Waiting for Ray
By Billy Labonte
Summer of 1998
At the time, I was planting trees, and the career choice between planting a million baby trees or guiding on the Firesteel River was not a morally complex dilemma. Ray flew me out to the Firesteel River to open camp. He told me to grab my daypack, a sandwich, and my sleeping bag “just in case”.
My first flight in a Super Cub changed my life. Seeing the Firesteel River from the air, for the first time, I knew quietly and deeply that this was where I belonged. As we flew over the flats between Rognaas Creek and the upper Firesteel, we saw a cow moose and two calves standing in the river right in front of the cabin. Ray buzzed them—real casual like—then looped back and made the smoothest glassy-water landing I’ve ever seen. As we taxied in, I was digging through my pack for my raincoat because it looked like the water’s surface was covered in raindrops. It wasn’t rain—it was rising trout. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them.
While Ray explained what needed to be done to open camp, I was nodding along, still fixated on the trout rising. Next thing I knew, Ray spun the plane around, climbed onto the float, and said: “I’ll be back.”
I watched the Super Cub taxi away, turn into the current, and lift off, and stood there, staring at the landscape, the river, the quiet. The feeling of belonging to a place I knew nothing about. Somehow, I already knew that I needed to be a bush pilot.
I had the camp opened and cleaned up to 23-year-old male standards in less than three hours.
Then I waited. And waited. And kept waiting. I didn’t see or hear another human being for four days. That might not sound like much—unless you only packed one peanut butter and jam sandwich. Thankfully, there were leftover canned goods from last season. Have you ever eaten creamed corn that’s been frozen? It looks and tastes like wallpaper paste. But there was a fly rod, a good selection of flies, a boat, a motor, and fuel. Until then, I’d been a hardcore catch-and-release guy. But with a little lemon pepper—a gift from the gods, I learned to make a gourmet rainbow trout.
Around 8 :00 AM on the fourth day, I heard a plane. I stumbled out of the cabin like Tom Hanks at the end of Cast Away, and saw a Cessna 185 buzzing overhead. It landed—not as smoothly as Ray—and as it taxied in, Ray’s son, Chris, poked his head out, and yelled: “What the hell are you doing here?”
I told him the story: opening camp, doing the chores… Waiting for Ray.
Chris just shrugged. “Dad didn’t tell anyone he dropped you off here.”
I was mildly concerned that it took them FOUR DAYS to notice I was missing.
“It’s fine. I just had the best four days of my fishing career.”