Thursday, June 23, 2016

Treeplanting #5: Mistakes, Men-as-Women, and Mushrooms

During the next shift, I find myself drifting off into daydreams a lot. Often about James (a cross between missing/loving him and hating the bastard), but also often about various other things. Whatever it is, I’m not focusing.
“Anneke, you’re planting too tight again,” Molly’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts toward the end of one day, “Look, these trees are hardly a meter apart; that’s literally half of the minimum! We’re planting 7s here and you’re planting like 11s.” 
She’s right. Okay, calm down, she’s not that angry - she just wants you to plant good trees. Bad trees screw up the whole block.
“I know you know how to plant good trees; I’ve seen you plant perfect trees all the time. I know you know. So I know you’re pulling something here.”
Shoot. She thinks I’m doing this on purpose. Don’t cry. Despite knowing this is definitely not a compliment, there is something extremely gratifying about hearing her say ‘I know you know how to plant good trees’. Her approach is extremely different from Uncle Jim’s whole persona of ‘all your trees are shitty so be happy these are the only ones I’m calling you on’. Still, this is not going in a good direction and Molly is clearly upset.
“When you only plant good trees when I’m around, then I can’t trust you and that sucks. It feels like you don’t respect me as your crew boss.”
  Nooooooo! She really thinks I’m doing this on purpose. Now it reflects me as a person. Okay don’t cry. Molly’s literally the best crew boss on the planet and I’m totally letting her down. Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry. I avoid looking at any of the other planters. Molly is evidently not a fan of the whole ‘praise in public, criticize in private’ thing, but I suppose that’s really neither tree planting style nor Molly’s style.
“And it’s not just that: I totally had your back, Anneke!” She continues. 
Shoot. Now it’s personal. Nononono. Don’tcrydon’tcrydon’tcry. Keep planting. Don’t cry. Hide under your silence. Don’t you dare cry. I’m not sure if it’s rude to keep planting while she’s talking to me, but if I don’t do something (aside from talking), I know I’m gonna burst into tears at any second. Disappointing people and letting them down absolutely sucks — for everyone. And now that person is Molly; not some grumpy old uncle, but Molly.
“When your uncle was complaining about you to Cathy and Rainer, I defended you!” she says, “I told them ‘no no, her trees are great!’ Don’t make me eat my words, Anneke!”
Also, don’t cry. She just wants you to plant good trees, so do it. Don’t cry. She doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t distrust you. She just wants you to plant good trees. Don’t you dare open your mouth; don’t cry.
After crossing the road to the piece below the road, Molly plants right behind me, following and watching my line. I try to ignore her presence and keep planting, knowing I’ll burst into tears if I think about it.
She’s not behind you. It’s okay. She’s not watching your trees.You haven’t disappointed her. Don’t look behind you. It’s okay.
“Alright, you’re on probation,” she says after a while. I look up and give her a smile in acknowledgment. I’m not sure a smile was really the best course of action. I mean, a smile doesn’t exactly say ‘I know what I was doing is wrong and I’m so sorry for letting you down. I swear I wasn’t doing it on purpose and will pay more attention in the future’. Then again, as far as I can see, my only options were to ignore her entirely, attempt to say something and risk bursting into tears, or to smile in acknowledgment. The latter seemed far less detrimental.

The next morning while bagging up, Molly walks over to my bags, removes the blue roll of flagging from my flagging pouch, and puts a teal roll in its place. She puts four more roles in my back bag, along with a plot cord.
“When you finish your first bag-up,” she says, “I want you to go back on your line and take a couple plots. You know we’re planting 7s on this block. 5s are okay; 4s are not. 9s are okay; 10s are not. Move trees where you need to.” She isn’t angry when she says this, but she isn’t exactly happy either. She just looks kind of sad, which is almost worse.
I plant slowly behind the others, being abnormally mindful of my trees.
As the others meet me while planting back toward the truck, Molly takes a look at my line.
“Great spacing!” She calls and I start feeling a little better. Then she laughs “It’s amazing what a different colour of flagging can do!” and I can feel my chest drop again. Hey now, don’t cry. She’s just teasing; she does that all the time. 
When the others pass us and I bag out, Molly shows me how to take a plot on the line. She explains how much of a difference just a few inches makes, how to space the whole plot rather than just the line you’re following, how to keep tight to the slash, etc. She definitely isn’t angry or upset. Good.


The evening of Day 3 is Cross-Dressing Date Night and I have been paired with Vincent, the friendly, French former crew boss whose been on our crew since arriving in the Flathead. Together, we plan our outfits: he will wear my short sport shorts and pink hat while carrying either a handful of candy or a bowl of bacon, and I will wear his Thai pants with his characteristic green sun hat while imitating his strong French accent and telling people about the different kinds of mushrooms found on the block. During the day, I try to find actual mushrooms on the block to make this imitation more accurate, but it turns out I’m a terrible mushroom hunter and the one I do find dries out before dinner. I instead borrow one of the dried morels he’d placed on the dashboard a few days ago. In addition, he finds some lichen and insists I stick it to my face with honey to use as a beard. 
While exchanging clothes in the shower tent, Vincent borrows one of my bras, blows up a pair of plastic gloves and places them inside. Initially planning to wear merely the shorts and sports bra, the continually protruding fingers of the glove persuade him to wear one of my shirts as well. I’m pretty sure he is far more into the act of pretending to be a woman than pretending to be me. I put on the Thai pants and large tank top. Next comes the beard. I cringe as his honey-covered fingers and strips of lichen make their way toward my chin, the dirt and crispy beard-like substance slipping loosely off my chin a sticky, gooey-mess. I shove the dried morel in my pocket and he hangs a stick of red liquorice from his mouth (okay, I may eat a lot of candy out here, but I definitely don’t have it dangling from my mouth while walking around).
As we exit the tent, we admire a group of people already in their exchanged clothes. I approach them with a huge, friendly smile, walk up super close to people and say in a thick French accent “can I tell you about my mushroom?” while holding out the morel. Vincent stays a few feet behind me, smiling quietly at everyone. This is about as long as we last with the switched personalities. Soon, I am quietly sitting with a group of people chatting while Vincent is out playing volleyball.
Molly and her cross-dressing date are pretty entertaining. Molly is dressed in extremely baggy shorts and a large t-shirt, looking more tomboyish than I would’ve thought possible. Her date (mentioned as Optimus Prime in the previous post) is dressed in one of Molly’s plaid dresses and wearing one of the scarves she always has around her head. In addition, since these clothes smell distinctly of Molly, Optimus Prime finds himself constantly guarded by two very large and sweet dogs.
Max and Bee are pretty fantastic as well. While Bee’s outfit is not too exciting, Max is sporting Bee’s super stylish, hobbit-like clothing. He walks up to people, places his hand on their hands, and looks super intently at them while softly saying things like “would you like me to fetch the tarot cards from my tent?”


