows that. So he waits, he sniffs, he watches.
Finally, he senses a pink coming up and he springs into action. Water sprays everywhere as the huge grizzly pounces at the fish, he leaps this way, that way and into the deep water, frantically and fruitlessly, he churns the water and claws at the fish that has slipped away.  After some more powerful sweeps and concentrated gazes, you can see that he goes slack and sighs a deep sigh of resignation. He sits back in the stream with a splash of defeat. He pauses for a fulsome moment of agony, fully aware of all the eyes and cameras aimed at him. Then, with the unmistakable look of shame in his eyes, he glances quickly up and catches my eye. He holds my eye for a moment. In that moment, I feel his hurt, his shame and his anger.
The baleful gaze of the grizz is a mystery to behold; it has not the sharpness and fierce wildness of the wolf, neither the wary watchfulness of the deer nor the predatory malevolence of the weasels. They observe you as if from a great distance or in a dream, there is a watery and elusive quality to their eyes, as if they are veiled from human understanding.
However at that moment, I did understand him. He was pissed off. And the shame took a bite at me, here I was, a white man, the most dreaded and sinister creature to blight the earth since the reptiles ruled.  We have scraped the forests off the mountains, choked the streams with our filth and the skies with our machines and fumes, annihilated the locals and enslaved nature. That which we could not control, we destroyed. And here we are, a dozen well fed white people, fresh from a feast of fish and chips with thousands of dollars worth of camera gear amusing ourselves by watching this beast try to catch a bite to eat. The only reason that we are so fascinated by bears is that we have driven them to the brink of extinction and now we pester the survivors as they struggle to avoid starvation. “I hope you’re proud of yourself”, he seems to say “Didn’t your mother tell you it’s not polite to stare? Maybe you should take these people on a tour of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver and then you can watch people eke out an existence picking food out of dumpsters.”
I was seized by a radical whim of generosity, perhaps I could throw myself off this stand and into the mouths of these hungry bears to help them make it through the winter, that’s what Buddha did. Then I think, no I can’t do that I have a lovely wife and two sweet daughters who’d miss me. But who’d miss that pudgy couple from Shropshire? Hmmmm. And then the spell is snapped and Bruno moves along. I haven’t seen him since.

Last night, an English lady slipped while removing her wellies, fell and broke her wrist. It was too late for the planes to come out, so the giant search and rescue Cormorant helicopter came blamming in at night, with massive searchlights slashing through the forests and blasting gale force winds around looking for a place to land. The thing was too huge to land anywhere, so the SarTechs repelled down by rope into the spawning channel, while it hovered overhead. When the square jawed super handsome commando medic arrived in his orange jumpsuit festooned with harnesses and equipment, Miss Hewson was smitten. The heroes gathered up the aged victim and her hubby and lifted them into the night sky with a rope, then roared off to the hospital. It was an action adventure comedy romance, but that’s another story.


-- 

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Casey and Finnegan Vs. The poopetrators and the Swiss Ham Club

