Читать книгу Highballer - Greg Nolan - Страница 7

The massive clearcut that loomed over our camp was completely planted within five days. Our plantation of conifers stretched out across the landscape for nearly as far as the eye could see. I was told that it took four hundred thousand seedlings to cover the entire area. Our new ground—the next clearcut on our list—was several dozen kilometres away, and getting there required a fleet of trucks. As we got ready to depart, a half-dozen four-by-fours idled in the cold, early morning April air, and billows of steam and exhaust hung over our staging area in front of the Quonset hut.

As we suspected, our rookie crew was a farm team of sorts. We were about to be split up and divided among the three existing crews. Barrett’s foremen were about to duke it out over who would get whom. The previous evening I caught Kelly, Barrett’s highest-producing foreman, sneaking a peek at our individual tree scores¹ in Jeremy’s ledger and entering figures into a little notebook that he liked to carry around in his tit pocket. When he noticed that I had noticed him, he gave me a wink, as if to say, Your ass is mine, pal.

The road that led to our new ground wound through a maze of interconnected clearcuts, several dense patches of mature forest and a canyon that Nature had crudely chiselled into her landscape.

After forty-five minutes of hard driving, we crested a ridge and began descending into a wide sweeping valley, the back end of which had been mowed down into a bowl-shaped clearcut. Our destination was obvious. The road leading in was lined with tree caches, their bright white reflective tarps lending the appearance of snowbanks from a distance.² As we entered the block, the idle banter in our truck subsided as we eyed the harvested landscape on both sides of the road, sizing up the sloping terrain, homing in on the areas that appeared most desirable.

I was on a roll. I was determined to crack a grand—one thousand planted trees—by the end of that day. By 2:30 that afternoon, I was fifty trees away from that important milestone, and while loading up for my final run of the day, Barrett pulled up alongside me riding a big beautiful trike.³ He was looking for a progress report.

Barrett had all of a sudden taken a keen interest in my progress. When I informed him that I was on the verge of cracking a grand, and then some, his face lit up like he had just flopped a full house.

A nineteen-year-old rookie who outgrows his training crew and manages to crack a grand in only a few short days is considered an extremely valuable asset to a treeplanting contractor. When I informed Barrett that a tally of thirteen hundred trees was a distinct possibility if I was given an extra hour or two at the end of the day, he asked if I knew how to operate the trike. Excited, I answered back, “Of course I can ride that thing.” I lied.

I had been riding dirt bikes since I was twelve years old but I had no idea if that skill set would transfer over to the strange-looking three-wheeler. Barrett then made me an offer I simply could not refuse: I could stay on the block as late as I wanted as long as I was willing to ride the trike back to camp—if I was certain that I knew my way back home. I promised him that I had paid close attention to all of the major intersections on the road leading in, that finding my way back to camp would be a piece of cake. I wonder if I actually believed that at the time.

That day ended at 4:30 p.m. for everyone—almost everyone. Debbie paid me a little visit at my cache before packing up her gear and jumping in the truck. She was still panting, having just finished her last run of the day. Her shirt was soaked with perspiration, and there was a fair volume of mud smeared across her forehead, presumably from repeatedly wiping away the sweat from her brow with her dirty work glove. She was also incredulous that I was bagging-up at the end of the day, thinking I had lost track of time.⁴ “You do realize it’s quitting time, don’t you?” she scolded, wiping her brow with her soiled glove, confirming my theory of moments earlier. When I told her my plan to stay late and ride the trike back home, she objected. She listed a number of reasons why it was an extremely bad idea, chief among them the number of bears that had been spotted around camp in recent days. Bears had just emerged from hibernation, she said, and were desperate in their pursuit of a meal—any meal. I dismissed her concerns and told her not to worry. I explained that there was a backup plan: Barrett would come looking for me in the event I wasn’t back by a certain hour. I also boasted of my expertise in operating three-wheeled ATVs. These were barefaced lies, but they helped put her mind at ease.