On one of the days off, Caedon invites people to help him rip, shred, and bag organic tobacco leaves. Since he buys them as full leaves, they are not included under the tobacco act when he orders them. He offers $10 cash plus $10 worth of product to everyone who helps. I volunteer, figuring it’ll be an interesting thing to learn and I can just give the tobacco to James.
The massive leaves are ripped apart and the veins are removed. They are then ripped further into smaller strips. Whenever they are not being handled, the leaf strips are kept in either a sealed Ziplock bag or in a large bowl with a damp cloth over it in order to retain the moisture. The three different types of tobacco leaves — Canadian, American, and burley — are kept separate until they are shredded. Once we start shredding them, they are distributed in equal parts Canadian and American with a tiny handful of burley mixed in. 
During the shredding process, Rainer comes in to ask what we’re doing and Caedon explains.
“Organic natural tobacco,” Rainer repeats, “so it’s good for you then?”
“It may be less bad for you,” Caedon explains, “but I wouldn’t claim it’s good for you.”

Later in the evening while sitting around the wood stove in the mess tent, we notice that the door to the kitchen has a variety of penises drawn all over the door. As Nina walks in, Sophia points this out.
“Sorry about the door,” she says apologetically as Nina makes her way toward the kitchen door, “I saw that and thought ‘Nina’s way too classy to have penises on her door.’”
“Well obviously you’re not too classy to draw them!” comes Nina’s response, making everyone in the tent crack up. There is no higher level of sass than sass from the cook.
“Did you hear about Chad’s laundry?” Gwen asks, making her way into the tent.
“No, what happened?” Molly asks.
“Well, he put all of his laundry into a garbage bag and threw it into the back of the truck when we went to town. But we had all the camp garbage in there as well and were going to the dump. So we get to the dump and are just beginning to put the boxes in the recycling station when Chad suddenly looks up and is like ‘did you throw my laundry in the dump? It was in a garbage bag’ and we were like ‘probably — if it was in a garbage bag and in the back with the rest of the garbage’. Suddenly his face just looks so sad and he goes bolting toward the area where we dumped all the garbage, but this massive garbage truck is literally just pulling into the station. I’ve never seen Chad run so fast with such long strides. He jumps in and just starts tearing through all the garbage bags until he finds his laundry. It was literally all his clothes inside.”
We all start laughing at the image of poor Chad sprinting across the transfer station and digging his garbage bag full of laundry out of the dump.

During one of the shifts, there is a professional bike race happening and the road through the Flathead up toward the camp is on the trail. Molly sets out several large containers of water and a sign that says ‘drinking water — help yourself!’ for the passing bikers. However, one morning at around 4:30am, Harley and Tula start barking super loudly and bolt toward the road. Hearing a loud scream, Molly chases after the dogs in time to see a terrified biker pedal as fast as he can in the opposite direction. Needless to say, we take the two dogs to work with us during the next few days while the race is still going on.
Whenever they are on the block with us, Tula likes to run around and chase whatever animal she comes across, but Harley often prefers to lay under the shade of the truck. He also just likes to stay within a 100-meter radius of wherever he knows there’s food. Because of this, Molly scrawls in large letters in the dirt on the truck: “DON’T FEED THE CACHE MONKEY!”. Upon returning to the truck a few hours later, we see another message scrawled directly below Molly’s. It reads: “I do w/e the f**k I want to monkeys!!”. Gwen.

Toward the end of the contract, there are two massive blocks up in the Flathead that all the crews are working on together. The blocks are so large that they will probably last the whole camp to the end of the contract. Since it is the same block, it is all the same price to plant, although certain areas of the block are west-facing and rocky, while others have much softer ground because they are north-facing. The weather’s been turning hot recently as well and we all plant a little slower and lazily.
At one of the cache breaks, Chad and Gwen are talking about Magic 8 balls and talismans.
“One of the theories I’ve heard about talismans,” Chad says, “is that the reason they seem to work so well is because you are unconsciously controlling it. Like, the idea is that the talisman will magically point to whatever it is you’re supposed to do or have or something, but if unconsciously in the back of your mind you know what you want, then you will unconsciously pull your hand toward that. Since you were not consciously moving your hand, then it looks all mystical.”
“Ooor it is magic,” says Gwen decisively.
“Or it’s magic,” Chad gives in, laughing.

During another cache break, Gwen and Chad are discussing the significance of intuition and the compatibility of Western and traditional medicine. As if in direct contrast to this fairly intellectual conversation, Kendall is busy sticking empty flagging rolls on her eyes. It turns out empty flagging rolls are the perfect size to fit around your eye and stay there when you slightly close your eye, the way you can do with quarters. Facing the truck, she suddenly turns around to face me with a huge smile on her face, peering through the dark cardboard tubes stuck to her eyes.
“Kendall!” I burst out laughing, “you look like Mole from that animated movie Atlantis!”

One extremely hot day, we’re very close to Frozen Lake, so we head down after work to quick jump it.
“I’m not going to turn the truck off,” Molly says as we climb out, “because I don’t want to have to get on the radio like ‘Umm Rainer, we need a boost at Silver Lake, where we’re not supposed to be’. So we’re gonna have to just jump right in an right out again.” Ours is an old truck and we’ve needed boosts many times before, so we nod and run out. We strip naked out of our dirty planting clothes and jump in. The freezing water feels so refreshing on our hot and filthy planting bodies.


Jazzy walks into the mess tent one morning with a pair of what looks like brand new cork boots in her hand.
“Anyone want a pair of corks?” she calls out, “size 7, $90, never worn!”
“Where are they from?” I ask, trying them on.
“My friend quit planting before she ever used them,” Jazzy explains, “that was like two years ago though, so these are the good kind of Vikings that they don’t make anymore. I bought them off her without trying them on, thinking they’d fit. She bought them for like $200.”
That evening, I hand her the money and she gives me the boots, along with a pair of liners she’d just purchased for the boots. Finally! I think, I’ve finally got a pair of corks! 
Walking across the gravel road with them feels like I’m wearing an extremely heavy-duty pair of track spikes, but it’s a whole new experience walking through the block with them. There is far less slipping, but way more tripping at first, being unused to the feeling of placing your foot on something and it will stay there even when you push it. It takes a while to get used to them, but eventually they make a world of difference.
“Sometimes I feel like an insect or something,” Molly says, referring to wearing cork boots, “walking up logs and shit.” After hearing this, I try walking up a log and am amazed at how much fun it is. I then spend a large portion of my day just walking up and across fallen logs rather than actually planting trees.


