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!
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!