It’s quite an experience looking out over a large clearcut, spotting dozens of people spread out over a hundred acres of rolling terrain one minute, then being the only person left standing in the middle of all of that wilderness the next. I watched in awe as the taillights from the last truck disappeared below the road, leaving only a thin column of dust in its wake.

No more voices calling out in the distance. No more whistles, no more shouting, no more singing or spontaneous bursts of laughter. No more dogs barking or truck engines straining. Silence. The only interruption: the pounding inside my chest and the occasional ruffle from a stray breeze. Scanning the wide-open landscape heightened the senses. The air became heavier, the temperature cooler. It felt as if the sun had suddenly drawn blinds down on itself—light seemed denser. I don’t believe I had ever felt so isolated, so exposed, so alone.

With my head down and 250 seedlings weighing heavy on my hips, I continued to work my land. By 5:30 the forest that bordered the top of the cutblock had cast a dark shadow over the upper third of my area. It was getting late in the day. I was beginning to feel more anxious. There were times when I thought I detected movement along the treeline, or within the shadow it cast below—a shadow that continued to creep down the slope toward me as the sun continued its inexorable retreat.

The setting was ripe for the overactive imagination. My nerves were on a hair-trigger. Though it was necessary to maintain a hurried pace, I paused periodically to scan the terrain above me, surveying the landscape for anything out of the ordinary, anything that might present a threat. I was a little more than halfway through my final run by 6:00 p.m. I calculated that I could bag-out by 7:00 p.m., but I needed to stay focused.

I bagged-out at 7:00 p.m. on the dot. Excited, I raced back to my cache and packed up my gear, preparing for the long trike ride back to camp. There was roughly one hour of sunlight remaining in my day. Barrett had estimated that the ride home would take ninety minutes.

The trike was a fairly simple ATV. It had no clutch and only four gears. It was a pull-start machine, though, and I knew from experience they could be moody. I took a couple of pulls on the starter cord, played with the choke, took another half-dozen pulls. Nothing. I stopped and examined it from top to bottom to make sure that I hadn’t missed a step. The key was turned to the on position, it had plenty of fuel, the fuel line was open. I took a few more pulls. Nothing. A dozen more pulls yielded the same damn result. After fifteen minutes of increasingly frantic pulling, I succeeded only in tearing the callouses off the palm of my hand. I was exhausted. My hand was bloody. After catching my breath, I took another half-dozen desperate pulls. Nothing. It was nearly 7:30 and I was losing daylight. Fast. With my heart pounding, I weighed my options. It didn’t take long to conclude that my only real play was to begin hiking the thirty-five kilometres back to camp.

I couldn’t spend the night on the block. Temperatures were still dipping well below zero in the wee hours after nightfall. My one hope was that, at some point, someone in camp would discover that I hadn’t made it back and would send a truck out after me. Then, I was struck at once by several realizations:

One: I had been keeping a fairly low profile in camp in the evenings by heading to bed early. My absence in this case wouldn’t have been deemed out of the ordinary.

Two: I had instructed Barrett not to fuss. I hated people fussing over me. Rejecting his offer to set aside my supper, I had told him that I’d simply raid the kitchen for leftovers once I arrived back in camp. That was a monumental error on my part. Someone at some point would have noticed an untouched plate of food. It would have set off alarm bells.

Three: I had convinced Debbie not to fuss on my account as well, knowing that she had worked her ass off that day and was thoroughly exhausted. I’d insisted that she not wait up for me.

Four: The camp took on a carnival-like atmosphere at night. I knew that my presence wouldn’t be missed.

Taking inventory, I discovered one severely bruised Granny Smith apple at the bottom of my pack that had been taking abuse since day one. I also had a one-litre bottle of water—meager provisions, but better than nothing. For protection, I had my long-handled staff shovel with a heavy steel blade at the end. I also had a six-inch lock-blade knife. In the event of a hostile grizzly encounter, I figured I could escape the situation by using the knife to slit my wrists. Shaken but not deterred, I began my long trek home.

