Читать книгу Highballer - Greg Nolan - Страница 8

By week four our first contract of the season was winding down. Those of us who began the season as hapless rookies had become, by some minor miracle, treeplanters.

We were a proud lot, though we were all still adjusting to life in a remote camp. Toward the end of the last shift of the contract I began experiencing severe stomach cramps. Actually, a number of people in camp suffered from a similar malady. Playing amateur sleuth, following the downward track of the intake hose from the water pump, I found a possible cause for the intestinal distress: we appeared to be sucking water straight from the creek. Back then, it was often argued that if your creek water was running cold and fast, it was safe to drink directly from the source. I don’t recall if Barrett had installed a filter farther up the water line, but most treeplanting camps operated without any sort of water filtration system back then. Parasite and protozoa exposure was typical.

At the time, there didn’t seem to be any real urgency to enforce a list of camp standards. There was no government oversight—not that I can recall anyway—no outside controls of any kind. It was like the Wild West in many ways. I suppose the stomach bugs we endured were a small price to pay for the freedoms we enjoyed. Bureaucrats have a way of ruining a good party.

As it turned out, Kelly, the foreman with the highest-producing crew in Barrett’s arsenal, drafted both Debbie and me. My average daily production was slightly above the crew average at sixteen hundred trees. At 11¢ per tree, that worked out to $176 per day. In 1983 dollars, that had the same buying power as about $400 in 2019. For a nineteen-year-old kid fresh out of high school, that was a king’s ransom.

For the final three days of the contract, Debbie and I were instructed to plant together, side by side. I believe Kelly, who was paid a commission based on our daily tree totals, hoped to motivate Debbie to up her game. For me, this was a very agreeable arrangement.

Like me, Debbie was extremely competitive. She strived to match me step for step, tree for tree. She also liked to clown around, injecting her uniquely twisted brand of comedy into our day in order to break up the routine. Sometimes, at the end of a particularly difficult run, she’d stop, turn and belt out a few lines of an Ethel Merman tune at the top of her lungs. I lost it every single time. It was right around that point in our friendship that I realized that I needed to be with this woman. I loved everything about her: the shimmer in her deep green eyes (I could swim in those eyes), her lithe frame, her nonchalance about having mud on her face, the sweet aroma of her jasmine oil, her flawless Ethel Merman impersonation. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman, even though I knew I was nowhere near her equal—intellectually or emotionally.

The atmosphere around camp on the final night of the Purden Lake contract was jubilant. We were a tight crew. We were happy with the money we were making and our energy was good. We were also on the cusp of a two-day break. There was going to be a party in camp that night, the only question being: What form would it take?

It was from this buoyant reservoir of high spirits that the idea of a talent show surfaced. It seemed that everyone had something (or someone) that they wanted to interpret in their own way, in their own special humiliating way. The idea snowballed in a matter of minutes. Chairs were all turned toward the stage and people began huddling together in small troupes, hatching basic storylines for their moment in the spotlight.

Performances ranged from impromptu skits to poetry readings; from duelling bongos to John Wayne impersonations. Some of it was top-shelf entertainment. A couple of smartasses even decided to re-enact my long trek home from the cutblock that one night. Toward the end, as the creative juices began to ebb, people began pointing in my direction. It seemed to be a given that I’d break out my acoustic guitar for the final act of the evening. Truth was, I hadn’t touched my guitar in over a month. It was lying on the floor of my tent, in its case, covered in candle wax, work socks and underwear nightcaps. When I announced that I had no intention of playing—due to a swollen injured index finger—people unleashed a chorus of boos and hisses. Luckily, I was saved by a bright set of headlights spotted off in the distance, making their way toward camp. It was the head forester from the logging company. In the back of his truck were two large metal tubs filled with crushed ice and beer. It was his way of thanking us for planting healthy seedlings all across his division. Within minutes, there was an orgy of drinking, smoking, music and dancing inside the Quonset hut and out.

Copious amounts of cannabis were being consumed that night, and everyone seemed to be partaking except for a small group of new arrivals who were keeping to themselves. Among this group was a medical student named Dr. Josh. Josh was an interesting study. The man oozed charisma. He towered over us all at six foot seven and had a booming voice to match his imposing frame. He spoke his mind, and he liked to stir the pot. As a large hippy circle materialized outside—it rotated participants in such a way that everyone could pause and greet the person next to them, saying the first thing that came to mind before shifting to the person next in line—Josh and I watched wide-eyed from the sidelines. When the leader of the swirling mass of love and patchouli graciously encouraged Josh and me to join in, Josh, without skipping a beat, bellowed out, “We’re good eyeballing it from here for now.” I was pretty open-minded back then. I was curious. It appeared to be a little too delightful for Josh, though. He nudged my shoulder and proposed, a little louder than necessary, “Let’s go shotgun some beer, young fella.”

It was a great night. I was really beginning to feel as if I had found my place on Barrett’s crew. The night would have been even greater had Debbie not made a point of reminding me that she was meeting her boyfriend in town the very next day while we were on our break. She retired early that night in order to be fully rested. I was a little hurt when she abandoned me, but there were plenty of distractions to be had that night.

The next morning, as the sun emerged from the cold eastern horizon, there was no time for hangovers or leisurely sleep-ins. The breakfast horn sounded at 7:00 a.m. and within one hour, the camp was completely dismantled, the Quonset hut lying flat on the ground like a giant deflated hot-air balloon. Gear was packed into large wooden crates, and a long line of trucks were idling, waiting, ready to receive their loads. What was once a thriving community, a myriad of multicoloured tents spread out across four acres of wilderness, was now a string of tightly packed bundles assembled neatly on the side of the road, ready to be tossed aboard any vehicle with extra room. I remember being struck by the contradictions in this crew, from a gyrating mass of free-hippy-love-shit to a tight unit working with military discipline in the space of only a few hours.

