By the end of March, sixty cabins had been removed. The remaining rows looked strangely isolated, like houses left behind after a neighborhood moved away. Some still had outdoor chairs stacked on their decks. One had a faded wreath hanging on the door. I recognized it from a photograph Patricia had shown me in the diner. That had been her cabin, the one she had bought because she imagined spending retirement mornings there between rental bookings.
I asked Ray whether that cabin would be handled differently because it had belonged to a woman I knew. He told me all the units were being removed under the same approved plan, with ownership and asset issues coordinated through the settlement and bankruptcy representatives. I nodded and did not ask him to pause. Patricia's loss was real, but turning her cabin into a memorial would not restore her investment or solve the problem beneath its foundation. I took one photograph from the road and sent it to David for the records, not to Patricia.
In April, the last clusters of cabins began disappearing. The remaining crews removed the docks and the buried utility systems, then broke up the foundations and hauled away the concrete. Work on the old parking lots took longer than I expected because those surfaces had to be removed without tearing open the natural drainage channels beneath them. The clean lines of the resort were replaced by rough grading, temporary erosion barriers, and piles of material awaiting transport. It looked worse before it began to look better.
By mid-April, ninety-seven cabins had been removed. Twelve remained on the southern end, where the access road was narrow and the utilities more complicated. Ray told me the crews could finish by the May deadline if the weather stayed reasonable. I walked the empty northern stretch and tried to remember exactly where each building had stood. With the roofs gone, I could once again see the shape of the slope my grandfather had purchased. That mattered more to me than the money already in escrow.
The independent environmental inspection began on April 22. Specialists from Alpine Environmental Services collected soil and water samples, checked for possible effects from septic systems and construction materials, reviewed sediment management, and surveyed the areas most heavily used by machinery. I accompanied them for part of the first day, wearing work boots and carrying the original shoreline photographs. They warned me that a clean report would not mean every mark disappeared overnight. Compacted soil, altered drainage, and disturbed vegetation could require years of recovery even when contamination was not detected.
Their preliminary findings were reassuring. The samples did not show contamination requiring a major hazardous-material cleanup, and the remaining problems involved grading, soil compaction, erosion control, and vegetation. The specialists recommended native grasses, wildflowers, and long-term monitoring of vulnerable bank sections. I asked them to include restoration of willow habitat near the inlets, because I remembered the swallows and songbirds that had lived there before construction. They made notes and added the work to the plan.