The Last Man

Beside the crumbling remains of the Trans-Canada Highway, between the ghost town of Banff and what was once one of the most photographed lakes in the world, rots a cluster of forgotten chalets.

Long ago, when money mattered, it cost up to as much as six or seven hundred dollars per night to claim the keys to these coveted log cabins. Rustic and charming, nestled in a grove of towering pines, they welcomed travelers from around the world at a time when the park buzzed with tourists, like millions of ants, swarming the pristine rocky passes.

Now the chalets crumble and collapse under the shadow of the impassive mountain, buried to their brittle windows in heavy snow, suffocating in the muffled song of silence. 

From the leaning chimney of one of these cabins curls the final pollutants of mankind, a lonely tendril of smoke and ash that disperses on the kiss of the brisk evening breeze.

Inside, the Last Man coaxes a fire back to life in the stone hearth, feeding the dormant embers with pages from a yellowed French paperback until flames roar with heat against the night’s damp drafts and whistling wind. He arranges a worn rocking chair at the fireside, settles into it with all the grace of old age, and turns his thoughts to the burden of eulogizing the human species.

How does one pay appropriate tribute, in the face of probable extinction?

He does not have a pen.

There is no one to hear his voice.

He is not an artist. He is not a scientist. He is not a politician. He is not a man of faith.

Plague came. War came. Famine came. God did not.

He is the caretaker of the cabins—business and property both inherited from his late father—although it is clear by their state of decomposing disrepair that he has been shirking his responsibilities for some time now. It has been four decades since the last guest departed.

In the first year, the borders closed, the planes were grounded, and the steady stream of visitors dried to dust. He stocked up on supplies, took inventory of food and ammo, and then avoided town to elude infection. The news was a bloodbath of global death and despair, and he quit watching it long before the power cut out and cell service died. With no one to rescue and nowhere else to go, he hunkered down in Cabin 10 and waited.

In the second year, the non-perishables dwindled and the generator guzzled the last of the gas. Wildlife reclaimed the valley with quick vengeance. Before the snow came, he set snares, collected firewood, and practiced with his father’s bow to conserve bullets. In a terrifying encounter that fall, he fell and skinned his first grizzly. In the main lodge, he fiddled with an old radio and was stung by static.

In the third year, he wondered and fished, hoped and hunted. He scanned the skies and listened to the highway. He collected and read all the books left behind by guests over the years—paperbacks and hardcovers, biographies and bibles, mysterious romances and instructional self-help. The stacks of languages and letters he did not recognize, he used for kindling.

In the seventh year, he made the arduous journey up the mountain to the hollow chateau, desolate and decaying, a blight on Lady Louise’s renowned turquoise shores. Among the lavish musty ballrooms, dank gourmet kitchens, and empty suites littered with broken glass and mud and scat, he scavenged through the debris of left-behind luxuries and long lost lives. He stood at the gaping regal windows and cried shamelessly at the immortal beauty of the glacier. He lit a fire in the grand foyer and indulged in top-shelf liquor. He ran through the haunted halls and screamed in rage. The cavernous ceilings echoed his grievances, and he spent three cool summer nights conversing with his own whiskey-slurred voice.

In the twelfth year, he climbed to the top of the falls and thought about jumping. But he didn’t. When the spring storms blew through, he watched an avalanche rip down a nearby slope and wished he had been standing in its path. But he wasn’t.

In the twenty-fifth year, he considered leaving the valley in search of answers but never found the will or the courage. Instead, he crafted a new pair of snowshoes and sewed a warm pair of moose hide mitts.

In the forty-second year, it is enough. He is tired. His bones ache. His gums bleed. His vision flickers and his hands are crippled in pain. He feels a darkness lurking within, creeping through his veins, skulking at the base of his neck.

So the Last Man sits in front of his last fire with his last bottle of bourbon and reflects on humanity.

He is fully aware that he is completely unaware of most of the human experience—a long evolution of triumphs, defeats, innovations, tribulations, languages, cultures, treaties, and traditions. He never went to college. He never travelled outside of the country. As a young man, he’d never felt the need to visit the rest of the world. Not when it was always visiting him. Now he is sorry for his ignorance; he grieves that he cannot mourn as he should.

Blood humming with booze-laced warmth, he closes his eyes and reconstructs the memory-torn faces and voices of guests—the skiers and hikers, families and newlyweds, farmers and foreigners, philosophers and nomads—a diverse spectrum of color, perspective, and knowledge spins in the synapses of his mind. He visits industrious cities and towering temples; he walks through simple villages and cultivated land. He dredges up his mother’s spicy vanilla scent and gentle hands; he recalls his father’s kind crinkling eyes and booming laugh.

It will have to be enough. 

Snowflakes pirouette in a lazy indifferent descent from the dense sky. The books run out of pages. The wood pile empties. The Last Man’s heart coughs and concedes, and the last man’s fire spits and sputters an extinguishing sigh.