As I helped load the trucks, Barrett approached me and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking care of one of his four-by-fours over the course of our break. That’s when I knew I was officially in. Barrett took great care in assigning responsibility for his vehicles. I was a bit blown away by the offer, which I eagerly accepted, and suddenly I found myself with a great set of wheels to boot around in during my two days of R and R.

When a treeplanting crew arrives in a community, it’s akin to a circus rolling into town. We attract attention. We stand out with our parade of bush vehicles, our trailers loaded down with ATVs and gear, our wild hair and free-hippy-love-shit attire. Our hacky sack circles and impromptu jam sessions.

The Nechako Inn in Prince George was where every treeplanting company in the region settled themselves when they had time off between contracts. If you can imagine an uproarious wall-to-wall house party, one that spills out onto the front lawn and into the street, that’s what the Nechako Inn was back in the day. It wasn’t unusual to have a group of complete strangers—planters from other companies—barge into your room in the middle of the night looking for a lost friend, a beer or a couch to crash on. Most of the rooms, which reeked of weed and tobacco smoke, were pockmarked with dozens of cigarette burns about the carpets and drapes. The mattresses on the beds were all well broken in—from what, I dared not imagine—and the fabric on the couches and chairs was tattered and threadbare. But strangely enough, there was an easy, comfortable feel to the place. We were at ground level. We were also all living on borrowed time with the next project looming over us like a menacing storm front on the horizon.

Prince George was a thriving resource town back then. There were a number of mills in the region that supported a significant percentage of the population, and they paid very decent wages. Judging by the quality of many of the stores, restaurants and watering holes in town, those wages were generously plowed back into the local economy. There was a small price to pay for all of this prosperity, though: the pulp and paper mills belched out so much sulphur in their emissions, it was nearly impossible to escape the stench of rotting eggs. The locals proudly referred to this as the “smell of money.” After a few hours in town, the olfactory senses somehow seemed to adapt.

While walking the streets of Prince George during my first real day off in four weeks, I marvelled at the number of treeplanters that had descended on the poor town. We were everywhere. We stood out, easily identified by our filthy work clothes and long hair; our backpacks and hacky sacks. It was a total invasion—I’m sure that was how the locals viewed it. We jaywalked along every street, forcing traffic to a standstill. We travelled in mobs. We monopolized public places. Worst of all, we formed drum circles in the middle of busy sidewalks, often near the entrances to health-food stores and all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants. It was a spectacle. If it wasn’t for the fact that we were all flush with cash, we likely would’ve been rounded up, issued one-way bus tickets and stuffed on the next coach headed back east.

Our second contract of the season was along Williston Lake. I had never even heard of Williston Lake, a 250-kilometre-long monstrosity created by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. There were no roads leading into this project, so Barrett had arranged for two water taxis and a barge to transport our trucks, camp and crew to a point along the lake where a series of logging roads had been pushed in, approximately halfway up the extremely remote eastern shore.

After one night at the Nechako Inn, a night that resulted in precious little rest or relaxation, I drove to the town of Mackenzie, where our trucks were to be loaded onto a barge later that evening. After dropping off Barrett’s truck at the loading dock, I hooked up with the crew at a small motel at the edge of town where we all settled in for the night. It was a peaceful and uneventful night—until about two in the morning. That’s when James, the hardest core of all hardcore treeplanters, spotted a peeping Tom outside of Debbie’s bedroom window. A frantic chase over concrete, one that echoed across the motel compound and through our open windows, was followed by a cacophony of angry shouts and piercing screams. Too exhausted to investigate, and not entirely convinced that the commotion didn’t emanate deep from within my own dream world, I kept my head on the pillow. As the story was brought to light early the next morning, it appeared that James had caught the pervert peeping into Debbie’s bedroom window, chased him down and then proceeded to open up a can of whoop-ass. Barrett would later be heard to say, “You just had to know James was involved…”

The next morning, as we waited in the motel parking lot for a fleet of vans to transport us to our water taxis, I spotted Debbie moping around outside her motel room. I approached her cautiously and asked how she was coping after the peeping Tom incident. She blew it off, saying that she wasn’t even aware of the commotion, having slept right through it. She wasn’t functioning all that well. Her boyfriend had bailed on their planned two-day retreat, coming up with some lame excuse as to why he couldn’t make the trip up north from Vancouver. It was plain to me that she was hurting, but she wasn’t willing to admit it. Desperate to see her glow restored, I asked her, “What would Ethel say?” Without skipping a beat, she launched into an unbelievable rendition of Ethel’s “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” complete with flailing arms, gyrating hips and stomping feet. I lost it. Fits of laughter swept across half of the crew—the other half stood stunned, unable to calculate what the fuck was going on.

After packing ourselves into two big shiny aluminum water taxis, we began our long journey up Williston Lake. Cruising along the eastern edge of the reservoir, we spotted tree stumps dotting the shoreline and, occasionally, the black weathered tops of mature trees jutting straight out of the water, only metres from our boat. Apparently, when the construction of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam was given the green light back in the 1960s, a decision was made to leave much of this great northern forest standing. Vast expanses of conifer and deciduous trees were simply left to drown. It was a political decision—politicians needing to get things done fast in order to get re-elected and all. Even at my young, naive age, Williston Lake stood out to me as a monumental environmental disaster. With all of this devastation as our backdrop, a sombre mood hung over our crew that morning. The dark grey skies that challenged us in the distance offered little solace.

