One morning, I wake up starting too warm, which is strange because it’s always freezing in the morning. Opening my eyes, it’s getting pretty light out. Also strange.
Oh my god, I think, fingers grasping around my pillow to find my iPod, I’ve slept in and missed all the trucks. Sure enough, when I finally find my iPod and press the button, it says 9:00. A solid two hours after the trucks have already left. Three hours since my alarm was supposed to go off. WhatdoIdoWhatdoIdo? This is so irresponsible and inconsiderate that nobody even bothered waking me up. Slowly making my way over to the mess tent, Cathy for some reason is still in camp and she keeps giving me angry looks. Nina and Bee ignore me. Nina and Bee! Two of the sweetest, friendliest souls on the planet and they won’t even acknowledge me!
Beepbeepbeepbeep! Beepbeepbeepbeep! Beepbeepbeepbeep!
My eyes jolt open with the shrill noise of the alarm on my iPod. Grasping around my pillow to find my iPod for a second time, I press the button to turn off that godawful noise. It’s 6:00. An hour before trucks leave. I just had a nightmare about sleeping in and missing the trucks. That’s like what Uncle Jim consciously has nightmares about me doing (and has told me) and I just unconsciously had that same nightmare. That actually just happened. Cathy hasn’t been giving any angry looks and nobody’s ignoring anybody.
On my way to the mess tent (for real this time), moving stiffly in the early morning chill, Kendall hurries up to me and says, “we’re trying to get to the truck early this morning. We’re on the same block as your uncle and Molly wants to get there first so we get the good side.”
Good luck to us, I think, Uncle Jim’s crew always gets to the block first. It’s his thing. Nevertheless, I throw my bags in the truck early and pack a lunch quickly: a wrap loaded with goat cheese, Bee’s baked nut-squares, celery and carrots, a jar of nuts and candy, and a sandwich bag of sliced oranges. Then I throw it into my block bag along with my filled water bottle, chug a cup of orange juice, fill a large mug with some of Nina’s delicious breakfast, and head out to the truck. It’s already started and Molly’s there hurrying our crew to get into the truck as fast as possible. Chad’s on our crew today instead of Jazzy and he’s the only one not in the truck by 6:50 (trucks leave at 7). Impatient, Molly leans out of the truck and stands up, turning back toward the mess tent.
“CHAD!” She screams as loud as she can muster, “CHAAAD! CHAAAAAAAD!”
“There he is,” Kendall says quietly from the front middle seat. I look past her from the back and see Chad awkwardly scuttling toward the truck with boots untied, block bag thrown uncomfortably over his shoulder, planting bags in one hand, and a thermos in the other (which looks curiously like the thermos I lost a few days ago…)
“I’m in, I’m in. Jesus.” He says after throwing his bags in the back and climbing into the passenger seat.
Molly howls in victory as she steps on the gas and pulls out of camp at 6:55, mere seconds before Uncle Jim’s truck.
The next day, we are on the same block with Uncle Jim again. I smile from my seat in the back as Uncle Jim’s truck pulls out at 6:50 but our truck still hasn’t started and Molly isn’t anywhere to be seen. By 7:00, all six of the other trucks are leaving and every member of our crew is in the truck except for Molly. We all wait patiently, hearing someone call my uncle over the radio over and over again, who apparently doesn’t have it turned on or something. Chad drinks casually from his thermos that still looks remarkably like my own lost thermos. At 7:05, Molly makes her way over to the truck and climbs in.
“Would you believe,” she says as she put on her seatbelt and starts the truck, “Stryker left without Candace!” Stryker, my uncle and my last name, is what everyone calls my Uncle Jim. He’s kind of a legend out here, but that’s another story.
“What??” we all say in disbelief.
“Yeah,” she says, pulling the truck into the driveway, “Get this: apparently he got so pissed off that we beat him to the block yesterday that he left 10 minutes early today. Candace wasn’t even in the truck yet! So I was just trying to figure out another ride for her - Vincent has an extra seat in his truck.”
“Did he know Candace was on his crew…?” I wonder aloud, already knowing the answer, “No, she’s been on his crew the whole season so far.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Chad says heatedly (he’s been known to respect but not work well at all with my uncle), “you can’t just leave without a member of your crew, even if they’re late!”
