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After ten minutes of bumping over rocks and edging past sawn-up windfall trees, I reach a tidy clearing marked with logs to indicate the parking spaces. I pat the dash. "Screw the haters, Honey. We made it in one pi—Ahhh!"

I stomp the brakes reflexively, and Honey's wheels skid a little on the loose gravel.

McHuge. Or at least McHuge in vehicular form.

I mean, I knew he'd be here. I'm interviewing for a job with him. It's just unsettling to be confronted with a van that couldn't possibly belong to anyone else, unless the Scooby-Doo gang works here.

Okay, it's not an exact replica of the Mystery Machine. But what else can you call a multipassenger van painted the glossy summer cream of vanilla soft serve, accented with a vintage surf-style red-orange-yellow stripe? There's a stylized sunset on the rear doors, captioned with loopy brown script: keep on keepin' on. It looks like it was designed by a gray-ponytailed boomer who had one too many light beers while marinating in a Beach Boys megamix.

A round logo in the aggressively plain style you'd see at crunchy, expensive natural food stores decorates the rear sliding door.

THE LOVE BOAT.

This is what my life has come to.

But I still have two things in this world I love: my friend Liz and this beautiful, wild part of Canada. After losing everything else I used to care about, I'd do anything to keep them.

Even this.

I wait for the road dust to settle, then roll down my window, open the door using the still-functional outside handle, and step into the parking lot. I'm heading to work after this and I need to stay clean—Grey Tusk tourists don't tip when your clothes aren't spotless. I've tried a lot of different outfits in a year of working gig jobs, and this one sends me home with the most cash in hand: a fitted short-sleeved black button-down, slim black pants cut an inch above my ankle bone, and vegan leather oxfords in black and white. Black suspenders make a nice triangular gap between my waist and my padded bra. My undercut is freshly touched up with my secondhand trimmers, my hair sprayed into a pouf that filters any smile into a wicked smirk.

I look like the last person who should be working at a whitewater-canoeing-slash-relationship-therapy start-up. Then again, McHuge doesn't check a lot of boxes on the "stereotypical doctor of psychology" list, with his braided beard and California yoga teacher vocabulary.

No one's here to greet me except an enormous king shepherd dog who pops her head out of the van's open sliding door. She's big enough to bite me in half, and I respect that. God knows I'd like to bite a few people from time to time.

The dog looks me up and down, decides I'm not worth the effort, and curls back up on a towel spread across one of the vinyl bench seats.

It's fine. Animals don't like Katniss Everdeen, either.

I head along a path toward the river, stopping when I reach a clearing with a panoramic view of what Liz's husband, Tobin—also McHuge's business partner—called "base camp." It used to be part of a rustic family compound, but fewer people care to go without electricity and running water on their vacation these days, so Tobin and McHuge were able to secure prime waterfront for their don't-get-divorced summer camp.

I shouldn't make fun of it, I suppose. Last year McHuge published a self-help book that allegedly saved Liz and Tobin's marriage and made a few bestseller lists. Mostly the Canadian ones, but it's not nothing. Liz has been on me to read it, but I'm not interested in learning to get along with the people who've disappointed me.

To my left, there's an old cabin, planks silvered by age and rain, with a staircase of bright new cedar and a sign reading COOKHOUSE: STAFF ONLY. Not far away, on the edge of a wide sandy path leading to the river, is a smaller shed, its barn-style doors thrown open to reveal a pair of weathered sawhorses and a shelf crowded with marine maintenance products. A modest lawn surrounds a screened-in pavilion labeled dining hall/studio; up the hillside is an open-air wash station next to a broad-planked outdoor shower stall. Beside that is a low, square wooden building with a bright aluminum chimney. A sauna, unless I miss my guess.

The far end of the clearing obviously used to be a volleyball or badminton area, with those two tall poles that beg for a net. The nearer end features a river-stone firepit surrounded by a dozen thick, round log stools.

If there are sing-alongs, I'm calling in sick.

Fronting the calm expanse of the river, five white canvas castles, practically big tops, rise on airy platforms of the same red cedar as the cookhouse stairs. Smart: clients want the river view, but not the groundwater seeping through the floor.

And there, at the river's edge, a tall, broad figure looks out over the water toward the tree-lined mountains and decommissioned railway tracks on the opposite shore. On closer inspection, he's standing in the river, quick-dry cargo pants rolled up to midshin.

It's either a stirring portrait of Man in Nature or a dude who's two horns and a helmet short of a viral Viking video series.