Our destination that morning turned out to be a narrow stretch of hard-packed sand, and what appeared to be a concrete ramp protruding from the water’s edge. This was the genesis of the road system that would lead us inland to our project area. Creating an insurmountable barrier just beyond the ramp, however, was a four-metre-high wall of beached logs, one that stretched hundreds of metres in both directions. Our trucks were nowhere in sight. Radioing the barge captain from the water taxi, we discovered that he had arrived earlier that morning, discovered the huge volume of wood onshore—a consequence of several violent spring storms—and was forced to head back down the lake in order to pick up a large backhoe. His plan was to use the backhoe to punch a hole through the wall of wood—one large enough for him to offload our vehicles and send us on our way. In the meantime, we were stuck without our trucks for at least three or four hours.

Visible through the trees on the other side of the giant pile of beached logs, about half a kilometre inland, were several long rows of red and white trailers. It was a logging camp. With nothing else to do, nowhere else to go and with the skies threatening to open up on us, we grabbed our packs, bid farewell to our boat captains, climbed the wall of wood and cautiously made our way toward the camp.

As we entered the compound it was immediately obvious that it was an inactive camp—a ghost camp. It was clear that it hadn’t been occupied for a good many years—perhaps decades—judging by the condition of the mattresses and furniture in the trailers. But it was shelter nonetheless, and the weather was unsettled and threatening.

Having scoped out several of the least offensive rooms, we packed ourselves in and tried to relax while we waited for the barge to return. Curt, veteran treeplanter and designated camp musician, pulled out his guitar and began grinding out a few Neil Young tunes while we settled in.

Curt was a gentle, wise and thoughtful man. He always paused to consider what you were saying before responding. I really liked that about him. He also had one eye that slightly crossed over toward the other. He wasn’t self-conscious about it, not in the least. I liked that about him too. His partner was a black lab named Jessy, who Curt liked to burden with a backpack, one designed to carry precisely one hundred seedlings. With his backpack loaded, Jessy would hang out in the shade until Curt needed trees. “I feed him chow, he feeds me seedlings—that’s a fair division of labour,” Curt liked to say. One day, halfway through the first contract, while on his way to deliver trees to Curt, Jessy picked up on the scent of something he couldn’t resist and gave chase. When he finally returned, panting from exhaustion, his tree bags were empty, having been jostled free during the wild chase through the woods. Curt didn’t like being reminded of that little episode.

In the first two weeks of the season, Curt had urged me to join him up on stage with my guitar in the evenings. I rejected his invitations, time and again. One night, after listening to the same old litany of tired excuses, he advised, “You need to find a balance here—you’re missing out on some really cool shit, man.”

I happened to be carrying my acoustic guitar with me on the water taxi that morning. It was too valuable to risk sending off on the barge unattended. Having several hours of downtime until the barge arrived, I decided to take it out and tune it up in front of Curt. His face lit up like a pinball machine.

Curt was prepared. Apparently, he’d had a good listen to the cassette tape I sent to my sister months earlier and knew that I wasn’t much of a rhythm guitar player. He understood that I was more into improvising rather than providing a foundation for others to play off of. He understood that I was selfish, that I liked to show off. The guitar rhythm he laid down for me was inspiring. We were off. Within a matter of minutes, we had twenty-five people packed into our tiny room and at least a dozen more in the hallway trying to squeeze inside. I’ll never forget Barrett pushing his maps aside, turning his clipboard upside down and using it as a drum (thank goodness everyone’s bongo drums were safely stowed away on the barge miles offshore). We played for well over an hour, and it was an incredibly moving experience for both of us. In my six years of obsessing on the frets, three of which were spent experimenting with a number of different bands, rarely had I achieved that level of musicianship. We would have continued playing long into the mid-morning drizzle if it weren’t for the mysterious truck that pulled into the camp compound and blasted its horn.

From an old beat-up pickup truck, an elderly First Nations gentleman emerged, leaving a wide-eyed young girl behind in the front seat. He was more than a little overwhelmed when all forty of us spilled out of the gutted trailer. After hearing our story and shaking a half-dozen outstretched hands, his relief was palpable. He immediately asked us if we had any food. When Barrett threw his hands up in the air and joked about sending a small crew out into the woods to forage for grubs, the old guy, without saying a word, jumped back into his truck and sped off.

The sun had just broken through the clouds when he returned thirty minutes later. Without ceremony, he and his granddaughter, Anna, pulled down the tailgate to his truck, spread out a woollen blanket and carefully began laying out an assortment of local delicacies. There were jars of fish, bright red fillets of smoked trout, an assortment of pickled vegetables and two tall stacks of fried bannock. The outpouring of gratitude from every one of us nearly brought the old man to tears. Young Anna took the opportunity to mingle with the ladies on the crew, and before long, they were pampering her with every indulgence one might expect from a five-star spa. She sat propped on Debbie’s knee while several of the girls worked on styling her hair, dabbing her with various perfume oils and applying “stuff” to her tiny excited face. It was a beautiful scene.

It was late in the afternoon when Dr. Josh, while engaged in a spirited round of hacky sack with the crew’s French Canadian “hacky contingent,” hollered with an outstretched finger in an exaggerated French Canadian accent, “Oua de la barge!” (I don’t think Josh was much of a francophone.) That put an abrupt end to the festivities.

Positioned at the front of the barge was a large backhoe, and within minutes, it was up on the beach busily tossing logs in all directions. Within fifteen minutes, there was a gap in the wall of wood large enough to allow our vehicles to pass through. And just like that, we were a mobile crew again.

Bidding our First Nations friends farewell triggered the waterworks. Poor little Anna didn’t want the afternoon to end. Her grand­father did his best to comfort her as we pulled away, but she couldn’t hold back the tears. I don’t think there was a dry eye among the crew either. We later learned that Anna’s family was employed by the logging company to provide “care and maintenance” for the camp. It must have been extremely lonely for them in such a remote setting.