“No, you just scream their name from the truck,” Molly grins at Chad, who laughs in agreement, “but she wasn’t even late. They still had 10 minutes!”
We’re still talking about this as we see Uncle Jim’s truck pull back into the driveway. We stop to let Candace run in front of us, throw her bags into the dually on the back of Uncle Jim’s truck, and climb in. The guilty smile on Uncle Jim’s face is priceless as we start back up again and drive around them.
On the road, we see Francois, a member of Uncle Jim’s crew walking. Huh?? Apparently, rather than driving back to camp with Uncle Jim, Francois chose to get out of the truck and walk, Uncle Jim picking him up again on the way back. At 7am on a freezing cold morning, he chose to get out of the warm truck and walk. Huh?? He waves as we pass and we all wave back.
Arriving at the block first for the second day in a row, Jazzy hands me a pair of gaiters.
“Here,” she says, “I’m wearing my cork boots today, so I won’t be needing these.” I thank her and strap the gaiters around the tops of my boots and up to my knees.
“Chad, there’s a small piece over here that’s probably small enough for two people to go and fill,” Molly says, walking over to Chad with her finger on specific point on the map, “why don’t you and Kurt bag up and head over there?” Kurt is the other greener on our crew, but he is learning very quickly and Chad is a known highballer.
“Sure,” Chad shrugs, climbing into the dually to grab his bags and corks.
“Keep an eye on him; make sure he stays on track,” Molly says, “he’s good; he’s a strong planter. He just needs a strong male role model.” Chad bursts out laughing at this, jumping out of the truck and starting to put on his corks.
“Take me seriously, dammit!” Molly cries, jumping into the dually.
“I do take you seriously,” Chad laughs in response, “I just don’t take my job seriously.”
Once everyone has headed out into the block except for Kendall and I, I walk over to examine Chad’s thermos. Sure enough, it is completely identical to the one I bought at the Sparwood thrift store days ago and only used once.
“Chad’s totally using my thermos,” I say.
“Really??” Kendall laughs, “yesterday he was talking about how it was just sitting in the mess tent for two days so he took it. I was like ‘if it was in the mess tent, then it belongs to somebody’ but he used it anyway.”
“Ahh well,” I shrug, “I wasn’t using it anyway.” Glad to have that mystery solved though.
The gaiters work excellent today. I should really get a pair of these.
One day, the one ever-changing seat in our truck has been filled by Casper, a friend of Jazzy’s who has never planted before. Our morning drive is a solid hour before we finally make it to the block. We’re planting with two crews from Marty’s camp today. Marty is another Brinkman supervisor and operates a camp outside of Fernie, where this block is.
It’s freezing cold and raining as we all force ourselves out of the truck and begin taking tree boxes out of the back. Everyone is putting on their rain gear, but all I have are two dinky little emergency rain ponchos at the bottom of my day bag that I don’t bother digging out. I’m never going to actually use those.
We have about a 10-metre walk-in with full bags, but the block itself isn’t so bad. It’s good dirt and would be a relatively easy block if everything weren’t soaking wet and slippery. Corks would have prevented all this slipping. Once the first 20 or so trees are in the ground, the fingers in my left hand have thawed into feeling again and my right hand is stiffly frozen onto my shovel (which works quite well for planting). After another 20 trees, my right hand has begun to thaw as well, but now both hands are becoming wet. A few shifts ago, Jazzy gave me a pair of gardening gloves to use instead of the Sol-Vex gloves I’d been using before. They’re excellent in cool or hot weather, but they take in every drop of water that touches them. This freezing rain is sinking right into them. Also, of the two pairs of boots I own, I chose to wear the least waterproof boots today. Great.
While I’m still warm when I bag out, the walk out of the block is freezing. My fingers are no longer working so the soaking wet gloves are no longer warm against the freezing cold weather. The rain has almost completely soaked through my cotton jacket. Looking around, I can see thick snowflakes beginning to fall between the heavy raindrops.