Chapter 48

Casey and Finnegan Vs. The poopetrators and the Swiss Ham Club


Otter poop is one of the most pernicious and vile forms of poop that I’ve ever come across.  I’ve come across a lot of it here. There is a family if seven otters that live beneath the lodge, sometimes you hear their demonic vocalizations emanating from beneath your feet and sometimes you see them galumphing across the deck, but mostly you find their fecal  leavings. They have several kinds of gunk that come out of both ends of them, there’s the slimy brown weasel scented gack and then there’s the regurgitated shell-filled weasel scented vomit balls, then there’s the dog poop that has been laid down in the same vicinity in order for the dock dogs to show they can’t be out done.  It’s a constant chore to hose off the offending excretions and try to keep the dock tidy so that our fine guests don’t have to step in the stuff.
Of course Casey and Finnegan are at constant war with the otters. They are the canine commandos that keep our dock safe from all comers, and they are such sweeties. They are the dock bitches, that is to say, female dogs. When they scent or hear otters, they rip off barking, full of unquenchable vituperation, hell bent on destroying those weasely interlopers. In fact, all you have to do is say, “Otters!!!” and Casey and Finnegan will burst into apoplectic rage and gallop off in random directions. They are the only full time year round residents here and they often go weeks without setting paw on solid ground. Especially Casey, she is the elder of the two and has had several operations to replace her tendons; she’s a cyborg-canine. Casey likes to ride the herring skiff across the cove for pick-ups and drop-offs, but Finney is much more afraid of the boat, as she fell off the front of a boat one time and was run over by the motor at the back. That would put me off boats as well. But all the same, I’ll be taking her across with me tomorrow morning for a Big Cedar trail hike. They stay here year round, welcoming all the guests in the summer and keeping the caretakers company in the winter. When I first arrived last year, I witnessed Casey and Finnegan say a heart wrenching goodbye to Hayley, a girl who had worked as a guide here. She had tears in her eyes as she cruised away forever in a boat and the dogs stood on the end of the dock and watched her go until long after she had disappeared from sight. They waited and watched and waited until they finally plodded sadly back to their dog box to whimper and mope. Everybody always leaves them eventually.
In other news, I’m pleased to announce that the salmon have arrived and are heading up the spawning channel. We are seeing lots of bears up in the stream feeding. Unfortunately, the run is very weak so far this year and bears are spending more time scoping and wrestling for good fishing spots than they are actually feeding. That’s because pink salmon are on a two year cycle. Last year was a banner year, with 6 to 8 hundred thousand salmon cramming up the channel. The year before had a paltry 25,000 salmon. So if only 6% of the fry that leave the channel are able to make it back, all indications point to a very lousy, if not abysmal year.  Bears are still catching fish, but the stress and lack of abundance is clearly etched in the ribs of the mother bears who are desperately hoping for some salmon to eat, so they can fatten up and feed their kids. When there isn’t enough food, cubs get abandoned and the next crop of cubs is curtailed. So far, it’s a gloomy prospect, but there are fish there, and more on the way, so all hope is not lost. In fact, some of the other salmon runs have far outstripped expectations and sockeye abound in other watersheds. We’ll have to wait and see how the season here ends up for all concerned parties.
So, who are the Swiss Ham Club you may ask? In fact it sounds like a sandwich. They are actually a group of gents from Switzerland who I had the pleasure of hanging out with for several days. There were six of them, all about 60 years old, and they all wore a pin with the letters SHC. That stands for Swiss Ham Club in case you hadn’t connected the dots. They had all been born in the same town, and had been in grade one together, they all became friends at the age of seven. When they were twenty, they decided to give their friendship an official club title, so they chose the Swiss Ham Club, because they all like to eat and drink. So, they began meeting for meals, adventures and travelling, on the 40thanniversary of founding their club, they decided to come to Canada, and the highlight and last part of the trip, was a visit to our lodge. I’m so impressed by the endurance of their friendship, and slightly jealous.
I had these fellows on an inlet cruise and we were floating in the boat in front of an epic natural amphitheatre with 2000 foot high stone walls, where I like to play accordion music for my passengers and the Buddha like mountain goats who watch us from the mountain tops. I asked them if they would sing a Swiss song, perhaps they could yodel? At first they dissembled and refused, but eventually, I harangued them enough and they burst out with some traditional lusty Italian songs that echoed across the wilderness. After I got them started, they never stopped, they sang as I soaked them beneath the waterfall, and as we cruised up the Anu-Wate river to look at the huge Chum salmon in the water. I had them get up and sing for the whole lodge at dinner every night that they were here. I don’t think they had ever sung as a group in public before and people just ate it up. They sang one traditional song about young Swiss mercenaries longing for home and then deserting the foreign armies they served and being hung. The chorus was “Yooooooo-Ba, Yoooo-oooo-Ba” like a mountain herdsman calling his cows home. It was intense and haunting and I think everyone was quite moved.
When it finally came time for the SHC to leave, they practically had to be wrestled onto the float plane, they just didn’t want to leave. Few guests do, and many come back again, or say they will return again someday. The comment I hear most frequently is that they wished that they had booked just one more night, as it was the highlight of their trip to Canada, year, or life.
The other comment I hear frequently, is when someone looks at me incredulously as we are kayaking beneath eagles, with seals popping up around us and grizzlies grazing on the shore nearby and say, “Let me get this straight, you actually get PAID to be here? You must love your job.”
Then as we sit down to another exquisite meal of fresh seafood and chicken kiev served with fine wine while we reminisce about the days hikes, adventures and grizzly encounters, I think, “Yes, yes I do. I love my job.”
How many people can say that?