After a forty-five-minute drive through a succession of clearcuts and patches of mature virgin timber, across fast-running creeks and a river, our convoy came to rest in the middle of a large clearcut at the edge of a riparian zone—a lush oasis of trees and running water that was left untouched by the logging company.¹ This wasn’t just any large clearcut. This was truly epic in scale.

It was apparent that we were about to set up our camp along the edge of the largest cutblock on the contract. Every square inch of land around us, right up to our tent pegs, would soon bear our seedlings. The fact that we would be walking to work, rather than driving, for the first few shifts of the contract anyway, spelled opportunity. I was planting an average of sixteen hundred trees per day at that point. I calculated that by working an extra hour or two each day, I could potentially tack several hundred additional trees onto my daily average. That would put me in the running to become Barrett’s top planter—his top highballer. It was a ridiculous goal, especially for a rookie working among some of the best planters in the sector, but it became my objective nonetheless. It wasn’t just a greed thing, it was a satisfaction thing. I felt sufficiently motivated to make my mark.

It was getting late in the day and we needed to erect a fully functional camp by sunset. We all knew what to do and we threw ourselves at the task. Due to the extended time frame of the project—six weeks—an effort was made to create a more comfortable and fulsome setting. After the Quonset hut and kitchen were squared away, a spacious shower complex with multiple wings was envisaged, as was a sauna. Both structures were masterfully constructed, limb by limb, plank by plank, under the bountiful shade of the conifers that lined the edge of our cold-running creek.

With only thirty minutes of light remaining in the day, I followed the perimeter of our riparian zone and discovered a lush opening in the trees, some 250 metres away from our little village. The spot had shade, it was private and it was far enough away from the sounds of the camp generator—a very important consideration (Denny started his day at 4:30 a.m. and his first order of business was cranking up the camp generator in order to light his way around the kitchen). The generator weighed well over a hundred pounds and it made a racket. If you were camped too close to the kitchen and were a light sleeper, as I was, you risked being robbed of precious sleep. Of course, there’s always a risk in separating yourself from the herd. There was a robust bear population in the area, and having been stalked earlier in the season, I moderated an internal debate. Peace, quiet and solitude won out in the end.

Having pitched my tent and arranged my bedding, I stood back and witnessed the last vestiges of light retreating from the stealthy approach of night. The luxuriant canopy above my campsite filtered a setting sun that cast a smoldering orange glow across the late evening sky. I was spellbound. It was a superb moment, one of cogitation and inward reflection. Aside from a few distant female voices, the only sounds I could detect were from leaves fluttering in the caress of a soft breeze above, and the gentle lapping of water from the brook below. This would be my home for the next six weeks.

Supper was late that night and, as predicted, very simple. Setting up the kitchen, unpacking, arranging and storing the tons of food that accompanied us left limited time for Denny to fuss over an elaborate dinner. On the menu that night: spaghetti with meat sauce and salad. Even the simplest of meals taste absolutely amazing when you’re camped out under a big beautiful northern British Columbia sky.

There were several new additions to the crew, and curiously, one of the new girls seemed to know Barrett rather well. They both appeared to be quite taken with one another. Barrett and my sister lived together, as far as I knew, but I wasn’t privy to their exact arrangement as a couple (my sister and I rarely communicated—I hadn’t actually seen her in over eight years at the time). As I watched Barrett and the new girl, Brandi, disappear into Barrett’s trailer later that evening, I simply assumed that he and my sister had an open relationship. As I would soon discover, there were a few characters around camp who had wives and significant others back home, something you never would have guessed judging by the company they entertained in their tents at night. The whole situation was far too sophisticated for me. I was strictly a one-woman kind of guy.

As I entered the Quonset hut the next morning for breakfast, I spotted Debbie at a table near the wood stove. As usual, she had a seat reserved just for me. By that time, the majority of the crew suspected that we were a couple, though it wasn’t even remotely true, even if we were openly affectionate toward one another.

Debbie confessed that she was still in a funk over her boyfriend, “Mr. No-Show,” having broken his promise to meet her in town during the break between contracts. She said that she was considering giving him an ultimatum, or just ending it outright. In deference to her fragile emotional state, I feigned regret, but secretly, selfishly, I was excited at the prospect of seeing that relationship end. Then an extraordinary thing occurred: Barrett and Brandi sat down directly across from us.

Barrett and I had never broken bread together and suddenly here we were, on a double date. In hindsight, I think he needed to know that I was cool with his arrangement with Brandi. It would have been impossible to hide, after all. Determined to set his mind at ease and establish once and for all that I really didn’t care—that his personal life was none of my damn business—I broke the awkward silence by floating the idea of working extra hours. To my relief Barrett embraced the idea. “Whatever turns your crank, kid,” he said. Curiously, Brandi also expressed interest in working extra hours, if I didn’t mind the company in the evenings. Debbie immediately registered her opposition to that idea by poking me under the table, then quickly changed the subject by asking Brandi what her major was at university.

Having the freedom to walk to work was a rare opportunity. On most days, I woke up at 4:00 a.m., packed an extra-large lunch, and began my lonely walk just as the sun began casting its first rays of light on my day. By the time the crew arrived on the block later that morning, I’d already have four hundred trees pounded into the ground and would be well into my second run of the day. When the planting day wound down at 4:30 p.m. and people began their long hike back to camp, I’d stick around for one more run.

