the Further Adventures of Trashy Drifter

Chapter 28

Dean’s Bubble

I have just now come from my first up close and personal grizzly encounter. I have been closer to bears
before, but I’ve always been on a boat with some aluminum and water between me and them.

This time it was twenty feet away, a mom and her new cub walking one way up a narrow peninsula
whilst I valiantly led my guests from Oxford the other way, down the same peninsula. My heart did a
little karate kick of adrenaline, but I managed to keep calm and cool, gather my guests to my bosom and
lead them twenty feet from the bear, (which I have now named Ava) and proceed to the rocky shore,
where Peter the geezer hovered in the skiff to ferry us to safety, comfort and nice cold beer.

We live, breathe and work within a bubble, the bubble contains a float lodge and is in a remote
picturesque fjord. This bubble exists within the mind of its owner and creator, the ursine and
Promethean Dean Wyatt. He is indeed jovial, actually jovial, in the original sense of the word, he is like
unto the god Jove, the jolly, roly poly, sometimes thunderous, sometimes humorous, expansive and
capricious lord of Olympus.

He descended upon the lodge last weekend, attended by a host of in-laws and nephews and nieces.
Ready for adventure, his bright blue eyes showering sparks of divine madness all about. He was off
rampaging in the cigarette boat while I was serenading a couple of wacky Irish catholic girls from
Pittsburgh. They were definitely crazy, my favourite flavour of crazy, menopausal and bourbon
drenched. They decided that instead of looking for bears, they’d rather just sit in the boat and have me
sing them songs, so that I did.

We anchored at the Big Cedar cove, where Leonore and her cub Peanut are ever so likely to be found
foraging. I strummed my gretsch and sang sea shanties and ditties for the crazy ladies, while they
smoked and grinned and the waves rocked and rolled our little boat. Then, just as I finished a song, a
pod of killer whales appeared and began breaching and splashing not one hundred feet from us. The
orcas rarely come this far up the inlet and the crazy ladies reckoned it must have been my musical vibes
that summonsed them. Soon we were pounding up the inlet with mighty redneck Bob at the helm,
pursuing the pod of Orcas with giddy excitement and cameras cocked and loaded. Darlene and Alexis
were both so in love with the Orcas that they were eager to be dangled over the edge of the boat just to
touch one.

As it turned out, the transient pod burst out of the water, magnificent, gleaming, virile and deadly, just
feet from our boat, on all sides.

Screams, cheers and whoops filled the air as we pursued and worshipped the mighty Orcas. Their
samurai dorsal fins slicing through the inlet, their blow holes banging like Ferrari pistons, their black and

white torpedo bodies screaming through their kingdom, reckless, wild and fearless. It was sweet.