Comedy Potential and the Daily Mexican Lunch Combo Surprise

Chapter 47

Comedy Potential and the Daily Mexican Lunch Combo Surprise

Humour is getting a paper cut, comedy is falling down an open manhole and dying. – Woody Allen
The season is proceeding beautifully. Just this morning I took eleven Dutchies out kayaking, we saw seven grizzlies foraging on the shores and then from behind us across the cove I heard a distinct ‘phoosh’ and lo and behold, a pair of orcas had arrived in the cove. Everyone made it out and back safely, got some great photos and had a good time. This was a great tour, everyone smiling from ear to ear, and then I played them Auld Lang Syne as they boarded the plane depart, no doubt full ofstories for their friends back home of how spectacular their visit here was. That’s the ideal situation. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Of course things don’t always go right and there are all kinds of daily possibilities for failure, disaster and calamity, or what I prefer to call, ‘comedy potential’.  A great tour that’s chock full of comedy potential is the Rainforest Hike. It consists of a series of challenges and obstacles that build character and provide you with the opportunity to look like an ass in front of an international audience. I like to think of it as a Japanese game show. The kind where hapless competitors have to wind their way through a ridiculous obstacle course with a plethora of perils and swinging balls and bats to knock them into the water. So here’s an overview of the elements involved in a typical rainforest hike.
1: Make a half hour journey up the inlet to the Kwalate river, during which you may be pounded by waves, or struck by asteroids.
2: Dock the boat against the floating dock at Kwalate, which may have become unmoored, may be galloping about and buffeted by waves, is slippery and usually covered in fresh slimy otter crap. Tie up the boat to the dock and bring out the guests.
3:  Walk along a long slippery log to retrieve the key for the tool chest; once again covered with poo and mysterious slippery substances.
4: Unlock the chest and lift a heavy awkward outboard engine from the box and attach it to a flimsy tin skiff, which may or may not be full of water.
5: Untie the skiff and launch it into the water. If you forgot to replace the bung plug, it will sink.
6: Attempt to start the recalcitrant engine, which seems to mock your very being. If it starts the first time, that means that it will die and humiliate you soon enough. (Beware of accidentally punching guests in the face as you repeatedly pull the start cord, while sweating and muttering.) If you forgot to refill the tank, it gets double comedy points.
7: Load some guests, most of whom are grandparents with hip replacements, into this skiff which is rocking in the waves like a bucking bronco and banging against the dock.
8: Ferry loads of guests to the shore where they may be eaten, and come back for more. This usually entails having the engine kick up into your face, stalling or both. At low tide you must weave across shallow waters, banging into rocks or at high tide, trying to unload septuagenarians in waist deep water.
9: Once you have ferried all the guests to shore, you need to flip down the wheels at the back of the skiff and wrestle it over rocks and stumps and mud to where you can tie it up. If it’s not tied securely, it won’t be there when you return and you’ll have to resort to cannibalism.
10: Good for you! You have made it through the first step! Now you just need to hike through the remote wilderness, avoiding injuries, animal attacks and savages, all the while interpreting the flora and fauna and ethno botanical, geological, paleontological, historical, cultural and metaphysical reality around you to a group ofpeople who may or may not speak English.
 11: When you get to the end of the hike, rest, serve some tea and cookies, skip stones and then repeat all the steps in reverse order.
