Nell Voss, Exshaw

I am Nell. I kept a small guest house on Beaver Street for eighteen seasons, which is a polite way of saying I made breakfast for strangers who had come to look at mountains and then asked me, over jam, whether they should go up this one. I was good at beds and indifferent at sales. When the house went, I moved to Exshaw, where the rent is honest and the wind does not care that I used to have a sign in a window.

I still drive into the townsite on weekdays with a thermos. I still pack a shell in July. I still wince at town shoes on iced planks, and then I remember the year I did that myself, in 2009, and I keep the wince in this gazette instead of on a guest’s morning. I am not a park interpreter and I am not a photographer. I am a woman who answered the same questions until they became a liturgy, and who got tired of seeing those answers flattened into a brochure.

This gazette is private. It has no commercial arrangement with any lift, lodge or ticket seller. I do not sell admission and I never handle payment. If you came looking for an official desk, you are in the wrong house, and you are welcome to stay for the coffee I make in my own kitchen. For cabins, go to the operator. For weather, look at the sky. For the rest, write to me.