Eventually, Kendall and I are at the back of the block together. One of the crews from Marty’s camp is supposed to meet us back there, but we aren’t running into any flagging from the other direction. Eventually, we both bag out and head back to the truck. My toes manage to remain warm as I keep walking, toes squishing into the socks soaked in rainwater that has become warm. Once we stop planting, however, I immediately feel my soaking gloves and all the freezing air around them; my fingers turn to ice the minute I stop reaching for more trees. It’s my chest that’s really disabling though; I begin to feel the cotton jacket that is now completely soaked. It’s like a freezing, wet claw grasping tightly to my chest and piercing into every other part of my body.
Upon reaching the truck, I immediately drop my shovel, rip off my bags, jump into the cab, and slam the door beside me. I eventually gather enough energy to rip off the gloves, unzip my jacket, peel it off along with my t-shirt, and throw them over the seat. I sit for several minutes in the warmth of not wearing those freezing wet clothes. Kendall joins me in the truck for a few minutes and we enjoy a few minutes of complaining to each other about the weather. She has an extra long-sleeve t-shirt and hands lets me borrow it for the day. Kendall is honestly the biggest life-saving sweetheart. I dig through my day bag to find the old Sol-Vex gloves I used to use, which are 100% waterproof and what I should have been using all day long. I also pull out one of those dinky little rain ponchos I was never actually going to wear. Desperate times call for desperate measures - I am actually going to wear it.
“I like your poncho,” Kendall laughs as I fill my bags and haul them up onto my waist, “You look like a superhero with your cape flying behind you.” I laugh and head back toward the block.
“Hey, Molly wants us to walk in until the line begins to turn,” Velma’s voice is exhausted as she makes her way out of the block. I nod my head in acknowledgement.
Oh fuck that, I scream in my head, Can you feel this weather?! Like hell we can handle a longer walk-in! I do walk until the line begins to turn though and it does work out just fine. The cold is much more bearable with waterproof gloves and chest protected from the rain. At one point, I pass Molly, who is planting several rows at a time beside Casper while showing him different techniques for planting. What a shitty day to start planting, I think.
At the back of the block, the other crew from Marty’s camp is still nowhere to be seen and Molly is clearly getting frustrated.
“They must have creamed out the front,” she snaps, “instead of planting all the way into this shit in the back.” She pulls out her radio and starts trying to contact the other crew.
Two hours later, I finish my bag-up and head back to the truck. Upon opening the door, I see a large ball of clothing in the middle of the back seat that I’m pretty sure has a human underneath.
“Hey, are you done for the day?” I ask.
The shivering pile of clothing nods.
“Are you okay?” I ask, “Do you want me to get Molly?”
“No, it’s fine,” Velma’s shaky voice quietly makes its way out of the clothing pile, “every part of my body is just so wet and cold. But don’t worry, if I stay here I’ll be fine. I just need to warm up.”
“Okay…” I say. I begin bagging up again. I know that if I take a few moments for a break in the truck, I’ll never leave it again. In the few minutes it takes to fill my bags up, my fingers and toes go completely numb through lack of movement and I begin to feel the chill of the wet sleeves where the poncho doesn’t reach. Get moving again, I mentally scream at myself, hauling the bags up onto my waist again and forcing a couple sips of water down my throat. I have to start putting trees in the ground or I will turn into an ice cube again.
On my way into the block, I see a figure ahead of me fall down, then struggle back up, waving at me in the process. Eventually, we make our way toward each other and I see that it’s Kendall, who is on her way out of the block.
“Hey do you wanna check on Velma when you get back to the truck?” I ask, “she’s in the truck and she’s so cold. Her voice sounds so shaky.”
“Aww, okay,” Kendall says sympathetically, “it’s such an awful day. I just fell flat on my face. And I’ve already poo-ed six times today. That’s insane! Sorry, you probably didn’t want to hear that.”
“It’s all good, girl,” I say.
Carrying on, Molly passes me on her way back to the truck as well. She is moving quickly and clearly not in a good mood.
“Finish your bag-up and then head down to the block below the road,” she says, “We’re done with this block. We’ve been walking in the entire day while the other crew creamed out the entire front of the piece, so now there’s this massive hole. So they’re gonna fix it; we’re done with this block. Just head down below the road on your next bag-up.”
