After a dramatic turn of events, I am now planting in the Clearwater camp mentioned in the previous blog. We’ll back up only to the point where I hitched a ride out of Nelson.
James and Ellie drove me into Nelson on the morning of the Clearwater camp’s day off. I had all my gear packed into a backpack and handmade cardboard sign reading “KAMLOOPS”. James had lent me a tent, blanket, shovel, and bags as well. After a quick breakfast at Oso Negro, we drove to one of the intersections outside of town. All three of us were completely silent.
“It’s for the best, Anneke,” he says as he and Ellie walk across the road with me, trying to sound comforting. Don’t you tell me it’s ‘for the best’, I think angrily, my glaring eyes glaring venomously at the road beneath my feet, This is all you.
“Good-bye, Ellie,” I say quietly as she walks toward me. She refuses to look at me, just like I’m refusing to look at James, but she leans into me and wraps her arm around my legs. I wrap her in a hug and we stay there for a second. For a few moments, we are just a small group of sad, awkward-looking people refusing to make eye-contact with each other. Then they leave.
A couple seconds later, James runs back across the road toward me, holding out a plastic bag.
“The muffins!” he calls cheerily, “you’ll want something to eat along the way!” He’s trying to make this better, I think bitterly, biting back a snide comment. I take the muffins and he heads back across the street.
Even while they’re driving away, I think, they’ll turn back. He’s not actually going to leave me here. He’ll come back. But he doesn’t and, before long, an old man stops beside me and offers me a ride up to Slocan, the next town up. I throw my stuff in the back, hop in, and watch as Nelson disappears behind us in the side mirror.
Both he and the next person who pick me up are extremely quiet old men. This is absolutely perfect, considering all I am capable of doing is stare broodingly out the window in a wave of angry self-pity. After the second man drops me off in Nakusp, I wait almost an hour for someone else to pick me up again (Nakusp is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and there are hardly any cars). By this time, all the angry brooding of the morning plus the hour waiting in the hot sun has completely burnt me out and I am grateful to collapse into any moving vehicle.
“We can getcha to Revelstoke if you’re alright with sitting on the mattress!” calls the girl in the passenger seat of a minivan that pulls up, gesturing toward the back door. I slide open the door and realize that all of the back seats have been removed. In their place is a giant mattress with a guy fast asleep on one side of it.
“It’s perfect!” I respond, sliding my backpack to the back of the mattress, “thanks so much!” It really is perfect; too perfect, almost. I am fast asleep by the time we reach Revelstoke.
The next guy to pick me up is going all the way to Kamloops. He is extremely friendly and social, and I’m relieved to have spent the last few hours sleeping. We end up getting along really well.
“My name’s Jack McCabe,” he says cheerily, a thick American accent showing through, “I’m coming from Florida.”
“Wow!” I respond, “that’s literally the opposite corner of the continent!”
“Yes, it is,” he laughs, “after I retired, I’ve been driving my bus all over this continent!” We talk for a long time. Jack is a retired math professor, but a lifelong mathematician. He explains the Fibonacci theory to me in a way that actually makes sense, and is actually able to help me see a sense of beauty in math in general (a subject I’ve always thought of as boring as shit). One of his biggest passions is prime numbers, and he is thrilled when I ask whether or not there’s a “final” prime number (turns out there isn’t). I’m really impressed by the way he seemed to approach teaching (“my students were always allowed to interrupt me, but they were never allowed to interrupt each other”), how he placed the students and their abilities higher than his own. While driving, we also pay attention to the incredible landscape we’re passing.
When we reach Kamloops, Jack insists I borrow his phone to call the people in the Clearwater camp so they know where I am.
“I’m responsible for you now,” he explains, “I don’t want to drop you on the side of the road without knowing you’re going to end up where you need to go.” I call both Molly and Jeremy, but neither of them answer their phones. Finally, he drives me to the road that goes straight to Clearwater and I pull my stuff out of his bus.
“Do you need anything?” he asks, “here, I’ll fill up your water bottle for ya.” He reaches for my empty water bottle and fills it from one of his own. I smile and thank him, telling him I’m fine.
“Now I’m gonna drive past here again in about forty-five minutes,” he says, “if you’re still here, I’m picking you up and you can pitch your tent near my bus for the night. I don’t want you standing out here in the dark!”