One day, Rainer loads our truck with 45% big spruce because we’re planting a section of the block with much softer soil. These heavy trees are ten in each bundle and only around 200 can fit in a bag-up (the same type of heavy trees that go in some of the fill plants). To help give us energy, Gwen offers fingerfuls of mushroom honey to everyone. We all take small amounts and suck on it while bagging up (except for Kendall, who takes a rather large amount).
As Molly makes her way back toward the truck, everyone kind of looks awkwardly between her and Gwen’s tiny little still-open jar.
“What’s that?” Molly asks suspiciously about the jar, making her way closer. Gwen walks up to her with a big smile on her face.
“Mushroom honey,” she smiles sweetly, “would you like some?”
“Mushroom honey?” Molly asks with a wary smile and an expression that seems to question whether or not she should play an authority role here.
“It’s not very strong,” Gwen assures her, “there’s only 2.5 grams in the whole jar.”
Fourty-five grams?!” Molly exclaims, eyes growing wide.
“No, just 2.5! 2.5 grams,” Gwen repeats, holding out the open jar. Molly pauses for a moment, then shrugs and sticks her finger into the jar as well.
“There was this one guy I was bushwhacking with who got so high on mushrooms one day on the job,” Molly laughs after starting to bag up, “that he hid under a cluster of bushes to trip out. So I almost whacked his head off when I found him! It was like, dude, if you’re gonna hide somewhere to trip out, could you go somewhere we’ve already finished? We’re bushwhacking here!”

Later, on the block, I over hear Molly talking with Gwen about what sort of effect psychedelics have on the human brain.
“What we normally see isn’t actually everything that is,” Molly explains how she sees it, “there’s no way we could take in everything at once or we’d be like babies staring wide-eyed at everything, or a monk silent by himself and not differentiating between ourselves and everything else. We naturally only focus on what we know or what is familiar to us. Like, you know when you learn a new word and suddenly you start hearing it everywhere? You’re not actually hearing it more; you’re just noticing it now, but it was always there. I think what makes these drugs so powerful is that they help us to take a step back from our own way of looking at the world.”


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!

Friday, June 17, 2016

Treeplanting #4: Moving Camp to the Flathead

The last day of the last shift at the Sparwood camp, Jazzy is driving to Nelson in the evening and has extra seats in the car. She can drop me off in Crawford Bay, which is on the way, then take the ferry over into Nelson. Chad is getting a ride with us to a hostel in Fernie, which is also on the way (there are literally like 2 main roads around here that connect every single town ever). 
While she is lovely company, the first thing I notice is how much time Jazzy spends on her phone. She calls her friends, texts, and controls the music from her phone. Neither Chad nor I say anything though, so we keep going until we reach Fernie.
We stay in Fernie for around twenty minutes because we run into sone of Jazzy’s friends. She is a fellow tree planter as well, but with the company Evergreen, which is also planting in the Flathead. Rather than staying in a camp with a cook, these planters rent out a large section of he hostel and commute up to the Flathead every morning.
“Hi,” she says, “I’m Maia.”
“I’m ” says Chad, then rolls his eyes toward me, “or Chad.”
“You make a good Chad,” I chuckle.
“It’s just such a greaseball name,” he responds with a laugh.
“True,” I say, “but it really has nothing to do with you. Just your appearance. You look like a Chad.”
“So I’m a greaseball.”
“I’m sorry, man.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he laughs, “I actually find it really funny.”
When we get back on the road, Jazzy and I are ready for the looooong road ahead of us. Well, four hours or so worth. There’s something really satisfying about driving through long, winding mountain roads in a tiny little car packed with belongings with super-confident Jazzy jamming along to the different varieties of electronic music on her phone, one hand on the wheel and the other either on her phone or holding a cigarette out the window. We talk about her time in Costa Rica and my time in Thailand; the strange position of being a constant foreigner regardless of how much time you spend there.
“Do you feel that?” she says suddenly.
“What?” I ask.
“Every time I turn, the car jerks in the direction,” she says as we hit another turn. This time, I do notice the sudden swerve in the middle of the turn. “I don’t like that,” she says. She instead takes the turns on the other side of the road to avoid turning the wheels as much.
There are two ways to get to Nelson and the point of decision on which way to go is Creston. Creston, at the foot of Kootenay Lake, provides the option of either driving around the lake to reach Nelson or drive to Crawford Bay on the other side of the lake, then take a free ferry over into Nelson. As the centre point, Creston has a large sign with all the ferry times. When we arrive, Jazzy and I realize that we are too late for Jazzy to make the last ferry if we go the Crawford Bay way. Eager to get home, Jazzy offers me a place to stay for the night and she’ll take me to the first ferry from Nelson to Crawford Bay in the morning. I agree, then doze off.
Jazzy and I arrive at her boyfriend’s house around 12:30. I go to sleep on the couch while Jazzy and her boyfriend head out to a costume party. That girl has boundless energy. The next morning, Jazzy and her boyfriend get up at like 5:30 to get me to the 6am ferry. Bless them, the sweethearts.

A wave of nostalgia hits me as I walk down James’ driveway at 7. It looks and smells just like last summer and all the times I’ve been there since then. Ellie, his 5-yr-old daughter, is there as well. She gives me a big hug when I arrive.
As his day off, he is heading to Creston with one of his other planters to pick up more trees and groceries for the next shift. As they get the truck ready, Ellie rips out a piece in her colouring book for me and we spend the next half hour drawing. When we’re finished, I’m not sure what to do with the drawing, so Ellie takes it as I’m cleaning up the pencil crayons and markers.
“I take it. I take it,” she says, then begins looking for tape. After I help her get it, she takes my picture up to her bedroom and sticks it on the wall above her bed. My heart warms as she says, “that’s where all the important things go.”
While picking up the trees, there is not much for Ellie and I to do, so she sits on my shoulders and we go for a short walk, looking at bushes and trees and flowers. Another planting truck shows up, so we go and explore it as well. Ellie is convinced it is not a real planting truck because it doesn’t look like James’ truck.
Afterward, we spend several hours at the aquatic centre. We swim through the current stream, sit in the hot tub, splash in pool with giant spouts of water shooting out, and toss Ellie between James and I. Ellie and I pull each other around the current stream as the boys sit in the sauna. I’ve never been able to appreciate saunas; they just seem to me near-suffocation anxiety without any sense of relaxation or relief whatsoever.
Dropping Ellie off at her mother’s house, we continue on back to James’ house. We eat a late supper and head to bed. Despite knowing James and how he is, it still hurts to be laying in the throws of love in each others' arms and suddenly he decides to say: “don’t get attached, Anneke.” We both know perfectly well it’s too late for that. Part of me is okay with this: as long as both Ellie and James are happy, healthy, and safe, then everything’s okay. Whatever else I feel is my deal and I can find some way to deal with it. Another part of me feels incredibly betrayed and wants to scream at him.

