Riding the mail boat to Kilroy Bay

John Thaxter used to have a desk job. But along with the lure of more time to fish, when opportunity knocked he found himself a storm-worthy vessel and commenced delivering mail for the Bayview post office – by boat. Despite scorching sun, thick winter fog and furious winds that pound the hull of his boat with spectacular waves, Thaxter has delivered mail to the remote outposts of civilization on the east side of Lake Pend Oreille since 1993, six days a week, all year long.

In addition to his contract with the U.S. Postal Service, he also delivers packages for UPS and FedEx. Upon request, he’s also happy to bring a dozen eggs or a loaf of bread from Bayview Mercantile or maybe deliver something a little bigger, like a new washer and dryer. He also offers taxi service.

Deliveries to this side of the lake are much easier to make by boat than by car or truck. The roads through the surrounding mountains, maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, are primarily dirt roads. It takes one and a half hours to drive the 19 miles to Lakeview from Bayview, but by boat it takes only 10 minutes. It can take all day to deliver something to Kilroy Bay (just ask the Sears delivery man who swears he’ll never do it again). But for Thaxter, Kilroy Bay is merely the last stop on his well-traveled lake route; in less than two hours he’s back at the dock at MacDonald’s Hudson Bay Marina and Resort in Bayview after also visiting Lakeview, Cedar Creek, Whiskey Rock, Granite Creek and Pine Cove. The only way to reach these human enclaves once the snow flies is by water because the roads eventually become impassable. So Thaxter is also a lifeline to the residents on this side of the lake during the winter months.

“There’s never a dull moment,” says Thaxter, adding that he really enjoys his work. (But for the record, he actually has less time for fishing.) He particularly likes the challenge of making deliveries on wintry or stormy days, although the near-80 mph winds and 10-foot waves in November 2006 were downright frightening – the worst weather he’s ever seen on the lake.

At each stop along the east shore, most of the residents come down to the docks to meet him and they exchange mailbags and friendly news, and Thaxter always has biscuits for the dogs. Most of the time he doesn’t even have to get out of the boat: “It makes it a little nicer,” he says, “especially when the wind is blowing 30 miles per hour.”

One can imagine the swell of residents who arrive to spend their summers on this isolated side of the lake, but what sort of people lives here year-round? This particular July day, I’m hitching a ride on the mail boat all the way to Kilroy Bay and back to find out.

Argyle Mydland is a former Angus cattle rancher from Montana who, along with three other year-round families, is enjoying his retirement living at Whiskey Rock. He was used to remoteness, but because of the lake’s effect of moderating temperatures, he finds that Whiskey Rock is warmer in winter and cooler in summer than his former home. Mydland really appreciates the old-fashioned hospitality that Thaxter offers to residents like him on Lake Pend Oreille’s east shore, especially during wintertime. “If it wasn’t for John,” he jokingly says, “people here probably wouldn’t get anything to eat!”

“It’s more fun if you do more than what you’re supposed to do,” Thaxter says. Folks like Mydland may be customers, but they’re also friends. “I don’t mind bringing the groceries,” he says. Sometimes Thaxter will even get a phone call in the middle of night. “I make emergency runs, too, sometimes for medications.” Once he helped take a resident to the hospital. After all these years and clocking more than 150,000 miles on the lake, he says he could probably do his route blindfolded. With fuel as expensive as it is – in summer 2007 he was spending $400 a week – he performs the extra duties because he enjoys doing them, not because there’s much money in it.

At Kilroy Bay, there are three year-round residents and 24 families who arrive during summertime. Lou Crisler, a Naval retiree from Spokane, has lived here for 22 years. Since Forest Road No. 278 is several miles away, he usually goes by his own boat across the lake to Garfield Bay when he needs to go to Sandpoint. Lou’s neighbor, Velda McTighe still enjoys living at Kilroy Bay even after her husband, John, died. Surprisingly, no one admits to getting cabin fever here. Instead they spend their days hiking, doing crafts, socializing, watching the storms pass through and viewing wildlife – eagles that flock to Granite Creek for a feast of spawning kokanee in the winter, and moose, deer, elk, mountain goats, and cougar who come to shore year-round. McTighe says some of the ungulates, recalling a cow moose and her calf, will swim across the lake to Garfield Bay. “It’s a little bit of heaven,” says Crisler. “I wouldn’t go anywhere else.”

On the boat heading back to Bayview on this lovely July morning, John Thaxter reveals that although every day on the lake is special, his favorite season of being a mailman on the water is during the winter months when there isn’t a lot of human activity. He says the lake’s monochromatic landscape with ice sculpting the shoreline and wildlife peacefully drinking at the water’s edge is like a beautiful charcoal drawing. Most days he just can’t wait to get out on the water. And as far as jobs go, it’s the best one he’s ever had.

MERGANSERS ON A LOG

During summer quiet, along the lake’s shoreline where the fishing is good, you are apt to find a driftwood log with young, auburn-headed common mergansers – a fish-eating, diving duck – bunched so tightly together that they look like bristles on a brush. It’s hard to count them even with binoculars. Sixteen? No, 17 ... I think. There are also two adult females resting together a little farther up on the log. Are they the mothers of this large brood or babysitters with the birds’ parents out on the lake fishing for food?

The juvenile mergansers’ ivory breasts when facing the golden sun of early morning or late afternoon turn the color of creamery butter tailored into a gray-brown suit of speckled plumage. Then there’s that crest of reddish-brown feathers that sweeps back like a wild head of hair.

Occasionally, when a bird falls off the log or is pushed accidentally by a sibling, the youngster will literally leap out of the water and use its orange feet to snag the log and pull itself back up. Sometimes that sharp, fish-eating beak can help with the process.

A sandpiper, a shorebird with a nest nearby, swoops past the young mergansers scolding the birds. One of the juveniles tries to swipe at the small bird with its sharp beak, missing it. The adult birds are patient with all the activity below them and they say little. But there’s squawking from more than a few of the youngsters on the crowded log as the birds preen one another, stretching and wrapping their long necks around the body of another.

Once the merganser adults have sunned long enough, maybe 15 to 20 minutes, they’ll slip silently back into the water, and the entire brood will immediately follow, jumping down in a series of smooth plops to quietly paddle after them in single-file on their watery march to the next stop.

The bark from a white pine tree is stripped to make the canoe. Photo by Karen Dingerson

Now it’s easy to count them. Yes, there are 17 juveniles!

Not all of a young merganser’s watery life is so regimented, however. They enjoy playing tag in their nursery area, chasing one another this direction and that, and literally running across the water’s surface like a schoolyard full of children during recess.

Whether they’re fishing, frolicking or playing follow-the-leader, mergansers are a native species of waterfowl in Lake Pend Oreille that are a joy to watch.