If you’ve ever spent time as a hut keeper at a ski or hiking lodge, you have to read this great poem recently penned by Tyler Bradley.
Tyler Bradley is a hut keeper and tail guide at Valhalla Mountain Touring and other lodges in the Kootenays. He contacted us recently to say, “I was writing up my to-do list and discovered to my horror that I had written a poem.” He went on to say he preferred the sound of “hut keeper” versus custodian because it’s “more pastoral, less janitorial” and that he knows “rhyming couplets have the ring of Hallmark Cards, but I was going for ironic.” To illustrate Tyler’s great poem, we’re featuring the watercolour work of Lars Baggenstos. Enjoy! (Our favourite line is “Check the bulbs and cobweb gowns.”
All illustrations by Lars Baggenstos.
The Hut Keeper’s List
Dish-dog the breakfast dishes
Buff the flatware, grant three wishes
Chicken cut thin for P.M pizzas
Discuss the hazards, terrain features
Sweep and wipe all counters clean
Keep the kettles leaking steam
Launder sheets for Leigh and Sam
Unstick the sticky lid on jam
Tend the bogs, restock the paper
Give pep-talks (no one’s a gaper)
Split and stack the woods and kindling
Karate-log the cedar stripling
Caulk the kitchen chasm of crumbs
Wipe and bleach the sauna blond
Get the guides hut commons clean
Cool the woodstove, clear the screen
Sweep the ashes (dump out back)
Cement the sink-trap blackened stack
Check the bulbs and cobweb gowns
Knock the snow off porch-front down
Stop to hydrate; eat your lunch
Shovel footpaths, back all hunched
Check the propane, tumble dry
Kale on stovetop, oil, fry
Stop to stretch and see the sky
Answer distant howling cries by sat phone, cell phone, wolven eyes
Thankful for the space and time
Where mountains, snow
and work collide