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.
