Jeff Foxworthy built a career telling people how to spot a redneck. I don't need to tell lodge owners how to spot each other — you already know your people. Here's the list, for anyone who's ever run a business where the office has no walls and the org chart is just yours and your spouse's names, written ten different ways.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if your idea of rush hour is watching the fog burn off before the floatplane window closes.
City people worry about traffic. You worry about ceiling and visibility, and you've learned to read the sky the way other business owners read a spreadsheet.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if your job title changes four times before lunch.
Boat mechanic at 7, plumber at 9, referee by 11 for six guys from Chicago arguing over who lost the fishing bet the day before.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if the first two things into the guest cabin are a case of beer and somebody's CPAP machine, usually in that order.
Nobody has to worry about bears keeping them up at night. It's whoever's in cabin 4, plugged in and sawing logs at full volume.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if your website still looks like it was built the year flip phones were cool, and you're prouder of that fact than you'll admit.
You know exactly how many life jackets are in the shed. You couldn't tell anyone how many followers you have on Facebook.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if you've given the exact same fishing report to every guest, every week, all season, with total conviction, and you haven't wet a line yourself in years.
"They're hitting off the point in six feet of water" isn't your line. It's your guide's. You're just the messenger, delivering it with the confidence of someone who reeled it in personally.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if the ice-out date matters to you more than your own birthday.
Your birthday is just a date. Ice-out is a date that decides whether you make payroll in June.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if you know a guest's grandkids by name before you've ever met them.
Grandpa's been coming since 1974. The lodge has basically raised three generations of this family, and you were there for all of it.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if you own more ATVs, snowmobiles, boats, and side-by-sides than anyone else on the planet, and not one of them is for fun anymore.
They're all "work trucks" now. You remember when a boat used to mean a good time instead of a good tow.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if the entire operation runs on just two people, and you happen to be married to one of them.
No HR department, no shift schedule, just forty years of figuring out who runs the dock and who runs the books, and a marriage tough enough to survive both.
You might be a wilderness lodge owner if your retirement plan has been "sell the lodge" since roughly 2009.
You'll tell a total stranger exactly where the fish are biting before you'll tell your own family you're actually ready to sell — turns out that's the one secret you actually know how to keep.
