Time and time again, I have learned (and relearned) that people are multi-faceted and deeply interesting if I bother to take the time to find out.
With all the pressures of day-to-day life, it is so easy to rely on the roles I must play to define me to others. Moreover, it is very simple to allow the roles other people play in my life to define them – resulting in a two-dimensional impression as if we are all paper dolls with different outfits to wear appropriate to the occasion of the moment. Once again, I had the epiphany that I lose in life if I don’t go beyond the current “outfit.”
Meet Vicky Brown and let me tell you a quick story.
Once upon a time – one week ago, my son and I walked up to the bar to order takeout at The Depot, our favourite Friday night haunt in Ellicottville, NY. If you have never heard of Ellicottville, it is a gem of a village and town with populations of approximately 400 and 1500 respectively. In the winter, the population swells with thousands of skiers for the two local hills – Holiday Valley and Holimont. About 1/3 of the skiers are Canadian like me. It was a slow in The Depot because it was 8:30 pm and late ski season. The Depot is one of those places that get labelled in travel blogs as “quaint” and “authentic”. For us, it is part of our second home. They know me there as “Siri” because that is the name I use on our weekly takeout order of wings and potato skins.
This particular evening, we got to chatting with the bartender who we have known a bit for a couple years and I began to tell her about the True Patriot Foundation Baffin Expedition which is coming up in two weeks. She took our order, disappeared into the kitchen and when she came back she said one of the ladies in the kitchen had her honeymoon on Baffin Island where we will be trekking from near Qikiqtarjuaq to Pangnirtung (Pang). I was politely skeptical – who goes to Pang for a honeymoon in July? Who did it over 20 years ago?
The answer is Vicky Brown and her (then) new husband, who is known around town as Moose. It turns out that her father-in-law, in addition to being a local celebrity before he passed away in 2012, was a great outdoorsman. Vicky came out of the kitchen and sat with us at the bar to tell us some of her stories, of fishing, eating salmon every day. She told me of the Inuit family who were great friends and presented her with an 8-foot narwhal tusk as a wedding gift. What a cool wedding gift! It beats dishes. And Vicky smiled at her memories that were clearly cherished and in particular of people.
If you have not seen The Depot, it is the old town railroad station/depot moved to a location close to one of the ski hills. The interior is a kaleidoscope of Rolling Stones and skiing memorabilia. The walls are covered with various taxidermy from fish to fox to moose and deer heads. Vicky changes the decor on the ceiling for every season, with upside down Christmas trees and presents at Christmas, cupids and hearts at Valentines days and green, purple and gold streamers at Mardi Gras. On the large screen TV above the double door entrance, extreme skiing and boarding videos play where the athletes appear to be mostly falling with style. The chairs are mismatched, the dishes are mismatched, and it all adds up to a down to earth place you can go for good food wearing ski gear and a smile. We absolutely love it!
Vicky and Moose made the trek to Pang and Baffin more than once. Moose showed me a fish on one wall that he caught in Pang and another of the same variety in a distance corner caught at Great Bear Lake. The second was red because the food it ate changed to shrimp at that time of year. Every item on the walls has a story, but until that moment I had no idea and had rather assumed they hailed from some distant estate sale and seemed like a cool idea. Wow – I could not have been more wrong. And in the moments of sharing I realized that once again I need to remind myself that the facet I see of a person is only a single faceted – the one facing me. Everyone is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. It is in embracing and getting to know these facets that our encounters with each other are enriched.
We will return to The Depot after my expedition and share stories and learn more from Vicky and Moose. And we will order more wings and skins.
If you are every in Ellicottville, stop in at The Depot. Tell them Siri sent you.