The next day, James kisses me goodbye as they head out to work and I wait for Jazzy to get her car fixed so we can head out to the Flathead. It takes a while, so I arrange a place to live for Fall term, work on my PD2 course, write a little bit for my blog, and write a much-needed letter to James. When they still aren’t back by 5 and Jazzy’s car still isn’t fixed, I begin to clean the kitchen. They have a hell of a lotta dishes piled in the bathtub because three guys living and eating together aren’t the cleanest people and, with his house under construction, James has no sink. I wash them in the shower, but realize they’ll need it after they come back from planting. So I scrub all the grime out of the bathtub and put the dishes in there. After wiping down the counter and table, the boys still aren’t back and Jazzy won’t be able to come before the 7pm ferry. I debate making some sort of supper, but the boys generally have their meals super planned out and I don’t want to interfere with anything. So I blog until the boys come back, just publishing one more post as the truck rolls in.
When they get out, there is clearly something bitter going on.
“How was your day?” I ask timidly.
“We stayed late,” is James’ grumpy response, as though that wasn’t obvious, “what did you do all day?”
“I did a lot of writing,” I reply, “worked on my course a bit…”
“Yea, I get it,” James snaps, “you had a lazy day while we worked our asses off. And we still have trees left. You’re still here; you could’ve come plant with us.”
“I just cleaned your kitchen…” I begin to say, but James is already on his phone. They are heading out to James’ friend’s house for supper, so I make a sandwich for myself and sit on the couch outside.
A few minutes later, James joins me on the couch.
“They were all complaining about staying late,” he says. Here we go, I think, the real reason he’s all upset.
“They were surprised when I came out with full bags at 3:30 and asked if we were staying late,” he continued, “I’d told them so many times in the morning! They all acted as though they didn’t know, but I said it so many times ‘we’re staying until the trees are done’ and we didn’t even finish them!”
We talk about this a little more and about a few other things. This is probably one of my favourite parts about spending time with James. Just sitting next to each other talking about everything.

Jazzy finally arrives around 7:00 and we hit the road. The sun is just beginning to set behind the peaks of the Kootenays as we head toward Creston, setting off a glorious glow behind the mountains. Suddenly, the car swerves so far to the right that we just about hit the grass. I look over as Jazzy is lowering her phone.
“Whoops,” she says, “I just wanna get a photo of those mountains.”
“Here, I’ll get it,” I say quickly, taking the phone from her.
As we drive through Creston, we see a used car with a price tag on the side of the road, so Jazzy stops the car to take a few photos. It’s a brilliant viewpoint where she parks, so we spend a few moments taking photos. Of course, once we start driving again, Jazzy starts Instragraming the photos she took. While driving.
“Oh come on,” she says suddenly, “step on the gas, dude! Why are you moving so slow?” I look up and notice the car right in front of us, then laugh.
“Red license plate,” I point out.
“Of course,” she sighs, “friggin’ Albertans. Like, it’s all turns. You don’t have to drive so slow. You know what’s up ahead? A turn. And after that? Another turn. It’s not a  surprise; you don’t have to drive 60.”
She’s tailgating, I suddenly realize. I’d thought tailgating was only something angry drivers did when they’d lost their cool, but Jazzy is definitely not about to loose her cool. She’s just doing it to tell them to go faster
Eventually, the other car turns off the road and Jazzy is able to speed ahead and we carry on toward Fernie. It’s reaching 9:00, but there is a time change we passed through, so it’s actually 10. At some point, Jazzy and I begin a really deep conversation (which thankfully was deep and long enough to keep her off her phone). We talk about my cousin Anna, which Jazzy is extremely understanding about (she’d been one of the first people to offer kindness after finding out). Then we start talking about depression, how it can attack virtually anyone, and the social stigmas surrounding it.
We finally make it into the base of the Flathead at around 11, and into camp by 12:30. By this time, it’s so late that I don’t bother setting up my tent. I crawl into the back of Uncle Jim’s truck, unfold the mattress, unravel my sleeping bag, set my alarm for 6, and curl up right there in the back of the truck.

In the Flathead camp now, the crews have changed up a bit. Casper, Velma, and Kurt are no longer on Molly’s crew (Molly claims the other crew bosses came to the conclusion that she was “mothering” the greeners too much). Kendall and I are still here, and Chad appears to have gained a permanent seat on this crew. In addition, there are now Vincent (formerly a crew boss in the other camp) and Gwen (a sweet and free-spirited girl who has also crew-bossed before. She also reminds me a bit of my sister, although Gwen is much more clever). Also, Cathy often stays in Fernie when camp is out in the Flathead, and Rainer rarely changes up the crews, so this will likely be the crew arrangement for a while.

Our first block in the Flathead is a 16-cent block; our first 16 cent block all season. Uncle Jim’s crew and Jenna’s crew are also on this block. Driving in, I watch the land from the window: dirt, dirt, dirt everywhere! And not much slash! With a good eye, there shouldn’t be any need to screef. Also, it’s flat! Dirt, flat, and not much slash: this is a planter’s dream.
Getting out of the truck, we all fill up our bags and head out. Rainer is out on the block today surveying trees, which is unusual. About 30 trees into my bag-up, I notice he is walking up my line.
“You’ve got some leaners here, Anneke,” he says, gesturing toward my trees, “there’s a couple things you can do about that.” He reaches for my shovel and I give it to him. Opening a hole and sticking out his hand, I place a tree in his hand. He slides it against his shovel into the corner of the hole (rather than against the back) so it doesn’t lean slanted once the hole is closed with his fist. Alternatively, there’s the back-cut, where you quick throw the shovel into the dirt behind the tree, pushing it upward and against any previous slant. He continues to demonstrate these, reaching out for more trees as we move along the line. He plants almost faster than I can feed trees to him; I’m struggling to keep up with him while handing him trees and bundling more and more. He continues to narrate what he’s doing: “see here we’re coming up toward Kendall. She’s a professional, see, so she’ll bounce against our trees. If we follow her down her line now, she doesn’t need to flag. Stop flagging, Kendall. Here we’ll turn back again and fill this area. We don’t need to flag here because we’re following our own line. Now we’re coming up toward Molly. See, Molly knows what we’re doing; she’s smart. She can see trees too, so it’s okay if we don’t flag. What’s this she flagged? I don’t see a tree anywhere; she flagged this dead larch so we’ll put one here anyway. Now we can fill this section here so don’t flag.” This goes on for a while. I’m pretty sure Rainer’s loving this; he doesn’t get to plant trees anymore. While trailing behind him, I look up toward Molly, who gives me a huge, sneaky grin.
After 150-200 trees, Rainer stops and hands me my shovel back.
“I should go check on Jimmy,” he says, heading back toward the road. Planting toward Molly again, she gives me another teasing smile as we get closer.
“Ha! How was that?” she coos, “I looked up a couple times and was like ‘oh he’s still going.’”
“Ha, it was great! That was over half my bag-up!”
We keep planting. Our entire crew is having such a good day that we finish our block by 1:00. This block was supposed to last us until 4:30. We keep pounding in trees on the next block, which is almost equally as lovely. Dave comes three times to replenish the truck with more tree boxes.
“My job isn’t a tree deliverer,” Dave complains upon delivering the third load.
“Well today it is,” Molly responds, eagerly grabbing at the boxes and opening them the second they hit the ground.