At each step of the journey you are provided with the opportunity to create comedy. That is to say, something could go wrong and people will laugh at you. Provided you have no pride, this is fine.
So far, knock on wood, it has gone fairly well and I must say that I enjoy the adversity and uncertainty of journeying into the wilderness with all its unknowable mysteries. As the saying goes, “Adventure is only discomfort and adversity remembered from an armchair.” One time, when I was leaving the hike with some guests and trying to make it back to the floating dock, the waves were crashing over the back of the skiff as I was trying to launch and I was drenched and cold and miserable and cussin’ like a sailor while bailing with one hand and fighting the devil’s own engine with the other while banging into rocks and getting drenched in icy water. Now that I think about it that was a really good time.
So far nothing really funny has happened, I’ve always returned with the same number of guests and all my limbs and faculties intact. So far.
I think that’s why people golf. It’s so irritating and annoying to focus all your energy on this stupid little ball and its travels that you are consumed by frustration and forget all about your mundane life and its tribulations. So after all that venting and ranting and hacking away for 18 holes, you are ready to return to life renewed and rejuvenated and relieved to not be golfing.
So you may be wondering what the Mexican Daily Surprise Lunch Special is. It’s an analogy for how I live my life here. Have you ever noticed that Mexican food consists of the same four or five ingredients endlessly rearranged in new and interesting ways? How about some refried beans wrapped in a tortilla, with black beans on top and guacamole on the side. Or just to change things up, how about some guacamole wrapped in black beans with tortillas on top and refried beans on the side? It is an endless edible tetragrammaton of the same basic elements, so it is with my days at work.
I never look at the schedule board the night before, I like surprises. I’m not one to peek into a Christmas present or determine the sex of an unborn child. I figure the more mystery there is in life, the more I’ll enjoy it.
So every morning, I wake up in my attic, slide down the ladder, stumble towards a cuppa coffee and ramble over to the schedule board. That’s when I see what the Mexican Lunch special is: Estuary tour, Kayaking, Treestand, Inlet Cruise, Tracking Tour, Big Cedar Hike, Rainforest Hike. Those are the only items on the menu, endlessly rearranged to make each day a fresh and exciting adventure.
Then, throughout the day I find myself uttering snippets of languages I pretend to have learned to the various people who end up on my tours, for example:
Italiano - Guarda il urso bruno, y il scoiatolo, molto spectaculare. (Check out the grizzly and the squirrel, wow.)
Francais -Defense de marche en la caca d’os. (Don’t step on the bear shit)
Dutch -Hail sponend Ja? Keik, ein sea hunt! Wie gan turrugh! (Pretty cool eh? Look, a seal, let’s go home.)
I carry a little book to write down phrases in the different languages people come here with. By and large, folks speak English, but they always like to hear you attempt a few things in their language. I’m sure I could speak French if we just spent some time in Quebec, all those words are tucked away in a forgotten fold in my brain somewhere and could be awoken under duress.
Anyways, today is my (our) glorious seventh anniversary. (August 23rd, 2:30 pm, 2003.) Unfortunately, I am here at work instead of at home for the occasion, and therein lays the main reason that this will probably be my final season here, it’s too much time to be away from my beloved ones, plain and simple.
The salmon are arriving, apparently the end of the world will have to wait for at least another season as Mother Nature marches right along and creates an ever changing, ever fascinating spectacle for us to savour.
Until next time...
Via con dos cojones!