Separating reality from the forces one perceives to be threatening is no easy task, especially when one is physically and mentally exhausted. I was also famished, not to mention scared shitless. The reality: I had planted trees for over eleven hours, I was in the heart of bear country, I was defenceless, I had less than thirty minutes of daylight left and I faced a challenging five- to six-hour hike back to camp. The forces that I perceived to be threatening: whatever hungry or territorial carnivore that was already aware of my predicament, and whatever menacing element loomed, concealed in the shadows around the next bend in the road.

The road leading out of the cutblock rose to the top of a ridge before dropping back down into a long continuous series of older clearcuts. My view from the crest of the ridge was expansive, and it appeared that my road cut right through the centre of these clearcut areas. That was a good thing. My greatest fear in hiking through the darkness was following a road through a dense stand of mature timber, one where every vestige of available light would be blocked out by the canopy above. I worried that my visibility would be reduced to nothing. I worried about what might be lurking inside, concealed in the shadows. I remembered travelling through at least two such areas on the way in earlier that morning. It was only a matter of time before I’d be forced to confront them.

I was no more than thirty minutes into my long trek home when I came to a junction in the road that I didn’t recognize. As I examined my two options carefully, I noticed a moist set of tire tracks leading away from a large puddle that spanned the width of the road on the left fork. I knew that my crew had left them. I was fortunate in having just enough residual light to spot them against the dry, hard-packed gravel. I could easily have missed them. A sense of uncertainty, one that had already taken hold, deepened. This was likely only the first of many such junctions. I thought the path home would be obvious. I thought wrong.

One hour into my trek, I came to a stretch of road that I did recognize, even though the sun had completely set. The road entered a narrow canyon with jagged walls that rose up steeply on both sides. I could hear the sound of fast-running water to my left, but it was difficult to pinpoint its location. Judging by the hollow roar, it was likely following a flume that had been cut deep into the rock along the far edge of the canyon. Though my visibility was limited, I scanned the canyon walls thoroughly as I walked. I was looking for movement…anything that might signal danger.

The steep topography of the canyon produced crazy echoes. The sound of my hiking boots scuffing against the gravel road bounced along the sharp, rugged terrain like an Indian rubber ball. If there was ever a time when I needed to walk softly, this was it.

Midway through the canyon, the sound of surging water began to intensify as the road tapered toward its source. Then the road swung hard to the left and I suddenly found myself crossing a bridge elevated high above the maelstrom. I felt my legs tremble as I crossed over. It was an old bridge. Large gaps between the deck planks exposed its support beams underneath. Beyond the beams, unimaginable darkness and deafening turbulence. The relief I experienced in stepping back onto hard-packed gravel at the other side was monumental.

At 9:30, the canyon was behind me. I was relieved to be out in the open again, but I was experiencing tremendous strain, particularly in my thighs, which were beginning to cramp. At that point, I estimated I had at least three hours of hard hiking ahead of me. One blessing I was afforded that night: a full moon and a clear sky. I didn’t mind the dramatic drop in temperature that accompanied the clear moonlit air. I was generating more than enough internal heat from my brisk pace and elevated stress level.

Though my eyes were adjusting to the dark and the moonlight was illuminating certain features in the landscape, I was struggling to make sense of objects on the road ahead, particularly those off in the distance.

My mind was constantly playing tricks on me as I surveyed the surrounding terrain. On at least a dozen occasions I thought I detected a dark shape in motion along the edge of a treeline, or at the top of a rock bluff. Though they were all false alarms, I had the uneasy feeling that I was being watched.