Back at the truck by 4:30, Chad and Gwen are slumped exhaustedly against the truck, but Vincent, Molly, and Kendall are still out there. I grab 50 more trees and head out again. When I get back, the others still aren’t done, so I grab more. By 5:00, everyone is finally back at the truck. We throw the bags, shovels, garbage, and folded empty tree boxes into the Fist and jump in. I’m the only one who planted under 3000 trees today, but hey, I’m the only second year and 2485 is still my personal best. Chad, of course, planted 4000 trees. Freakin' highballer.
Driving out of the block, Molly swerves slightly to the right, letting out a quiet “whoops”. While getting flashbacks of my drive with Jazzy, I look over to see her struggling to open a little packet of dried seaweed. We let it rest until suddenly she swerves waaaay over to the right.
“Are you alright, Molly?” Chad asks in an amused voice, “Do you need any help?”
“No no, I got it,” Molly says under her breath, still struggling with the seaweed, “I’ve done this so many times before, I don’t know why it’s so… there we go!” She holds up the open packet of seaweed in triumph.

One thing necessary to mention about Molly (and it’s truly a shame that it hasn’t been mentioned earlier) is that she has these two dogs that love her to death (and vice versa). One, Tula, is a fairly regular-sized (but on the larger side) dog that is rather feisty, while the other, Harley, is a massive, cuddly ball of fur. They are always waiting for our truck to come back at the end of the day and jump excitedly outside of Molly’s door before she opens it and leaps out to give them both a bunch of hugs and tells them how much she missed them. When Harley jumps up and puts his front paws on Molly’s arms, he towers way above her head. I’m telling you, he is absolutely huge. If you watch his rear end as he walks away from you, he literally looks like a little horse.

On Day 2, the block we are planting is relatively close to camp, so Molly asks the crew if it’s alright if the dogs come along. We say yes, and one large dog and one massive dog pile into the truck cab along with the six of us. Harley lays across people’s feet on the floor (an excellent foot-warmer), while Tula stretches across people’s laps. When we get to the block, they jump out and jump up and down excitedly before bolting away into the block and coming back again. They love coming to work with us.
This morning, Nina had made her delicious banana pancakes for breakfast. Everybody absolutely adores Nina’s banana pancakes. Molly, however, ate five of them. And they are not the tiniest pancakes. During my second bag-up, she and I cross paths.
“Ugghhhh, I feel like I’m gonna puuuke,” she moans, a pained expression on her face, “Chad friggin’ lapped me already with his second bag-up.”
“So puke,” I shrug, “get it out and then you’ll feel better.”
“That was Chad’s advice,” Molly laughs sadly, “but I have this thing against puking. I just can’t do it.”
“Then I guess you suffer through.”
Molly lets out another sad whimper and continues planting.

Everyone is slow today, after working so hard yesterday. Back at the cache between bag-ups, Kendall has dark chocolate with sea salt; two different kinds! She kindly offers me some and we take a nice, long cache break. I head out first and plant for a while, but she catches up with me soon enough.
“Anneke,” she says as we’re near each other, “what’s your biggest fear?”
“Ummm what kind of fear?” I ask, slightly thrown off by the question, “like, petty and irrational fear or real, deep fear?”
“Whichever one you want,” Kendall responds, “Molly and I were having this conversation yesterday.”
“Hmm well irrational fear would have to be spiders,” I answer. That one’s easy enough; it’s the other that’s the hard one. “For the deeper fear, maybe not allowing myself to open up and talk to people, and then not build meaningful connections with them.”
“Aaah,” Kendall responds, “I used to be really quiet too, and would really see it as a weakness. But it’s not really. It allows you to carry more value in the things you do say. And there are other ways to build connections with people. The Tao Te Ching has a saying something like that.”
“There’s something similar in Proverbs, I think,” I add, “it goes like ‘the more you say, the more people find out how much you don’t know’ or something.”
“Yeah,” she says, “it’s a pretty reassuring statement.”
We talk a little longer about withholding our thoughts from others and the strengths/faults of guarding your words. Some people speak freely while others slowly calculate their words while others only speak to certain people, and it’s all okay.
“What’s your biggest fear?” I ask.
“I think being so stuck in my own head that I miss the beautiful things going on around me.”
“What was Molly’s?”
“Not being worthy of the gods.” (Necessary side note: After talking with Molly later, it turns out she had actually said ‘not being worthy of love’, not the gods. So y’all can drop the image of Molly chanting naked around a bonfire.)
“What was her understanding of ‘the gods’?”
“I don’t know. I think everyone has their own interpretation of what ‘the gods’ are,” Kendall responds as we plant our way out of the brushy spruce ground and into a giant burn area (pine ground). Unbundling a couple pines, she asks, “What do you think ‘the gods’ are?”
“I’m not sure,” I struggle to find an answer, “I think I believe there is some sort of higher power that we can tune into and that’s present in all people and all religions. I definitely think there’s something more out there that we don’t all see but have the ability to access. What about you? What do you think?”
“I’m not sure either,” Kendall admits, “but I think it definitely ties in to nature. Like, I believe in magic and that it is strongly connected to nature. And as nature ourselves, we as humans are an integral and beautiful part of that.”
We talk about this for a while. Then Kendall asks, “Do you believe in morality? Like, do you think morality naturally exists in the world?” I pause for a moment: these are really difficult questions.
“Well I want to say yes,” I finally answer, “but I feel like all there really is is what is and, through our empathy for others, humans create value and concepts of morality, but they’re not naturally there. Like kids, for example. They’re wonderful and all, but they’re incredibly selfish - morality and selflessness seem like something we grow into through developing empathy.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Kendall responds, “but I’d really like to believe that there’s something more natural in it. Another planter and I were talking about this, about how we are fundamentally beings of love. It’s a really refreshing thought when you’re having a terrible day or your mind is in an awful place, to just take a few moments to remember that we are being made entirely of love.”
“Do you think,” I wonder aloud, “that love could just be the absence of selfishness?”
“Yeah,” she responds after a minute, “that’s a really nice thought, that once we remove our own selfish preoccupations, all that’s left is love.”
We discuss this for a while longer until we bag out. Conversations on the block are generally either nonexistent, absolutely hilarious, or extremely insightful; there is almost never meaningless chatter (except in the case of those Fernie girls) because the physical work is too demanding to exert extra effort into chatter. Propelling conversations, however, can bring out more energy. This was one of the more insightful conversations.

Walking along the road back to the truck at the end of the day, I notice that I am walking beside a massive trail of boot prints in the road. Looking back along where I’d just walked, I notice that my boots aren’t even making any prints at all: the road is completely dry and hard. Yet the footsteps I’m walking beside have managed to leave massive, deep indents in the roads. Back at the truck, Molly is putting on chapstick in the truck mirror, so I mention the giant bootprints.
“Chad,” Molly automatically mutters under her breath without stopping or looking up, “a fully bagged Chad.” I smile. Whenever Molly talks to or about Chad, her tone always seems to adopt this sense of eye-rolling and ‘oh my god would you fucking believe this kid’ (only in a very nice, almost motherly way though).

