This little ditty came to me in 1997, as I researched Emily Carr’s "Cha-atl."

I paddle my new kayak through a narrow channel I hope leads to the West Coast of Haida Gwaii. It is the second day out and ahead on the right I spot my seventh black bear. The previous six became three rocks, a root, and two logs. The seventh becomes the biggest black bear I have ever seen. A breeze blows up the channel, toward the bear and then toward me, and I get so close I hear the bear breathe. It looks up, paws at its nose, and lumbers into the brush.

Late afternoon and a fine rain slants down. Even though this is the first week of July a south-easter seems to be blowing up. The channel veers west and gradually opens onto a sound maybe ten kilometers long, and I feel goosebumps when I see the spume in the distance and hear the surf. The Pacific. The open ocean. Paddle strokes away. The wind freshens and I concentrate on rotating my shoulders and pushing more than pulling, the three-part rhythm that still doesn’t come naturally. A silver shape edges from the woods at the end of the channel and the beginning of the sound, a silver image that grows into a weathered cedar cabin.

No smoke from the chimney. I angle in to the shore. The door is latched but unlocked and through the window I spot an embroidered wall hanging:

And so on for twelve well-intended lines. I enter, and spot a green binder, marked with a black felt pen, "Guest Book."

I reach two large kettles down from a shelf, walk back down to the kayak and unload it. I head out searching for drinkable water and find a creek entering the opposite shore not a half kilometer away. The crystal clearness of the water in this land of the spruce seems providential. I paddle back to the cabin, carry the kettles and then the kayak up to the grassy patch out front. A tiny green frog, the first I have seen on Haida Gwaii, leaps away. I carry my bags inside.

There is mouse sign everywhere. On the counter, in the sink, on the stove, on the table, the windowsills and the bunks. I start at the top. I sweep the sills then the counter then the stove, then the table and the bunks and the floor. Then I light a fire and put beans on to boil.

Hours later I am ready for bed, and since the rain has thickened I don’t pitch my tent out front on the grass. I unroll my sleeping bag onto the foam on one of the bunks. I snuggle in and peek out the windows as it gets dark out there and I listen to the rain and I feel cozy. Before I drift away the first mouse scurries across the arborite counter top over on the far side. I peer in that direction and the second zigzags across the floor. I look up to the window and the third hops and darts in profile along the sill. I am exhausted, and I soon fall asleep. I am barely aware of the mice cavorting all night long. In fact I sleep late the next morning, occasionally awakening just enough to hear the rain pelt the cedar-shake roof. When I crawl from the sleeping bag I sweep up the night’s mouse droppings.

So, throughout the day I write and I do little chores around the place. I sweep and clean but mostly I work on the woodpile. I write a paragraph and then split a block of wood. By evening I have piled an entire second row in the woodshed. And I think about the mice.

It seems that a large family, or a clan, or maybe even a nation, lives permanently and comfortably in the cabin. On the other hand, the guest book reveals that since four human families built the cabin in 1986 two or three guests or parties of guests have put up at the cabin most months. Many, like me, have taken refuge from the weather. Some stay a night then return eastward to Queen Charlotte City. Some return to their kayaks and continue westward to the exposed Pacific shore. Some use the stove in the cabin and pitch their tents on the grassy patch out front, an arrangement that seems to afford some of the comforts of the cabin while maintaining distance from the mice. Maybe that arrangement respects the mice, allows them their space too.

Oh yes. One of the four signs posted by the cabin’s human owners reads, "Please take all foodstuffs and garbage with you when you leave. We have had problems with mice and also with animals trying to break in."

This night is my second at the cabin. The rain continues in true Haida Gwaii fashion so I again unroll my sleeping bag inside rather than pitch my tent outside. Over near the sink there are three mousetraps. Inside one of my drybags, the one that contains the food, the one I carefully hung from a rafter so no mouse would chew its way through, there is a piece of sharp Swiss cheese.

Imagine yourself there with me. There’s a matter we must decide before we crawl into our sleeping bags.

Do we bait and set the mousetraps?

July 1997

Copyright, 2002, Joel Martineau.

"Guests" is the teddy bear among the thirteen stories in my manuscript, The Stories So Far.