“Okay,” I say and keep planting. While bouncing back and forth at the back of the piece, I run into Velma, who has full bags on.
“Velma!” I say happily, “You have risen! You came back out!”
“Yeah,” she sighs, “It was either freeze my ass off in the truck or freeze my ass off out here. May as well be out here.”
The block below the road is much easier to walk through and is way less slashy (which means much less slipping for those of us who haven’t purchased cork boots). At one point, I’m planting right next to Molly.
“The worm count is so high today,” I laugh as my shovel slices another worm in half on its way down. “I must have beheaded hundreds of them today!” The rain has just about quadrupled the number of worms we usually see.
“Huh,” Molly replies, clearly not as amused as I am, “hey, plant along the other side of this burn okay? I’m filling up to this side.”
I nod and planting along the far side of the burn pile. Goodness, I think, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Molly this pissed off before. Molly heads back up to the road and starts the truck a few minutes before 4:30, so we plant quickly to bag out and back up.
When we get back into the truck, Molly is clearly still upset about the other crew creaming out the front of our piece, especially on such a crappy day like this. Lemme tell ya, it’s damn strange to have the crew boss more upset about the day than the crew, especially when that crew boss is the fantastically spunky Molly.
The other super cold day was memorable for a very different reason.
This day, Molly had leant me an extra merino wool long-sleeve t-shirt for the day because it was too hot to plant in the wool jacket but too cold to plant in a normal t-shirt. This is the second time I’ve had to borrow a long-sleeve t-shirt from someone, so it’s definitely been added to the list of things I need to buy: gaiters, cork boots, long-sleeve t-shirt. On this day, it wasn’t raining (although it snowed a bit), so the cold didn’t sink into your skin. This actually worked to an advantage because, after 50 or so trees, the body was thawed and warm enough to keep planting but would freeze upon stopping. So it was great for motivation to keep planting.
However, at one point in the day, Kendall found a dead falcon on the block. I saw her crouched on the block in front of me and planted my way toward her. She’d taken off her bags and was picking out feathers to store in her back bag.
“Cool!” I say, approaching her, “what is it?”
“I think it’s a falcon,” she says, still plucking feathers, “Do you want some feathers?”
“Sure,” I say as she hands me few.
“I want its head.”
Before I have a chance to ask, Kendall picks up her shovel and slams the tip of it hard against the long-dead bird’s neck. She pulls, but nothing happens, so she picks up her shovel and does it again.
“It’s too tough,” she says, dropping the shovel and grabbing the bird with both hands. Looking away and cringing, she begins twisting. I just look in disbelief as she sits crouched on the ground, twisting off the giant bird’s head with both hands. Eventually, it gives way and a giant crraaacckkk releases the bird’s head from its body.
“There we go,” she says, holding the bird’s head, “I’m gonna crystallize it.”
Super impressed but still quite shocked, I keep planting. Kendall left the bird on the block with a lot of flagging so she could find it later. After bagging out, with the help of Dave (a sweet old man who helps out with the camp), she collected as many feathers as she good, its head, a foot, and a wing. She has a truly beautiful and wild soul, that one.
Cool bonus: Jazzy has a spare pair of gaiters that she gave me in exchange for a Palm Bay. Wooooooot! Tree planters are da best!!
Also, we’re gonna have two days off soon when we switch camps and move to the Flathead. Jazzy’s heading back to Nelson for the time, so I’ll be going with her to visit James in Crawford Bay. Another wooooot!
PS - don't forget about the Palestine delegation in which I am participating in August 2017! Around $200 has been raised so far - lots more to go! To donate, go to http://cpt.org/donate and follow the steps to donate. Toward the end of the process, there will be a box that says "donation inspired by". Be sure to enter my name in this section to ensure that the donation goes to this delegation.
Peace and love, friends!
PS - don't forget about the Palestine delegation in which I am participating in August 2017! Around $200 has been raised so far - lots more to go! To donate, go to http://cpt.org/donate and follow the steps to donate. Toward the end of the process, there will be a box that says "donation inspired by". Be sure to enter my name in this section to ensure that the donation goes to this delegation.
Peace and love, friends!