One evening while sitting around the wood stove in the mess tent, Sparky and I are talking about the lack of tasty cereals available in camp.
“Yeah, but once they get good cereals, they’re gone almost immediately,” Sparky says, “remember the time when we had Golden Grams? They were gone in less than a day.”
“That’s such a dad move,” I say, rolling my eyes, “In my family, we used to get the crunchy granola bars because my dad liked them and because ‘they last longer’, meaning they last a week while the chewy granola bars would be gone in like a day. It was like ‘yes, of course they last longer because you’re the only one eating them! These boxes have six bars in them and we are five people; of course the ones everybody likes will be gone in like a day!’”
“That is such a dad move,” Sparky revives a couple swans, “I love ‘dad moves’.” I think part of the whole appeal of the term “dad move” is that, grammatically, it could be a combination of “dick move” and “bad move”, which is essentially what a dad move is.
“Like controlling the music,” I add, “when a dad says ‘okay, let’s listen to music everybody enjoys’  and it actually means ‘let’s listen to music I enjoy and nobody’s allowed to complain about it or they’re being selfish’.”
“We could do that around here,” Sparky adds excitedly “when we get the music going by the campfire: ‘Okay guys, time to listen to music everybody likes’, and then turn on some really dull, mellow music.” Sparky’s face turns into a mock-authoritative expression, “‘Or how about silence? That’s something we can all agree on!’” I laugh. Sparky needs to work on his whole ‘controlling father’ persona — it’s 100% not his nature.


Additional note: Optimus Prime eats raw morels off the block.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Treeplanting #3: Sometimes shit has a silver lining. Silver shit?

A few weeks ago, I was walking back to my tent behind Uncle Jim’s trailer when I saw him standing outside. As I approached him, he was looking pretty intently up at the sky.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“An eagle was just flying over those mountains. I have awful news,” he says, giving me one of his expressions that I can’t tell whether it’s serious or joking.
“Oh? Your face doesn’t look very awful,” I say with a smile.
“No, I mean it. This is terrible,” his tone tells me he isn’t joking this time, “It’s your cousin Anna. She rented a hotel room in Toronto and climbed up onto the balcony and jumped.”
This seems too dramatic to be serious, but his face isn’t cracking into the characteristic smile that so often betrays his jokes. He continues.
“She had just finished handing in her Master’s,” he says. I remembered that Anna had been working on her Master’s degree for several years. “Then she flew back home to Toronto, where she did it.” Having no idea how to react, I stand motionless, glued to where I’m standing as he continues telling me about Anna. She’d written a letter to her boyfriend and ex-husband. There’s just going to be a small gathering of close family to celebrate her life instead of a larger funeral. Uncle Jim isn’t sure whether he’s going to fly back for it or not. I can use his phone if I want, but it’s charging right now.
Back in my tent, I break down into tears. I didn’t know Anna very well, but I know she was intelligent, beautiful, down-to-earth, and only in her early thirties. I still have no idea how to react. Do I fly back? Do I call my mom? Do I call my aunt? What can I say to my aunt? What on earth can you say to a mother whose daughter just died?

The next few days pass pretty quickly and unclearly. I call my mom and we talk for a long time. I walk down to the river beside camp for a long time. Chad lets me borrow his phone to call James, but he doesn’t answer. The next day, we have a really easy block with good dirt everywhere, but I’m in a bit of a daze and just plant slow and steady. I think Kendall gave some of us directions on the block, but I don’t think I registered any of it, which I felt kind of guilty about afterward. People are kind and caring; Nina compassionately tells me to just ask if I need anything. Candace and I have a long and thoughtful conversation. Molly puts her hand on my back and asks how I’m doing. Jazzy gives me a hug. I don’t know how people are finding out (cough cough… Uncle Jim), but it helps so much that there’s so much love to share in this camp. James calls me on the day off and we talk for a bit.

At the end of the shift, there is a new Game of Thrones episode out that Caedon is putting on the projector (SPOILER ALERT). Whenever there is a new episode, Caedon downloads it so everyone can watch it together in the mess tent. This episode is the first actual uplifting episode in a long time. Uplifting episodes are rare in this show. Sansa Stark and Jon Snow are finally reunited after almost everyone in their family has been separated and/or killed in the last few years, Daenerys gains the loyalty of an entire horde of Dothraki (again), Queen Margaery also sees her brother again after they’ve both been held prisoner for a long time, and Theon finally makes his way home. It may seem a little lame to put such stock in a TV show, but this episode was sorely needed both in terms of the show and in terms of my own mental state.

Then, at the start of the next shift, we are back on the nice block with good dirt that I’d dazed my way through before. Wait a second, I think, am I even really honouring Anna by being so stuck in my head? Sitting around moping isn’t doing anything. Wouldn’t she tell me to get my ass in gear and work this block? Any Stryker would say to work hard and take advantage of this easy block, especially since it’s a second chance at this block. So I do. I plant fast, jog instead of walk between trees, only stop to gulp water, and bag 340s. At one point, I see an eagle soaring between two mountain peaks. That’s Anna, I think, watching over us all and pushing us forward. I keep planting.
When I finally take a break at noon to scarf down some trail mix, Molly is there as well. She’s spreading her bleach-white sunscreen on her face while looking in the side mirror of the truck.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Someone planted the road!” I hear her say. I look up to see her stomping over to a part of the road in front of us where someone has planted and flagged the trees. She begins scooping up all the strips of blue flagging one by one. “If you’re gonna do sketchy shit like that,” she says, “at least don’t flag them!!” I smile. I love how Molly keeps her humour even when her planters do things wrong.
When we start bagging up again, Velma has joined us as well.
“500 works perfect for this mix!” sings Molly, “300 pine, 100 spruce, and 100 larch!”
“You’re bagging up 500?” Velma gasps. I’m super impressed with Molly as well. “That’s literally twice as heavy as my bag-ups. I’m taking 250.”
“Push yourself!” Molly says, “take 300!”
“Ha!” Velma replies, “not a chance.”
“Last year, I don’t think I ever took more than 250,” I said.
“Really?” asks Molly, “how many are you taking now?”
“340.”
“Push yourself!” Molly says again, this time to me, “take 400!”
“340 was pushing myself,” I say, “but I’ll take one more bundle. 360. A full circle of trees.”
We all head out again.
When I make it back to the truck again, it’s 1:20. I sit in the truck for just long enough to record the numbers in my iPod and distribute sunscreen around my face, ears, neck, and arms. Making my way into the back of the truck to load up again, I see Molly making her way back toward the truck.
“Did you just plant 500 trees in an hour and a half?” I say in disbelief.
“Oh yeah,” she grins, “I can do that. I’m just usually too busy crew bossing”
We keep planting, eventually jumping to an area above the road. We stay past 4:30 just to finish the trees because it’s such good ground. By the end of the day, I have planted 2280 trees. A new record, I smile, thank you, Anna.


