He gives compliments readily. He’s great at praise and I like it. I like it a lot. Probably too much, because I suddenly desire to be complimented by this man over and over and…
MAYA: I fell in a snowbank.
EMILY: WHAT!
LILY: During the reindeer thing??
MAYA: There was a reindeer escape situation and I was helping and there was mud.
MADISON: Please tell me he was there.
MAYA: He pulled me up.
CHLOE: HE PULLED YOU UP.
MAYA: And then brushed mud off my jacket.
HOLLY: I'm sorry WHAT?
AMBER: She's not going to survive this week.
LILY: The jacket thing is very much a thing.
MAYA: It was just manners.
EMILY: Maya
MAYA: What?
EMILY: The way you just defended it…
MADISON: She knows it wasn't just manners.
MAYA: I have to go wash my jeans.
CHLOE: Sure
HOLLY: Maya, he watched you walk all the way back to the lodge.
HOLLY: I saw him.
MAYA: I hate this resort.
HOLLY: No you don't.
MAYA: No I don't.
The rest of the morning preview is blessedly uneventful, which gives me time to post the reindeer content on my blog and all my socials. I have incredible footage, the reindeer escape included, because the lifestyle photographer sent me a clip that is genuinely the best thing I've captured in two years, and catch-up on the resort overview I'm supposed to be writing.
I sit in a window alcove in the main lodge with my laptop and my second coffee of the day and I write about the way the Evergreen feels different from every other luxury resort I've reviewed. Most of them are beautiful and correct with the right thread count, the right views, the right branded experience delivered with precision. This place has something else. It’s not right… not like a checklist of expectations that a lodge has made sure to fulfill. No, it’s more. It’s a story, a feeling. It's been built by people who actually love it, and you can feel that in the way the proportions are slightly more generous than they need to be, the way the fireplaces are real wood and not gas, the way even the petting zoo has been designed around the animals' comfort first.
I write three hundred words before I realize I'm also writing about a man who tells reindeer they get names when they've earned them.
I close the document.
I open the document.
I leave the sentence in.
