![]() That worry increased when 4 came and went with no sign of the plane. Our fear was that the floatplane company would call off their stop in Meyers Chuck. Out of concern that the floatplane might be late - it usually is - we decided that instead of waiting at the dock in the full glare of the sun, we’d toss the anchor out on Misery Island and ride the waves in the lee of it, basking in its cool, protective shadow.Īs we sat there and chatted, the wind started picking up, little whitecaps kicking up on the water, light green with glacier silt from melting glaciers to the north. The trees grow straight up on top of it, thin and hardy and probably over a century old: scrub hemlock, cedar and spruce that have withstood innumerable storms. We idled along the side of it - a large chunk of granite that rises up so sheer from the water that we can drive within arm’s reach of it. On the way there’s an island called Misery that my dad ducked in close to in order to hide from the sun. This meant that I spent the rest of the day, covered up in layers to protect my skin from the sun, moving the skiff down as the tide retreated during the hottest part of the 80-degree day, until finally my dad and I climbed in and headed for Meyers Chuck. Until the floatplane company called and said they had fog in Ketchikan. That worked great, since the small summer tide was in during the morning. This week’s mail was supposed to be coming in on the regularly scheduled mail day - Wednesday - in the morning. ![]() While this is understandable from their perspective (they make most of their money off passengers in the tourist season to tide them over in the lean winter months), it does make things tougher for us. Our groceries might sit in their freezer for days until they drop them off whenever it’s convenient to them. Despite the difficulties bush people can have getting groceries out here, the floatplane company has no compunction about bumping them in favor of a paying fare. Then there’s the floatplane company’s way, it often seems to locals, of putting paying passengers ahead of mail and groceries. They get backed up with passengers and freight deliveries and Meyers Chuck, with its small population, becomes a very low priority. If the tide is right, there may be fog, snow or high winds in Ketchikan that prevents the floatplanes from flying until later - when the tide is wrong. If the weather is nice, the tide may be too low for the floatplane to land in Meyers Chuck’s small harbor.
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