“Alright,” I smile, waving as he drives past (*side note: he wrote a book about his extremely interesting life called “Unspoken Love: An Orphan's Journey"). Luckily, Tabi happens to drive by and pulls over.
“Tabi!” I shout, running toward her. Francois is in the car behind her and he pulls over. The three of us have a big group hug on the side of the road for a few seconds.
“I had no idea you were coming!” Tabi gushes, “I thought you were planting out of Crawford Bay for summer trees!”
“Yeah… I was…” I answer awkwardly. I hadn’t thought of how to answer when people ask why I’m here, “but I’m planting here now.” On the hour-and-a-half drive to camp, Tabi and I catch up on everything.
After arriving in camp, I give everyone from the other camp a huge hug. It’s a wonderful feeling to see people again who you thought you wouldn’t see for a year.
“The biggest different is no Nina,” Edmund sighs while explaining the differences between the two camps. This is his first time planting outside of Cathy and Rainer’s as well. He is right; everyone says that Nina is the best camp cook ever found and it’s damn near impossible to appreciate anything else when you’ve only experienced the best. “Although,” he adds, “the mix is a lot easier. One hundred percent spruce.”
“All spruce?” I repeat. He nods. I’ve never planted monoculture before and feel a little strange about it. Surely that’s not sustainable…
One day, there are more people on our crew than seats in the truck, so I get a ride back to camp with Rob. We discuss monoculture planting on the drive back.
“But you can look at the forest along the side of the road and see it’s all different,” I say, pointing to the trees we’re driving past on the way back to camp, “there’s pine, cedar, spruce, poplar, larch…”
“Yeah,” he says, “mono-culture stinks. It’s cheaper, though, and easier to cut it all down. It’s not sustainable at all, though. One year, I went back up to see the trees we had planted the year before, and they were all dead! A disease came and wiped out all the spruce. That’s the thing about a monoculture forest; one disease can wipe absolutely everything out. It’s awful!”
People weren’t kidding when they said summer trees are difficult. I think a lot of that has to do with energy levels rather than ground or trees, though; people are exhausted from planting spring trees for the past two months (at least I am). Granted, the trees are all in bundles of fifteen rather than twenty, and the ground is generally either rockier or has more red-rot. It’s not as mountainous out here in Clearwater though, so the ground is much less steep. Also, we are able to plant in the black duff on top of the dirt because this area is not prone to drought, like up in the Flathead. There are also, however, far more bugs.
During the day, everywhere you look is a small cloud of mosquitos and no-see-ums. Everyone on my crew uses an extra t-shirt, wrapping it around their head while placing the neck-hole around their face. We all wear long-sleeve shirts and pants, dousing everything in bug spray every morning. At one point, I feel like The Brave Little Tailor, swatting “seven in one blow”.
One evening, I ask Molly if she needs help with her load-up again. She grins at me and says yes. On the way there, we talk about what happened if Crawford Bay. After finishing the load up, we talk more about it on the way back. It’s so relieving to talk about it, and she is so supportive. After we park, our conversation stretches onto many other things and eventually ends in a long, warm hug on the way to bed.
The crew I’m on in this camp is made up mostly of people from the previous camp. Our crew boss is William, named so because he looks exactly like a “Prince Charming”. Only he can often be seen picking his nose and then eating whatever he finds in it; definitely not a Prince Charming. We also have Ziggy, Caedon, Candace, and a girl named Callie, who was not at the other camp.
There is a lake just off the drive back to camp every day, and William often stops there for a few minutes to jump in before heading back to camp. The first time he stops, he strips completely naked and heads in, just like we did out in the Flathead, so I think nothing of doing the same. By the time my head pokes out of the water again, I realize that all the other girls on our crew are still wearing either both a bra and underwear or just underwear. Well whoops.
The first day off is extremely hot, so a bunch of us head to the lake in Clearwater. Eventually, there are at least fifteen of us all sitting on the tiny dock at once.
While sitting there, Edmund mentions how he had worked as Spongebob on a Nickelodeon cruise ship for a number of years.
“Yeah, it was a lot of fun,” he reminisces, “just spending all dressed as Spongebob, making kids laugh. They paid for all my travel expenses too. Usually, it was just from like Boston to Miami or something, but once they paid to fly me all the way to Barcelona to work on a ship out there.” This sounds like an absolutely incredible job.
Suddenly, the entire dock sinks down a level, sending us abruptly downward.