I came upon two additional junctions over the next forty-five minutes. At the first, I was reasonably certain that the trucks had turned right, and so I followed. I wasn’t nearly as confident at the second junction. It was a Y in the road and both forks appeared to be equally well travelled. Guessing, I chose the path to the right. After only a few minutes, I had a nagging suspicion that I had made the wrong choice. After fifteen minutes, I knew I had taken the wrong fork. By then, the moon was much higher on the horizon and I could clearly see that the road led to the top of a distant ridge. There was no such ridge on the drive in earlier that day—that much I was certain of. I glanced at my watch. It was 10:30 p.m.

The logical move was to simply turn around, hike back to the last junction and take the left fork. Continuing to press ahead, following the road to the top of the ridge, also had its merits. There, a view might open up, exposing the valley on the other side. I suspected that our camp was tucked away in there, somewhere deep in the valley on the other side of the ridge. I chose to push forward and attempt to gain the height of land.

It was an exhausting climb, but it was worth the effort. A filtered view of the valley below began to open up through a thin line of conifers that were sporadically spaced along the top of the ridge. It was breezy. The atmosphere was unsettling, eerie. I felt the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I approached the edge of the precipice. Walking along the rim, carefully negotiating each step forward, I managed to find a ledge that offered an unobstructed 180-degree view of the valley below.

Though shrouded in darkness, shadows, thin layers of cloud and patches of fog, the moonlight infiltrated the landscape below, revealing a vague outline of its rolling contours. As I began scanning the area, I was suddenly struck by an odd vibration. It was only for the briefest of moments, but it sounded like distant drumming. I heard it again seconds later, but a gust of wind immediately displaced it. As I scoured the landscape for the source of the sound, something caught my eye to my extreme left. Nestled between a large black void and a series of small hills, perhaps ten kilometres away, was a faint undulating glow. It was my camp. It had to be my camp. There was no other explanation for the mysterious source of light. My mind raced as I attempted to carve out a mental map that would lead me there. I knew that I needed to hike back to the last junction and take the left fork. From that point on, I resolved to stay left whenever in doubt.

Checking my watch as I descended the steep road back toward the last junction, I was shocked when the digits lit up and I saw 11:30 p.m. I was at least ten kilometres from camp. I still had a long, difficult hike ahead of me. I had already worked through two major leg cramps and felt a third one coming on. I was also feeling a hunger unlike anything I had ever experienced. I knew the emptiness was exacerbating the cramping in my muscles, not to mention my ability to think straight. I then remembered the apple in my backpack and quickly devoured it, tossing the core behind my shoulder. Then, just as I was approaching the junction, I detected the sound of tumbling rocks approximately fifty metres behind me. Though it wasn’t necessarily an unusual sound—the cutbanks on both sides of the road were steep and in a constant state of erosion—I suspected the disturbance was created by something other than mere gravity. I scolded myself for having discarded my apple core so carelessly.

Debbie’s anxiety over the number of bear sightings reported in and around camp suddenly began to weigh heavily on my mind. As I pressed on, limping, attempting to stave off a third muscle cramp, I continued to sense movement on the road behind me. It was difficult to separate the sound of my own footsteps, heavy and irregular, from the other vibrations around me. Heightening my anxiety, the moonlit landscape I had been trekking through all evening appeared to end abruptly farther up the road at a solid black wall. It was inevitable. I was approaching a dense stand of timber, the canopy of which would block out the moonlight I was relying upon to navigate.

As I approached the edge of the forest, it was like peering into a lightless tunnel. The path behind me was bathed in moonlight, the path ahead plunged into a pitch-black void. Pausing to take one last look behind me, I entered the forest and immediately hastened my pace. My visibility was nearly nil. I was able to make out only the basic contours of the road ahead. After one or two minutes of being enveloped in near total darkness, I launched into a spontaneous jog. Panic began to set in. The tension ratcheted higher when I heard a knock deep within the forest to my left. My jog turned into a full-out sprint when I thought I heard another knock directly behind me. I lost track of both time and space. I remember the sensations all too well though: dread, terror, a grave reckoning that I was drawing my last few gulps of air. I was in both fight and flight mode, ready to stop, turn and savagely swing my shovel at whatever was behind me.