The Hewson Manoeuvre and the Ogre’s Violin

the Further Adventures of Trashy Drifter

Chapter 46*

The Hewson Manoeuvre and the Ogre’s Violin


It would be dishonest of me to say that work is all work and no fun. In fact often we have too much fun. Our little dock family is a petri dish of peculiar people percolating in perplexingly personal proximity occasionally erupting in paroxysms of partying. Sometimes we have a few brewskis after the day is done and visit and socialize.
On one such occasion last month, my good friend N Hewson, who was a bridesmaid at our nuptials and now works here as a guide, was fairly well lubricated with beverages and we were singing karaoke. She and I stepped outside for a smoke break. As I watched her walk, I noticed that she kept on walking even though the dock beneath her had come to a physical end. She executed a magnificent and perfect no-handed cartwheel, in a skirt I might add, with her heels circumscribing a perfect half circle through the air as she gracefully and accidentally invented what I have dubbed, ‘the Hewson Manoeuvre’.
At the sound of her splash, many hands came to the rescue and she bobbed up with a surprised grin on her face and her wine glass still held in her hand. So far, she’s the first to execute such a move, but we’re only half way through the season.
That’s right, the full on non- stop summer to fall marathon has commenced. There isn’t a spare bed here until the end of October, luckily, there are plentyof bears around and more new ones are arriving and being watched each day. In fact today, Bella walked right behind the lodge with her three cubs, not more than eight meters away from the lodge railings where eager guests took hundreds of photos. As she and her cubs made their photogenic perambulation around our little cove, all the rubberneckers had to scramble from vantage point to vantage point to keep them in sight. So, people were pouring through every crevice and cranny to garner a gander.
We’ve just come back from a week’s break. I could really get used to that vacation mentality. We spent the week on Cortes Island. Originally, we had intended to just quickly visit Cortes and then find our way up to the Lodge so that I could show my family around here without all the touristas. But after we unwound on Cortes, we decided that doing anything other than relaxing and visiting with each other would be painful. I think it was our best ever family trip, even better than Mexico. We swam every day, in pure fresh lake water, met a lot of wonderful folks in a beautiful place. Our friend Scott Cook showed up there and we had a sing song at our campsite after watching one of the best sunsets ever. The next night he played a gig at a restaurant there.
On our last night there, we picked oysters off the beach and cooked them in the coals of a fire and ate them with a knife, I can’t remember when I’ve ever eaten something so exquisite. There was an open stage at the marina we were camped in, so I sang a few tunes, Yaya told her tornado tale and Bella told jokes. The owner now wants to book us to entertain there, so I expect we’ll revisit Cortes soon.
When we finally were ready to go to our Boler and sleep, we heard good music bouncing off the mountainsides, so we decided to chase it, and we ended up crashing an outdoor wedding! We magically arrived at the moment that a beer keg needed to be lifted. It was a fantastic outdoor wedding, on a beautiful acreage, with strings of lights hanging over banquet tables in a grove lit with tea lights. The bride and groom and their guests were rocking out to 80’s music which for some reason makes wifer gag, but I enjoy. So I ended up on the dance floor, and what do you suppose transpires? Yes, I caught the garter! I think I have caught the garter at almost every wedding I’ve ever been to, perhaps it’s a sign that I should become Mormon. Anyways, I had to relinquish it so that a proper bachelor could catch it. You see, another occasion when there needed to be an MC on the mic and there wasn’t one, sheesh.
Speaking of MC’ing, I recently had the audacious though slightly dubious honour of being the MC for a concert up on Mt Washington ski hill, put on by Vig and Kevin of Cumberland village works. The headliners were Cat Empire from Australia, a fantastically fun powerhouse band. Somehow, it was decided that I should be dressed as a tiger for the occasion, so Donna sliced up a stuffed tiger and I wore its head and paws and tail, with a leopard skin coat. The fluff from the chopped up stuffy tended to fly down my throat when I inhaled, so I ended up coughing up a few fur balls in front of thousandsof people. I’d like to think it went well, after all, I do love yelling at crowds of people, I find it therapeutic.
If you are wondering what the Ogre’s violin is, it is the music that I go to sleep to at night. This whole lodge is a cluster of floating wooden platforms that are connected by bridges. As we are at sea, the whole thing is always rocking or rolling one way or another and the bridges like to slide back and forth across the platforms. The ensuing friction between surfaces causes sound vibrations to fill the air. That sound resembles nothing so much as a very large, very out of tune violin being played very badly by a very sad and tedious ogre. Just beneath my attic window there is one such bridge and I sometimes get the impression that I am having a very clumsy lullaby blammed in my ear hole as I try to get some shut eye, which can translate into some very strange dreams indeed.
Other than that, things are going well, I’ve taken up carving and have gathered a few pieces of driftwood and have borrowed some carving tools. I like to carve an image into wood, then scorch it with a blowtorch and sand away the outer burnt parts to reveal the carved image burned into the wood. So far I’ve mostly done bears playing accordions and space ships and pin up girls. An American couple bought one piece off me and I’ve sent another to Lana and Marcus’ gallery in Telegraph Cove, who knows? Maybe someone will buy it?