We are moving soon to work out in the Flathead Valley. It’s gorgeous up there, but before that we have to finish all the ground out here. This means that the last few shifts here at the Sparwood camps are full of crappy fill plants. All priced between 25 and 30 cents, but nevertheless all crappy fill plants.
On the first day of the last shift at the Sparwood camp, our block is a solid hour and a half outside of camp. There is another crew joining us on the block today. After we turn off onto the logging road, Kendall, in the middle front seat, begins looking at the map to help Molly make sure we’re going the right way.
“You know…” Kendall says in confusion, fifteen minutes down the road, “this entire road we’re driving on right now is deactivated.” Sure enough, there are little Xs all along this road on the map.
“Oh yeah, I know,” Molly just laughs. We reach a deep creek crossing the road that looks like something used to cross it. Molly stops the truck and walks over to the creek to examine it.
“You ready for this?” Molly says excitedly, hopping back in, “Here we go.” She steps on the gas and makes her way over to the creek. She drives the truck headlong into the deep creek. Then, slowly, the front tires start making their way up the other side of the creek, when… bang the back of the truck drops down off the bank and slams onto the bottom of the creek. Molly is fiddling with the stick shift and four-wheel-drive as we inch further and further along, eventually pushing our way all the way up onto the other side.
“There we go,” Molly says happily once we pull up completely onto the other side of the bank, patting the dashboard of the truck.
The weather is wet and cold and we have a long uphill walk-in. Fill plant trees are big and heavy so we can only fit around 200 in our bags at a time. Also, fill plants have no clear boarders because everything has grown in already, so you can really only follow the line of planted trees in front of you. At one point, Velma, Kendall, and I realize we are the only three people in this one narrow section, so we begin to fill it between the three of us. We make our way through the thick undergrowth and plant trees wherever we can find open spots. Velma bags out first. When Kendall and I finally bag out, it is already 11:30 and we have only finished one bag-up.
“They’re gonna get that part finished up,” Molly says as she makes her way back to the truck, “You two come with me when we bag up again and we’ll walk to another part of the blog.” We have a loooong cache break, but eventually we head out. Kendall and I struggle to lug ourselves and our full bags behind Molly, who is confidently strolling along with her iPad to map where we go and her own full bags.
“There’s this song in my head,” Kendall breathes heavily beside me, leaning on her shovel, “it goes ‘tread through the mountains lightly’. I sure don’t feel very light right now.” We both burst out laughing — or rather, the closest thing to laughter we can muster. Our treading is anything but light right now.
At various points in the trek upward, I plop down on the ground to take a break while Kendall keeps on going ahead of me. That girl has the stamina of a racehorse, I think (additional animals with stamina, according to Sophia: butterflies, penguins, and geese). Eventually, I realize Molly is completely out of sight. Shoot, I should have looked at the map to see where we’re actually going. I wonder if Kendall can still see her. In the distance, I can see Kendall disappear as she reaches the peak. After at least twenty minutes and a few more breaks, I finally make it to the top, only to see nothing except trees and shrubs everywhere. Exhausted under my bags and pissed off at not having planted a single tree in over half an hour, I keep walking forward, hoping to see some sign of humans. Eventually I see Kendall making her way back toward me.
“Are we in the block yet??” I shout toward her.
“I don’t know!” she shouts back, “I can’t find Molly anywhere and she didn’t drop any flagging anywhere!” We make our way toward each other and then walk along the tree line, hoping to see just some sign of flagging or people. 
“MOLLY! MOOOLLLLYYYY!!!!!” We shout at the top of our lungs. Nothing. No voices calling back, no sounds of shovels hitting dirt, nothing.
“I don’t know why she didn’t drop any flagging!” Kendall says, “We’ve been walking for over 45 minutes!”
“Hey, with 30 cent trees, we only need to plant like 100 to cover camp costs,” I say, trying to maintain some sort of spirit, “so we’re not losing money, and we’re getting lots of exercise in.”
“Anneke,” she says abruptly, “I appreciate your positivity, but stop.” I do stop.
Eventually, we see flagging far in the distance and make our way toward it.
“This is the boundary line of the last section of the block we were in! The part that’s already filled!” Kendall realizes, her voice shaky and frustrated, as though she’s about to burst into tears. You and me both, girl, I think.
“Let’s just plant along the boundary until we find someone,” I say, not caring that it’s already filled, “We’ve walked for so long.”
“Well, okay…” says Kendall, “I’m just about done with this.” We begin planting our way along the boundary line, keeping a look out for people. After a while, we see Max in the distance, taking plots on the block.
“Maaaax!” Kendall shouts, but he’s too far away to hear, “MAAAAAX!!!” He looks up and sees us. He shouts something back and points toward the direction we came from, but we can’t hear anything. After another 10 minutes or so, we finally reach each other.
I just finished flagging the boundary,” I can hear Molly’s voice coming through Max’s radio as Kendall tells him about what happened. “There’s only Haley and Shannen out here with me though,” Molly’s voice continues on the radio, “I think the others are lost.”
“Here come with me,” Max says to Kendall and I, then heads back toward to the ridge and picks up his radio. “No I found them, they’re with me,” he says into the radio, “they came all the way up over the ridge into the other piece.”
“We were going to start honking the horn of the truck,” he says to us. 
He takes us back over the ridge, where we see the entire area we’d just walked up twenty minutes ago has been planted by now and long pieces of flagging now mark the boundary line. I’m too done to care though. I just want to get trees in the ground. Max points to the flags and tells us to just follow the line and we’ll find Molly. Kendall sets off right away and starts pounding in trees.
After planting around six trees down the line, I see Casper planting his way toward me.
“Hey, I don’t know to what’s going on or where plant,” he looks at me hopefully, “and I already mixed up the Douglas fir and balsam fir today.”
I have no idea! I think angrily, Kendall and I were just lost for an hour. Do you really think I have any idea what’s going on?! Douglas and balsam are literally the last thing on my mind! Before responding though, I look at his face and realize that he’s just as confused as I am. This is his first ever fill plant and he just wants to put in trees without messing anything up.
“The space between this line and that boundary line right there is getting pretty narrow,” I say, gesturing toward the boundary line that the line we’re following leads away from, “Do you want to fill it?”
“Yeah, definitely,” he looks relieved at having some sort of instruction and immediately heads in that direction. I hope that was good advice, I think, because really it was a total guess.
I keep following the line, not really knowing where I’m going but hoping it leads to people who do. Eventually, I see the crew boss from the other crew we’re planting with and can hear Kendall talking with Molly. Thank god, I think, we’re safe. I figure they’ve already talked about Kendall and my rather long detour, so I bounce back the other direction toward where I told Casper to plant. Once I hit the line of trees on the boundary, though, Casper is nowhere to be seen, so I plant back the other direction. Molly is gone now and it is just Kendall, me, and the other crew on this piece. The other crew is literally the most chatty crew I’ve been around. It is a group of girls who are all from Fernie and they are all lovely people but, my god, they chatter nonstop about absolutely nothing. On a day like today, it sounds like a constant clanging sound harassing my ears. As Kendall plants toward me, I see a line of flagging heading from in one direction.
“I have no idea whether that flagging is planted trees or the boundary line,” I say heatedly, planting toward it.
“It’s the boundary line,” Kendall responds tiredly, as though she’d rather not be saying anything, “just plant along it but not past it.”
As the relief at having some sort of clear instruction washes though me, I wonder if this interaction was the exact same as the interaction between Casper and I a while ago.