The threat that seemed so real, so immediate, failed to materialize in physical form. Eventually, after rounding a sharp bend in the road, I spotted a breach in the blackness several hundred metres ahead. I was coming back into the light.

I reached the edge of the timber. The stretch of road that broke through on the other side was drenched in moonlight. The transition between light and dark—the margin separating the two deeply conflicting elements—was astonishing. It was a glorious moment. My panic-stricken charge quickly deteriorated into a series of limps and staggers as my exhaustion triggered yet another severe leg cramp. This last stitch did some damage to the muscle in my right thigh. The pain was excruciating.

As I attempted to settle into a steady, consistent stride, I continued to hear sounds emanating from the dark corridor behind me. This time they were clear—heavy scrapes in the gravel. I was being followed.

Pressing ahead, looking over my shoulder every few seconds, I fixated on the road leading out of the dark wall of trees behind me. After advancing another two hundred metres or so, something caught my eye—a shape began to emerge slowly from the edge of the corridor. At first, I thought it was my imagination—a large rock, a stump perhaps. Then my worst fear materialized as the dark shape began to shift and take form, slowly pulling away and separating from the black wall.

I began shouting obscenities at the top of my lungs, hoping it would back off and blend back into the dark depths from which it emerged. My protests didn’t seem to faze it, though. It advanced, slowly but steadily closing the gap between us. It was a bear—a large bear. An apex predator. Its unwavering swagger suggested that it was fully aware of its position at the very top of the food chain.

After another fifteen minutes of staggering and lurching forward, of constantly looking over my shoulder and attempting to maintain a safe distance between me and my stalker, I saw that the road ahead was in the direct path of yet another dark forest corridor. I began scouring the road berm for a long heavy stick. I was looking for another weapon to augment the shovel I was gripping tightly with my bloody right hand. I also began loading my pockets with sharp flat stones. I had a good throwing arm.

It’s unsettling how different the woods appear at night. Any semblance of familiarity is lost or concealed in the absence of light. Individual trees that appear grand and majestic during daylight hours suddenly become menacing, threatening. I was experiencing a whole new set of negative emotions at this point. I had no idea that fear had so many layers, that it could probe so deep into one’s psyche.

It was now 1:00 a.m. as I approached the edge of the forest. Entering this corridor was like walking through a portal. I was immediately enveloped in darkness. Again. The road, barely visible, twisted and wound for several hundred metres before crossing over a fast-running creek. The surge of rushing water made it impossible to discern any other sound in either direction. I began to panic. Again. Despite my crippled gate, I managed to press ahead in a bizarre combination of skips and hobbles. Finally, I could see moonlight peer through the blackness a few hundred metres ahead. I emerged from the densely wooded corridor, once again stunned by the dramatic contrast. It was another moment of monumental relief—another glorious moment.

As I continued to press forward, I fixated on the forest edge that was now a good two hundred metres behind me. I detected no activity, no shape or form materializing from the edge of the dark corridor. Sensing that the bear had lost interest, I gave up attempting to run and limped forward. I had no idea how far I was from camp, but I hoped and prayed it was within shouting distance.

It was 2:00 a.m. when I arrived at yet another junction, one where both forks in the road cut through a sparse stand of timber. I was on my last legs.

Pausing at the junction, sensing that I was close to camp but unsure if it was left or right, I took a cursory glance behind me as I pondered my two options. Something was wrong. A black shape occupied the left side of the road approximately 150 metres behind me—it shouldn’t have been there. I could have sworn it wasn’t there the last time I scanned the terrain. I studied it for the better part of thirty seconds, and just as I was about to dismiss it as a log or a stump, I detected subtle movement. Then, suddenly, it began slowly advancing toward me.