I loved watching the long procession of treeplanters as they made their way home at the end of the day, walking along the path at the bottom of my piece, chatting away, oblivious to my toil on the slopes above. It was always a welcome event when someone suddenly spotted me from below and called out my name, tossing an enthusiastic wave, causing others to follow suit. As the procession faded from sight, their laughter and conversations trailing off in the distance, a strange and heavy silence would often settle in around me. It was then, in those first few moments after losing visual contact with my crew, that I always felt exposed and vulnerable.

As I had discovered earlier in the season, there’s an indefinable atmosphere on the block when you’re the only one left standing in the middle of all of that wilderness. I loved pausing in those moments and scanning the rolling landscape. Every movement and vibration was significant. Even the sight of a small bird taking flight took on greater meaning. If I was high enough on the mountain, I could sometimes spot our Quonset hut off in the distance. The images shimmered. They didn’t seem real at times. It was like a mirage as rising hot air along the ground played havoc with the light. Sometimes, I could make out the larger, more colourful tents that were tucked in against the lush halo of our riparian zone. I wasn’t able to spot movement, though, no matter how hard I focused. If the wind was just right, however, I could sometimes hear voices emanating from camp, often as if they were only metres away. This, I found most unsettling.

It wasn’t long before my early morning and late afternoon escapades earned me the nickname “Non-Stop.” My daily production soared to an average of 2,100 trees per day—$231 (equivalent to $525 today). There was a price to pay for this crazy pace, though. After arriving home late in the evening, I was too exhausted to appreciate the rich, festive atmosphere at camp. For some, the money and the positive camp energy were on equal terms. For others, their primary reason for hooking up with Barrett’s company was to bask in an atmosphere and lifestyle that they could not find anywhere else, in any other profession, or at least with any other treeplanting company. I was aware that I was depriving myself of a good many positive social experiences, but it was a sacrifice I felt compelled to make.

Many people, after hearing Curt and me play together at the ghost camp earlier in the week, expected us both to grace the Quonset hut stage each night. I rarely had enough energy to shower in the evenings, let alone perform in front of an audience. This bummed out more than a few people.

I promised Curt that I’d jam with him on the eve of the first day off. And of course, being the perfectionist that I was, I worried all through the final day of the shift that my guitar playing would fall flat. But as usual, my nervous energy morphed into creativity, and after several shots of tequila from Debbie’s private stock, Curt and I produced some exceptionally stirring rhythms and melodies.

It was a wonderful scene in camp that night. The front panel of the Quonset hut had been unzipped and pulled away, extending our view from the stage down to the sauna and creek where a dozen naked bodies excitedly rotated back and forth between the hot and the cold. As the sun began to set, a large pile of wood was gathered and set ablaze. There was drinking, dancing, singing and laughter. Veteran planters on the crew couldn’t recall ever seeing spirits so high. After fulfilling my musical obligation, Debbie and I raided the kitchen for lemons and salt, cuddled up in front of the fire, and went to work polishing off the remainder of her pure blue agave nectar.

The latter part of that evening took on a warm and fuzzy quality. We talked about everything, from past relationships to our favourite pizza toppings. As the night wore on and people began drifting off to their tents, I summoned the courage to tell her how I really felt about her, but she interrupted me in mid-sentence, saying, “I need more time to think. I still have feelings for…” I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hurt. She was thinking more about him than me, at that very moment. It was more than my little brain could process emotionally. I abruptly rose to my feet and walked away, leaving her to gather up her things and clean up the mess we’d made around the fire with our discarded lemon peels, empty cups and bottle.

I wasn’t quite halfway to my tent when I suddenly realized what an idiot I was. I couldn’t allow her to navigate through the dark alone. I ran back to the fire, grabbed the stick that held the most flame and ran after her. She laughed as I attempted to light the way back to her tent, saying softly, “I know you’re one of the good ones, Non-Stop.”

It was the final week of May and the midday sun was unrelenting. My water intake increased to over eight litres per day as sweat gushed from every pore in my body. It had become so hot, I was unable to maintain normal eating habits. I couldn’t eat breakfast. Barrett, instinctively knowing how our appetites would change as daytime temperatures rose, shipped in two tons of Granny Smith apples from New Zealand. These apples were very high quality—individually wrapped in green tissue, thirst quenching, satisfying. My lunch breaks involved jamming a fist full of crackers into my mouth, chasing them down with several large gulps of tepid water, devouring an apple or two, core and all, and repeating the same drill over again. Lunch was usually over in less than five minutes.

The concept of staying in motion took on a new urgency at this time as well. In the early morning and evening hours, hordes of no-see-ums and mosquitoes swarmed us relentlessly. As the morning chill lifted and the temperature began to rise, clouds of blackflies descended on us, dogging our every move, taking particular interest in our faces. When the sun was at its highest point in the sky, sorties of horseflies and deer flies bombarded us from every direction—wave upon wave, determined to tear small chunks of flesh from our exposed arms and necks. There was no relief unless you were willing to apply 100 per cent DEET to your exposed skin, and even then, it was only effective if you didn’t sweat it off. I sweat my DEET off within minutes. People fashioned hijabs and other forms of headgear out of towels and shirts, soaking them in bug dope in an attempt to escape the torment.² When an angry yell or scream was heard from across the block—and these were frequent occurrences—it was almost always bug related. Worst of all, no matter how vigilant you were in swatting insects away from your face, it was only a matter of time before a blackfly bit you on that special spot near your eye that caused your eyelid to swell shut, usually for the better part of a week, giving you the appearance of having just wandered off the set of a zombie flick.

People began to drop weight, often dramatically so. Even though I tried to make up for lost calories at dinner, I was shedding pounds faster than I could tack them back on. I began wearing a belt for the first time in years as my pants were falling off my hips.