 

(*Chapter 45 omitted by popular demand, but available for a price)

Blow Ye Winds Heigh – Ho!

the Further Adventures of TrashyDrifter

Chapter 43

Blow Ye Winds Heigh – Ho!

 

The wintry winds have arrived and are pounding us with icy rolling waves. Guests had to be flown in and out on helicopters as it was too windy for the float planes for several days. Its finally calmed down, but the world is now greyer and darker than before. The lodge is putting itself to sleep for the winter. Every few hours, something else goes into storage. Flags  flutter down from the poles, kayaks slide away, boats get flipped over, Adirondack chairs stacked and stowed, fireplaces snuffed out. One by one, my fellow guides are getting onto planes, waving goodbye and leaving forever. Jasmine has slipped off to her mountain abode, Jamie, Moira and Lord Denby are headed for the Bahamas next week. It’s the final lap of an epic marathon, just one more sleep and I’ll be home for good.
There’s a bittersweet feeling to all seasonal work. It’s a good thing I think; it keeps you from stagnating and lets you change with the seasons, which is only natural. I have always found and kept great friends from past seasons of similar work. There’s a sense that you might as well get along and live life how you want to, as everything has a limit and an expiration date. Like leaves on a tree, we bud, flourish, wither and fall off to be blown hither thither and yon by the wild winds of fortune. Wow, that’s a maudlin sentiment.
So, the majority of our visitors are grandparents and septuagenarians, sprinkled with a smattering of newlyweds and a dash of families. But sporadically we get single female visitors of marrying age. Sometimes these visitors, seem to be somewhat interested in nocturnal companionship, only to find that all the male staff at the lodge are either feeble geezers or married, like me, or engaged like all the other guys, even the infamously immoral Kemshaw. I think it’s a terrible thing to see someone’s vacation romance hopes dashed. That’s why I propose that the lodge hire a dock gigolo, just to see that we can meet all the needs of all our guests. If you know of anyone who likes to snuggle touristas, send them this way.
In closing; thanks for reading my friends. It’s been good for me to write down my reflections and impressions before they slipped away. And I’m glad to have had an ardent and illustrious readership, whose words of encouragement have spurred me on to excessive verbiage. I certainly hope the horizon holds further, further adventures, and if you want me to, I’ll write them down.
 Cheers.


The Bouncy Ball Theorem and the Narnia Complex

the Further Adventures of Trashy Drifter

Chapter 42

The Bouncy Ball Theorem and the Narnia Complex


 