I hollered at the creature. I screamed until my voice cracked. I whacked the ground with my shovel blade, creating as much noise as I could muster. When it appeared to hesitate, I turned around to further examine the junction in the road. Just then, I spotted a narrow beam of light coming from a dense patch of conifers roughly two hundred metres along the road to the left. It vanished. Then it appeared again, darting across the woods before abruptly trailing off.

Excited, I ignored my limp and advanced as fast as I could in the direction of the light. Then I saw it. A tent! It was a treeplanter’s tent. It belonged to one of those veteran planters on my crew who preferred privacy to convenience, carving out a nook a healthy distance away from the main camp. Pushing forward, while looking over my shoulder for evidence of my stalker, I stumbled and tripped on the road directly in front of the tent, making a horrible racket, provoking a very irritated, “What the fuck!” from within. I didn’t bother answering back. What would I say?

I wasn’t worried about my stalker from that moment on. The main Quonset hut was dead ahead.

Throwing my gear to the ground with a thud, I barged into the Quonset hut and made a beeline for the kitchen. Not bothering to grab a plate or utensils, I plucked a quarter chicken from a large baking tray in the fridge and tore into it, consuming bones, cartilage and all. Another deep tray had what appeared to be perfectly cut squares of lasagna—I fished one out with my free hand and inhaled it within seconds. Feeling only slightly satiated, I plated two additional quarter chickens, two slabs of lasagna and made my way to a table near the wood stove—it was still throwing off heat from a cedar fire that had burned hours earlier. I took my time with this plate of food, glancing at my watch every now and then, replaying the events of my evening over and over in my mind.

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when I blew the candle out in my tent. I was asleep before my head settled into my pillow.

When I woke up it was 6:45 a.m. and Debbie was frantically unzipping the door to my tent. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “It’s quarter to seven. The trucks leave in fifteen minutes.” After I gave her a quick summary of what I had endured only hours earlier, she raced back to the Quonset hut, packed a lunch and tossed a heap of scrambled eggs into a plastic bag for me. When I arrived at the staging area where the entire crew was assembled, only a handful of people were aware of my little adventure. Of those, several erupted into spontaneous applause; others simply pointed in my direction and laughed. I spotted Barrett on the sidelines shaking his head. He wasn’t sure what to think.

I later learned that the drumming I heard from the top of the ridge, immediately prior to spotting the distant glow from our camp, was a drum circle that had apparently built up to a climax at around that time—an obnoxious climax no doubt, but one that couldn’t have been better timed. I developed a much greater tolerance for bongos after that episode.

And without the freaked-out treeplanter who probed the woods with his flashlight, unable to make heads or tails out of the horrible racket taking place a short distance his tent—I’m not sure I would have found my way home.

My final tally from the day before: 1,450 trees. My stalker, an enormous male black bear, was spotted along the road outside camp later that day. Denny apparently dealt with it, firing off several warning rounds with his shotgun. That bear was never seen again.

I was a minor celebrity that morning after my story circulated among the three crews. But by mid-morning, by the end of my second run, it became just another day on the slopes.

1. “Tree scores” or “tree totals” are the number of seedlings an individual manages to plant during the course of their day. These numbers are diligently collected and recorded at the end of each day for accounting and payroll purposes.

2. A “cache,” “tree cache” or “road cache” refers to a stockpile of seedlings that is strategically positioned along a roadside for treeplanters to draw from as they work their land. Each cache of trees is covered with a bright white Silvicool tarp—a tarp made with a special reflective material that keeps the fragile young seedlings cool and moist, even when exposed to direct sunlight.

3. A “trike” is a three-wheeled all-terrain vehicle (ATV). By the late 1980s it was taken off the market due to its instability on rough, steep terrain.

4. “Bag-up” or “bagging-up” refers to the process of loading one’s treeplanting bags full of seedlings in preparation for a run.