By mid-contract, we had exhausted all of the ground within walking distance of camp. Sadly, my early morning escapades came to an end, but I kept working in the evenings. Barrett would leave a trike for me on the block—a trike that I had no trouble operating—allowing me to put an extra run in after everyone else called it a day. When I arrived back in camp later in the evening, I could always count on Debbie to greet me at the edge of camp, eager to get me caught up on all of the gossip she’d overheard at dinner. She’d sit with me in the Quonset hut while I devoured my dinner, picking away at her dessert and watching with incredulity as I inhaled one course after another.

One evening after I arrived back at camp a little later than usual, Debbie was nowhere to be found. Brushing aside vague feelings of abandonment, I used the opportunity to take a shower before dinner (the shower tent was nearly always empty in the evenings as people preferred to get clean immediately after work). Just as I was getting lathered up, I heard someone walk past outside and run a hand across the tarpaulin wall. Then the door opened and closed. I had company.

These showers were slightly more private than the setup in the previous camp. Rather than one large open space, there were three medium-sized compartments with two shower heads in each. A six-foot-high tarpaulin separated each compartment. Paying no attention to the person undressing in the next stall over, I gave myself a final rinse and reached for my towel. Then, suddenly, through the layers of mist and steam, a soft, sultry voice inquired, “How was your day, Non-Stop?” I remember wrestling with a temporary stammer as the honeyed tones of Debbie’s query pinged and echoed across every cell in my body. “Ah, ahhhh…good…great!” I finally managed.

Here was the one woman I adored more than any other on the entire planet, naked, showering a few feet away with only a thin sheet of plastic separating us. She asked if I wanted to try some of her shampoo, an intense mint-oil concoction that was popular among treeplanters back then. I accepted and stepped back under the generous spray. As she struggled to pass the heavy jug over our tarpaulin divider, I spotted beautiful chestnut brown freckles randomly and wonderfully distributed across her bicep and forearm. As I considered this exquisite little facet of her anatomy, I realized how much of a mystery she still was to me.

That may have been the longest shower of my young life, with Debbie occupying one side of the tarpaulin divide, me the other, each savouring the moist steamy environment, getting caught up on each other’s day. Of course, my mind raced, wondering if there was greater significance to the encounter—something more meaningful than merely washing away the day’s sweat and grime. One thing was for certain: if her intent was to drive me crazy, she had succeeded admirably. I hoped that this shower routine would become our “new thing.”

After our showers, as we were making our way to the Quonset hut, Debbie warned me that there was a scandal brewing in camp. Some of the treeplanters’ wives back on Cortes Island had been alerted that their men were sharing tents with some of the young ladies in camp (a number of people on the crew called Cortes home, including Barrett and my sister Lina). Apparently, one of the foremen who had been busted—a twitchy character named Ted—was livid, determined to find out who the whistleblower was. Rumour was, I was at the very top of his suspect list.

Halfway through my dinner that night, Ted marched in to the Quonset hut and interrupted my supper with a blunt and accusatory, “We need to talk.” I didn’t like Ted. I hadn’t liked him from the very beginning, especially after he labelled our rookie crew “The Lunch Bunch” after spotting us taking a break together on the side of the road on our first day of the season. He was, for lack of a better term, a major-league douchebag. He was a condescending prick who liked to peacock around camp as if he owned the place. With his chest pounding and the veins in his neck appallingly distended, he leaned across the table and with a hoarse whisper said, “Your sister informed my wife that I was sleeping with Jennifer.” I was in no mood for drama that evening and simply replied, “What the fuck do you want me to do about it, Ted?”

Before I could expand on that sentiment, Barrett, who had been listening in from the next table over, chimed in with, “Let the kid eat his dinner, Ted—can’t you see he’s on a date?” Debbie howled out loud with laughter at the suggestion, and Ted shrivelled to half his size and stormed out of the Quonset hut, tripping and nearly falling flat on his face in the process.

As the contract stretched out into June, Debbie and I grew even closer. We continued to spend our evenings together. I showed her how to play a few chords on my guitar. She even stayed late with me on the block a few times to tack a few hundred extra trees onto her score. Regrettably, intimate evening showers did not become our “new thing,” but I sensed that she was beginning to look at me in a different way. After everything I had experienced over the previous two months, I was also beginning to think differently about myself.

As we entered week five of the contract, and week nine of the season, I began to notice a change in the crew. Beaten down by the extreme heat, bugs, and general state of exhaustion, people began retiring to their tents earlier in the evening. There was less celebrating. There was less music. Even Curt, who was normally good for an hour or two of pickin’ and grinnin’, limited his sets to only twenty or thirty minutes per night. And there was something going on with the hardcore smokers on the crew. They were running out of tobacco. The ubiquitous pouches of loose tobacco that were generally left unattended on the dining tables in the Quonset hut were now being scooped up and pocketed when not in use. Tobacco had suddenly become a rare commodity, and a carefully guarded one at that.

In the trucks, on the way to work, we speculated on the desperate times that lay ahead for smokers unless Barrett was able to find a way to bring more in. We had a shipment of provisions barged in earlier that week, but tobacco wasn’t on the list. The smokers joked about how they would soon be forced to raid the dirty stinking ashtrays in the trucks. I thought they were jesting. They were not! There came an evening when they collectively raided the ashtrays in all of the trucks, sifting through nine weeks’ worth of discards, sorting and grading the used butts according to their level of raunchiness. Nothing was thrown out, though. Eventually, even the raunchiest of the lot were pulled apart, re-rolled and smoked. When the supply in the trucks was exhausted, the discarded butts that had been ground into the dirt outside the Quonset hut were next. Big Tobacco really had these poor folk by the short and curlies.

