That winter, I was dating a girl who was pretty, adventurous and maybe a bit wild, kinda like me. I thought her dad had a dislike for me until he offered me a job as a camp watchman at Darcy Point, up in Loughborough Inlet. I was still waiting for my visit to the bone butcher, and this was something I could do with my bad knee, so I took it. The thought of spending the winter holed up in a coastal camp with my girlfriend was cool.
He flew his daughter and me in, and we got the gear and food offloaded. He showed me the diesel generator that was attached to a big freaking engine and told me to make sure I fuelled it up at least once a week; it had a big tank right beside it. We filled up this tank as the generator had been running for several days. There was a hose running from the main fuel storage tank, and he showed me how to use it to fill up the generator.
The camp radiotelephone and heat were electric, and if the generator ran out of fuel, there would be no contact with the outside world and no heat. It was a big diesel, and he told it would need to have all its pistons primed to start again if I let it ran out of fuel. So I would be on top of this for sure.
He took me up a trail along the creek to show me where the water line was located and how to keep it running. We fired up the propane stove, and then he called his daughter and told her it was time to go. For some reason, I had thought she was going to stay with me. I stood there, on the dock, watching them fly off. I was all alone, just the camp cat and me. I now know it was his way of keeping us apart.
At least I had a truck, 30 miles of road, my gun and a fishing rod. I took a drive that first day to see if any lakes, rivers or creeks looked like they might hold some fish. From the moment I fired up the truck, I realized there was a problem; there was about half a turn of slack in the steering wheel. The roads were never level, as they twisted and turned, the slope would go from one side to the other, and you would need to catch the slack by turning the wheel quickly. I found that by reading the road ahead, I could keep the truck going straight, sort of. It was no big deal as I would be the only truck on the road all winter anyway.
I got back to camp and proceeded to look over supplies and put things away. My food supply was awesome, I had several deep freezers filled with frozen veggies, various types of meat pies, ice creams and as much meat as I could eat. The cupboards were stocked full of everything else. On the kitchen counters were huge containers of various flavours of cake mixes, pancake mixes, and gravy powders. There was a camp cat, but no cat food. Jack had said to just feed him from a case of canned sardines. I fixed up a meal of steak and eggs and then headed down to the wharf to sit back and watch the boats go by.
Right away, I saw a guy I know from Quadra Island, who owned a converted tugboat called the Widget. He seemed to be heading my way, and as he came up on the dock, he noticed it was me. He tied up, and we had a good chat. It seems he was contracted with fisheries; he would stop at all the creeks to count how many spawners he could see. When he found out I was to be here all winter, he asked if he and a few others I knew could stop by for showers and rest, and I said for sure. The following week, Dev and his wife, who were the original owners of the homefree commune on Quadra Island, dropped by on their sailboat for a few days. Dev’s wife baked bread and several pies for me and a load for them. She also made me a big cake. I was sad to see them go, but they said they would be going by every couple of weeks and would stop in for a few days.
When we flew in, I noticed an old cabin about a mile down the beach from camp, so one day at low tide, I took a walk to investigate. It was an old logger’s shack, and out back was a logging road that headed off into the forest with a very old logging truck sitting on it. It was so old that it had solid rubber tires. This truck was a GMC from around 1910-1920.
There was a door in the back of the cabin that I had trouble getting open, as I dragged it through the duff, it rolled up a grizzly skull and bones. It was then that I saw there were a couple of bullet holes in the door.
In the cabin, you could see stains on a counter where sandwiches had rotted right beside a couple of old leather lunch kits. There were cross-cut saws and other logging tools scattered about. Looks like they were having grizzly problems and had to shoot the bear through the back door, then just left out the front door and never returned. It appears that I Am likely the first person to visit the cabin since this event. About 15 years later, I was back at Darcy Point working for the BC Forest Service. It had been logged where the cabin once stood, and there was no sign of it or the truck now. A coastal story that almost remained untold.
The winter rains came, and the creek got flowing pretty badly, and it washed my water line down and tangled it in a bunch of flotsam. Took me forever to get it loose again. I had to lay it out and up to where I could reset the gravity bag. Once I had it all laid out and hooked up, there still was no water. Had no idea what the problem was. There were two connectors along the line. I thought maybe one line had stuff plugging it, as this is PCP black waterline, the only way to check was to undo each connector. So I undid the one closest to the gravity bag, water was flowing there, and I got soaked hooking it back up again. Move on to the next one. When I pulled it apart, there was no water, but I could hear water up the line. Then it came out, hitting me in the belly, soaked again. It was tough to get it hooked up again. But still no water in the cookhouse. So undo the line where it goes in under the cookshack, soaked again. After that, we had water in the cookhouse. Noted the need to get shutoff valves for these connections.
The camp cat was giving me trouble; he was always letting loose with a runny shit in the cookhouse, and no matter how many times I would rub his nose in it, he would just do it again. I had no idea why until I tried a can of those sardines. I quickly got sick and could not even get out of bed except to get into the washroom; sometimes I had to crawl through the snow to get there. Then the generator died. It had run out of fuel. I was in and out of delirium, and I am not sure how many days it had been since I ate those sardines. I was still getting sicker. I tried to call someone, but could not get a connection. I knew I had to get to town. I took the truck down to the wharf, and when a tug or fishboat would go by, I would use the lights to signal S.O.S.
I had learned how to do this from being in sea cadets. But it was to no avail; they would just flash their light back at me as if to say hello.
I figured my only hope was to get the generator up and running. It was tough, but I did it. I then used the radiotelephone to call a friend to come and replace me while I went to town. Had our pilot bring him in, and then he flew me out. They kept me in the hospital for a few days with a bad case of food poisoning. I lost a bit of weight but made it through the ordeal. When I got out, I headed back to camp, and I took a big bag of cat food with me. The cat recovered as well, and all was good.
The hospital contacted my sister to give her my operation date. I left Darcy Point at the end of the shift, My knee operation happened shortly after. It went fine and after a few weeks; I was able to return to work. In the meantime, the boss’s daughter had found a new love, and we were done.