Back at the truck by 3:30, I am so excited to grab just an hour’s worth of trees and get back to camp. By 4:30, however, we receive news that another crew from our camp is heading toward our block, meaning we’ll probably have to stay to finish the block. I sigh and grab a few more tree bundles, hoping it will last me until the block finishes. Bagging out by five, I discover there is another section of the block that we are also planting. Kurt is equally as done as I am. We grab eight more bundles each. It starts raining. We keep planting. I slip and fall a lot (because I still don’t have corks). I bag out. There’s still trees left and still people in the block. I bag up again. Kendall runs out of flagging. I try to follow her unflagged trees. I fail a lot, planting directly beside her trees even though we may not even have enough trees to finish the block. Turns out we have extra. We finish at 6:30. Six fucking thirty. Two hours late.
“You know,” Kendall says to me on the drive back, “being lost for an hour with somebody else is much better than being lost all alone.”
“Yeah,” I smile, instantly feeling better, “you’re a lovely companion to be lost with.”

When we finally get back to camp around 7:30, Molly parks next to the dry shack so we can jump right out of truck and bring our stuff into the shack.
Inside the dry shack trying to warm up next to the fire, I overhear Cathy talking to Molly.
“I’m so glad you made it back alright,” Cathy gushes, “nobody’s eaten yet.”
“You waited?” asks Molly, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Well, with three crews still out,” Cathy responds, “Also, we’re changing things up a bit tomorrow. I’m taking Anneke and giving you…” I immediately stop listening as my heart drops. She’s taking me off Molly’s crew, I think in disbelief, I’m the one in the ever-changing seat. They’re taking me off Molly’s crew. I stay in the dry shack for a long time before slowly making my way out. Molly is right there.
“You got bumped!” She exclaims.
“I knoooww,” I respond, defeated.
“Don’t worry,” she says reassuringly, giving me a big hug, “I’ll talk to Cathy. We’ll get you back.”


The next day, I’m on Jenna’s crew. Jenna is a younger crew boss and was my first crew boss last year, the one who trained me. She is a sweet, sensitive girl and means well, but last year it seemed like she and I had never clicked very well. I just don’t think her way of teaching and my way of learning matched very well, which really isn’t anyone’s fault. 

However, last year I had developed some sort of completely unwarranted grudge against her for criticizing all my trees as I was learning (which was her job, really, since my trees were crappy while I was first learning). I hadn’t acted on this grudge until the end party last year though, which I still deeply regret. At that party, after a bit of MDMA and an extraordinary bit of alcohol, I had made it my mission to go up to each individual person and tell them how wonderful they are and how glad I was to have met them. While this was all well and good, it also included Jenna, with whom that totally unwarranted grudge was still lingering.
I remember walking up to her and throwing my arm around her, pulling her close, as I had with everyone that night.
“I just want you to know that I think you were a fantastic crew boss,” I had told her, “and I’m glad you trained me.” Then, that evil part of me still holding that grudge had added, “now, I know there were some other people in this camp who were really upset with you being a crew boss after so few years of planting, but I don’t think that matters. I think you’re fantastic.” Bitch move, I know, and I still feel awful about it. Planting doubt in a totally innocent and sweet person who already carries enough self doubt. Bitch bitch bitch move.

Now, I hadn’t completely pulled this comment out of my ass. Last year, while still planting on my uncle’s crew, there was a guy on his crew who had been planting for very long time and would complain about various things. Apparently, he had asked Rainer if he could be crew boss that year, but Rainer had refused, citing this planter’s refusal to help out with camp take-down and other things.
“It’s all really clique-y,” this planter had continued, “take Jenna, for example. She’s only been planting for like two years, but Cathy likes her, so they made her a crew boss after she hurt her hip.”
However, this was only one planter who had said this, and I really don’t think it was too reliable a source of information. In any case, it certainly had no business making itself known that night.
So now I’m back on her crew. In some ways, although I absolutely love being on Molly’s crew, I think this was an important change, at least for a time. Part of me feels like I really need to make it up to Jenna, while most of me desperately hopes she just doesn’t remember that night. I think we just need a day or two to make nice with each other.

This is my first day ever planting ferts. Ferts are tiny little packets of fertilizer that get planted in a separated whole a few inches from the planted tree. They’re usually used in extremely crappy fill plants, the mines, or in other places where the ground is so awful that it needs fertilizer to grow. Jenna shows me how to plant the ferts with the tree and we set to work. I don’t mind ferts so much; it’s an extra 3 cents just for one more hole that you can even use to close the previous hole for the tree. It ends up being a relatively decent day, but there just isn’t much of a “crew feeling” going on there. Although Jenna’s crew are all lovely people, I am extremely glad to find out that it was just a one-time deal and I get to go BACK TO MOLLY’S CREW WOOOOO!!!!


The late-night breakdowns in my tent are definitely down from last year, but they’ve been occurring a little more regularly recently. I think there are several factors affecting this. One, Anna. Obviously. Two, I’ve pretty much completely stopped taking antidepressants since coming out here, whether or not I actually should; I’m at less than a quarter of my prescription now. Three, being only four hours away from James since coming out here but talking to him only once every four or eight days. Also, there’s his whole “no attachment” thing James has going on, which anyone who’s been reading my blogs knows I’m 100% not down with.

In a positive end note, I was talking by the fire with Sparky one night about various things. At one point, he says “I know you write a lot of stuff in your blog, Anneke, but I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention anything I say in a negative light toward other planters. I’d hate for anyone to be hurt because of me.”
“I totally understand,” I say, “but there is one point where you laugh at something someone else said. And that’s kind of important because your laugh brings stillborn swans back to life.”
“Wow,” Sparky laughs, reviving six more swans in the process, “I wish my laugh really could do that! I’d go find all the dead swans and laugh at them. All of them! Mwahahaha!”
“That’s kind of awful,” I say. We both start laughing at the ridiculous image of Sparky going around laughing at dead swans.