As our spring season entered its final shift, the black bears, which until then had kept a healthy distance from our camp, became bolder, attempting to break into the kitchen and Quonset hut late at night. One of the girls who was camped in proximity to the kitchen claimed that a black bear had actually poked its head in through the front door of her tent. That explained the blood-curdling screams I woke up to at 2:00 a.m. Curiously, these Williston Lake black bears all sported beautiful white patches on their chests, some larger than others, but always prominent. It gave them a cuddly-looking quality and we always stopped our trucks to admire them whenever they were spotted on the road. But beyond a few isolated incidents, they didn’t pose much of a threat, and they remain a fond memory—one of the few fond memories I have involving bears while camping in remote locales.

We were coming down to the final few days of the contract, and as I would soon discover, these were often stressful times for the crew. People would grow anxious in the final push. We always knew the number of trees that remained to be planted, and in the final few days, simple arithmetic revealed the exact number of trees each planter would be required to plant in order to draw the contract to a close. Often that number overwhelmed people. Adding to the stress of this particular contract, we were forced to abide by an inflexible barge schedule. Three days’ worth of trees would need to go into the ground in the space of two; otherwise we’d be forced to wait another five days for the next barge run.

A decision was made to start work an hour earlier the next morning, work a full day, drive back to camp for a one-hour supper break and then head back out to the block for an evening run. I was fine with the idea, but there was resistance among some of the more exhausted planters on the crew. When it came right down to it, we didn’t have a choice. Geographically isolated contracts often end in this manner. It seemed to be the rule, rather than the exception, as I would discover over time.

The second to last day of the contract was brutal. We needed to pound in an extraordinary number of trees that day, and we didn’t quite reach our goal. A decision was made to start even earlier the next day and work until the final tree went into the ground. We were encouraged to work together in small groups in order to play off one another’s energy. This made sense to me. Debbie and I decided to pair up, and we carefully scanned the crew for a third partner. Kevin!

Kevin was a bred and buttered Cortes Island boy. He was one of the more straightlaced and likable guys on the crew. He was clean-cut, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink and he was always polite, almost to a fault. He was also a fastidious man. He actually washed out his treeplanting bags at the end of each shift—no one on the crew had ever seen anything like it. And he planted with a mattock, an old-school pick-like tool that required an entirely different skill set to master. Kevin was the only treeplanter I have ever met who planted with such an archaic tool. Debbie and I both respected him for that.

Everyone retired to their tents shortly after finishing supper. Knowing that our time together was coming to an end, Debbie and I embraced each other longer than usual that evening. When she retreated to her tent, I found myself all alone in the Quonset hut. It was a strange feeling, being the only soul awake in camp while the sun was still visible on the horizon. I used the opportunity to fire up the generator and pump for a nice long shower. I had a lot to think about.

After ten minutes of squatting under the intense heat and spray generated by the two shower heads I had angled to form a single powerful stream, I barely noticed the sound of the shower door opening and closing. I expected Barrett, or one of the foremen, to barge in thinking someone had accidentally left the shower on, but the rap of the shower door was followed by silence. Then, softly, Debbie emerged from the layers of steam. She was wearing only a towel, which she allowed to drop to the ground the moment our eyes met. The image of her slowly advancing through the white vapor is one that is indelibly burned into my memory.

The final day of planting—the final day of my 1983 spring treeplanting season—was an emotionally charged experience. Barrett loaded Debbie, Kevin and me into his own personal truck and sped off ahead of the rest of the pack. A few minutes into the drive, Debbie leaned into my shoulder and fell fast asleep. We were both exhausted. We were too exhausted to show up for breakfast that morning. While attempting to choke down a few handfuls of granola for energy, I observed Barrett turning our truck onto a brand-new road system. We were to be “block-openers” on that final day of the season.

As we pulled into our new block, I nudged Debbie and directed her weary gaze toward the beautiful expanse of cream that was coming into view.³ With a grin on his mug, Barrett instructed us to plant down the slope against the forest line to our right, hook up with a riparian zone boundary half a kilometre below and plant single lines of trees through the cream until we were instructed to do otherwise. From a treeplanter’s perspective, it was a dream assignment. It was a massive area, encompassing at least one hundred acres. Normally it would take the three of us five or six days to plant an area that size. On that day, we would have company, eventually. Two or three other crews were expected to arrive by the end of the afternoon, promising to turn the area into an epic gang-plant.⁴

Debbie and I were operating on only three hours of sleep. It took an inordinate amount of effort just to put seedlings into our bags and strap them onto our hips. Looking down toward the bottom of our private cream-show, we observed a thin layer of fog hanging over the lower third of the block, obscuring our bottom boundary.

There might have been a half-dozen words spoken between us during that first hour. The only sounds produced by our little trio were those of our shovel and mattock blades stabbing the ground and the occasional involuntary grunt as we worked our roots into the soil. As we planted farther toward the bottom of the block, we were treated to the vibrations of rushing water. The source lay hidden, buried deep in the lush foliage of the riparian zone below.

This was not a day for individual achievement. When someone bagged-out early, they grabbed trees from the bags of the person planting beside them, repeating the gesture over and over until the entire group was completely bagged-out.

At the end of the first run, back at the treecache, Debbie glanced at her watch, sighed heavily and declared, “One run down…seven more to go.” This was going to be a long day, and emotionally, I was a wreck. The thought that I might not see Debbie again after this day was more than I could handle. I was gutted. But I managed to stay in character. Staying in motion helped conceal my anguish.

We worked at a steady pace all day long and by 3:00 p.m. there were ten additional planters in our area, turning our cream-show into a hub of activity. By 5:00 p.m. two more trucks loaded with planters had arrived and, as expected, the gang-plant was epic in scale. It’s an extraordinary sight watching two dozen planters lined up, side by side, three metres apart, taking out giant swaths of land in a single pass.