Every time I get on board a float plane at Campbell River and lift off, I get a gitchy, butterfly feeling in my belly. It’s not just fear of flying and turbulence and the surreal dizzying landscape rolling beneath me. It is a feeling of leaving the ‘real’ world behind and going to a magical land inhabited by wondrous creatures and steadfast companions. This is not a normal place. When I get off the plane, I put my wallet away and forget about it and immerse myself in a mosaic of whirling gulls, swooping eagles, honking herons and of course, waddling grizzlies bellying up to the feast of salmon.
 This feeling of leaving the real world behind and entering a magical one is a feeling I’ve had before. When I was a kid, I spent the majority of my time in Middle Earth, I actually went to the barber shop and got some hair and glued it to the tops of my feet and walked around the neighbourhood barefoot, looking for orcs. My brother Brent and our friend Darren and I founded a magical kingdom in our uncle’s pasture and cunningly named it Dakab, (which stands for Darren and Kevin and Brent). I recall being infinitely more interested in my own fantasies and other worlds than this one.
So it wasn’t with much surprise that I discovered that my own daughter has this same Narnia syndrome, perhaps it’s congenital? She has been devouring books where the heroines get zipped off to Faerie land to save the faeries from Jack Frost and his goblins in story after story. So when we spent last weekend at Long Beach, Bella transformed into Hannah the Harvester, a fairy who wandered the beaches eating bark and wild peas. Ava and I bought into this scenario and we were all transformed into other people in another place; which is of course, a welcome break from being this same old boring person in this same old place.  I think that people generally do live in a fantasy world in which they are playing characters, usually though, the fantasy is provided for you and so is the character that you are supposed to play, it’s called ‘life’.
There is a new superstar around this place. A young grizzly cub that is creamy white, that we have been calling Spirit, I wanted to call her Creamo or Honky but was voted down. She is one of three siblings, the other two are chocolate, but she stands out and gets everybody’s shutters chattering. The thing is though, Spirit’s mom is a total b#@*h! She’s been attacking every other mother bear at the weir and starting snarling fights with all comers.  Even though she’s smaller than most other bears she’s extremely aggressive, which isn’t necessary as there is enough fish for all the bears to have more than they need. But oddly enough, they are still territorial and owly with one another, and each mother keeps her own cubs tucked in behind her own rump and away from all other bears. She’d better ease up on the tough girl act though, sooner or later she’ll try that stuff with Bruno and then, look out, Spirit and her siblings will be orphans.
The other day I was taking some British bankers tracking and we wound down a bear trail into a clearing and I was stopped in my tracks by a strange sound. At first I thought it was an engine, then perhaps a cat purring, and then I realized that it was the loud and proud snoring of a bear that was resonating through the woods. It made me realize what it is that I love most about these big hairy goofballs.  They are honest. Bears have no guile or subterfuge, bears aren’t tricky or sneaky. They won’t drop on you out of a tree like a cougar, or deviously outsmart you like a coyote. They just see or smell what they want, they go towards it in a straightforward manner and then eat it. It’s that simple. And then, when they have eaten all they can, they just find a place to lay down and sleep until they wake up hungry. Ta daa! That’s it, that’s all they do. No wonder they have always gotten in trouble with us humans, they are too honest, we don’t know how to deal with that.
So, this job may seem to you like a breezy vacation, but really, you’ve got to be friendly and available and engaging 14 hours a day. Try getting peppered with questions by 6:30 am before you’ve even managed to pry your eyeballs open, and fielding questions and conversations until you fall asleep at night. It takes a lot ofbuoyancy and flexibility to be a constant host and guide. I reckon that if you need to be always flexible and bouncy and able to roll, you might as well be a bouncy ball.
You see, there are different kinds of balls that bounce; some of them such a as volleyballs and beach balls require air to fill them and make them bouncy. However, when an inflated ball loses some air, after constant use over a ten day period, it will become floppy, flaccid, grouchy and bitchy. Such a ball will require re-inflation. How they get re-inflated is a question that each ball must ask itself. Personally, I prefer hard rubber bouncy balls. They are dense, solid and resilient.  They are always ready for whatever comes their way and they never flag or fail until they finally roll under the couch to hide or are chewed to pieces by a terrier.
As an analogy, I’m not sure if that even makes sense to me anymore. But suffice to say, this summer has been an awesome adventure, but also an epic ordeal, and I am looking forward to spending some quality time on the couch by the fire with my lovely wife and kids and Pancake the wonderdog. Right now, from where I sit with the bleak and icy pacific wind banging at the door, home seems like a Narnia I’d like to escape to.