By 7:00 p.m., operating on only a few hours of sleep, a half-dozen pieces of fruit and a few handfuls of granola, our little trio was plucked off the gang-plant and put on yet another special mission. Barrett transported us to the other side of the riparian zone that served as our bottom boundary. There, a new cutblock opened up. Our instructions were simple: plant along the bottom of the cutblock, along the treeline, and continue planting until our roadside cache was exhausted. Though we couldn’t fully appreciate it at the time, this assignment was a gift. The perimeters of most Interior cutblocks were lined with a fire road or trail back then—a beautiful, dirty and yielding swath of ground that made planting nearly effortless. This cutblock had such a feature, but it was twice as wide as normal.

Barrett left us with eighteen hundred trees in our cache. We bagged-up with three hundred each and began pounding away. The ground was so clean and fast that we bagged-out in less than forty-five minutes. When we arrived back at our cache, Barrett had left us an additional 150 trees. Expecting that this would be our final run of the season, we bagged-up with 350 trees each. The weight on our poor hips and shoulders was brutal, but the weight comes off fast when you’re planting a tree every five or six seconds.

The sun was in full retreat when we bagged-out from our final run, and to our great relief, there were no more trees waiting for us at our cache. Our empty tree boxes had been broken down, flattened, and the tarp was folded—a clear indication that our day was done. The contract was over.

Tearing a page out of Karl Marx’s playbook, we decided to pool our trees together and split them evenly three ways. Our net result: 3,100 trees each. Not bad for a day when I was ready to quit before it even began.

There was no party or celebration back at camp that evening. People were struggling, even falling to the ground, as they attempted to extricate themselves from the back seats of their trucks when they arrived at camp. Some people didn’t even line up for supper—they simply staggered off in the direction of their tents. This crew was done.

I guess I wasn’t surprised when Debbie pulled away from me at the end of the evening, insisting that we retreat to our separate tents. This was her way, her first step in drawing our relationship to a close. Though she didn’t admit it, I got a sense that she was determined to rekindle her flame back home in Vancouver. I was too tired to think, and with a heavy heart I wandered back to my side of the woods and drifted off into a profound sleep.

The breakfast horn blew at 9:00 the next morning. By the time I arrived, half of the camp had already been torn down. The bright white and yellow canvas shell of the Quonset hut had already been stripped and folded, and only the metal frame was still erect, giving it the appearance of a giant prehistoric skeleton from a distance.

Barrett, his foreman and several veteran highballers were gathered around the only table still upright, some shaking their heads, some with incredulous expressions on their faces. When Barrett spotted me, his face lit up. Pointing in my direction, he called out, “There he is!” Motioning me to come join his circle of insiders, he declared that I was his top producer on the contract. I had planted more trees than even his most celebrated highballers. That felt pretty damn good, for a second or two; then I spotted Debbie toiling away in the kitchen trailer, helping Denny get things squared away. When she looked up and our eyes met, I detected no warmth, no longing, no affection. She wasn’t approachable. I kept my distance.

When the water taxis arrived to take us back to Mackenzie, Debbie boarded the second boat, choosing not to ride along with me in the first one. It was a long ride back to town. I isolated myself, avoiding the chatter that centred on topics like, “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get to town?” and, “Who’s the first person you’re going to call?” The banter was too carefree, too untroubled for the state of mind I was in. The smokers on the crew, who had just endured four days without nicotine, sat with their eyes fixed straight ahead, rocking back and forth in their seats. We knew what their first move would be once we landed, and one would be best advised not to stand in their way when the boat docked.

Back onshore, after the trucks were unloaded from the barge and people began to claim their seats, preparing for the long journey back to Vancouver, Debbie pulled away from the crowd, walked over to me and said goodbye. Our eyes locked for only a brief moment before she cast her gaze downward. Her eyes were puffy and red from tears—somehow I found comfort in her sadness. Before I could ask whether I could reach out to her the next time I was in Vancouver, she gave me a hug and quickly retreated back to her truck.

I wondered if I would ever see her again. To this day, some thirty-six years and a good handful of meaningful relationships later, my love for Debbie endures. Whenever I detect the scent of mint oil, lavender or jasmine, a melancholy rolls over me, nearly reducing me to tears.

Crazy thing: when I arrived back in Calgary late the next afternoon, I half expected a victory parade. After everything I had gone through, I expected people to stand up, take notice and give me my due. Of course, after planting for the better part of three months at a pace that could only be described as reckless, I was entitled to such delusions.

Exhausted, heartbroken and desolate, I landed on my sister’s doorstep and retreated to her guest bedroom. The next two weeks are a blur. They consisted of long periods of deep sleep and ruminations over lost love. I was inconsolable. I couldn’t steer my thoughts away from Debbie. Barely a second went by when I wasn’t thinking of her in some way.

As the summer matured and I began to heal, my thoughts eventually turned westward. I was waiting for the phone to ring. I was waiting for that important phone call from Barrett. It finally came late in the summer, just as the leaves around my sister’s neighbourhood were beginning to change colour.

1. A riparian zone refers to an area where land meets a river or stream. The interface between land and water is often dynamic. These zones are defined and recognizable by the abundance of trees and lush vegetation that border them.

2. “Bug dope” refers to bug spray or DEET insect repellent.

3. “Cream” refers to an exceptional piece of land that has light slash and soft, yielding soil. Basically, it’s fast ground and easy to plant.

4. “Gang-plant”: a large group of planters who descend on an area, typically toward the end of a contract, forming a line, planting side by side until the area, or the trees, are exhausted.