“Whoooaaaa!” everyone shouts, “fuck, what just happened? Duuuude, we just broke the dock!” Everyone laughs, making sure the thing isn’t about to completely collapse, then continues what they are doing. One of the supports on the dock came totally loose. Now, whenever someone gets up, the entire dock shifts a bit and water comes up into certain areas. As everyone continues talking, making due with the now-shifting dock, I spend the next while fantasizing about being princess Jasmine on a Disney cruise ship (Ellie would love that…).
One night, Francois is at the table sewing a part of his boots, so I ask if he can show me how to sew a giant tear in my bags. He says it’s no problem, so I bring my stuff over to the table. While sitting there, he starts asking questions about why I’m not planting at James’ camp anymore. He didn’t think I was very clear when I had briefly talked about it when he and Tabi picked me up (which I hadn’t been), so I tell him an extremely abbreviated two-sentence version of what actually happened.
“So he promised you work, and then told you to leave before the work even started?” he snorts while threading the heavy-duty needle. That isn’t exactly what I said at all, I think, how is that all he got?
“That’s not right,” he continues, “this contract started a while ago; he essentially cost you three days of work. For you, that’s over six hundred dollars, isn’t it? The least he could have done was drive you here.” I make no response, only looking at the needle he is in the midst of setting up. Suddenly he stops.
“It’s his fault. You know that, right?” he says, eyeing me closely, “You didn’t do anything wrong; it’s his fault.” I’m startled by this; Francois has always been a kind, older planter, but this is the first time he’s ever said anything like this.
“Heh,” I breathe quietly, smiling slightly. He smiles and pats me on the shoulder, then continues his work, showing me how to operate the wooden handle of the needle.
On another one of the nights off, I join everyone by the fire. One of the people in camp has a tiny, angry dog who likes to sit on people’s laps but does not like to be touched. This makes it quite difficult to remove the thing once she decides to sit on your lap. While sitting at the fire, the little dog chooses my lap as his throne for the night. When Molly comes over, she lightly brushes against the dog, who immediately jumps up and starts barking rabidly at her. As Molly jumps back, Tula is suddenly right there between the little dog and Molly, growling at the little dog.
“Whoa there, Tula,” Molly says as she takes a seat, lightly holding the large, golden dog back. As Molly pops open another beer, Tula keeps close, looking around cautiously.
“Tula hates it when I get drunk,” Molly says, petting the dog, “or high.”
“How can she tell?” I ask.
“Dogs can tell a lot,” she answers, “she’s super smart.”
Chad bought a type of whiskey that tastes just like cinnamon hearts and brings it to the fire. Molly gags as he shows it to her, but he insists she takes a drink.
“Uggghhh, it’s so sweet!” she spits, handing the bottle back to him. I think it tastes fantastic though, so he leaves the whole thing with me.
At various points during the night, Dale, one of the crew bosses here, sits next to me. He tells me how interesting I am (even though I’m saying hardly anything), talks about a bunch of the exciting jobs he’s had, and frequently reaches over to stroke my back or massage my arms. Is it weird to admit that I’m enjoying this? After the whole thing with James, there is so much self-doubt entering my mind. With Dale sitting next to me, I can’t help but think, well I wasn’t enough for James, but clearly I’m enough for Dale to come flirt with.
“Hey, do you enjoy working out in your spare time?” asks Molly, who is on the other side of me. She is leaning over me and grinning at Dale.
“Working out?” Dale asks in surprise, “oh yeah, of course. I…”
“How many push-ups can you do?” Molly presses further. I cringe, trying not to laugh.
“Oh, quite a few…” Dale answers confidently.
“Yeah, can you do them one-handed?” Molly is still grinning wide. Oh my gooood, I think to myself, the poor guy isn’t even embarrassed by this.
“I can do those,” he responds, sitting up a bit straighter, “only like three at a time, but I can do them.”
“Yeah? Max loooooves to do push-ups,” Molly gushes further, nudging Max on her other side. At this point, I am genuinely not sure whether she is even teasing.
“Oh my gosh, Molly, stop,” Max laughs, looking slightly embarrassed.
I get up and leave for a bit. Upon returning, I see Molly, Caedon, and Tabi all standing together next to the tables outside. Walking over, I give the three of them a huge hug. Then, grabbing Molly’s hand, I pull her into the mess tent where the music is playing. We dance for a while and she spins me over and over again, in and out. It takes a lot of alcohol for me to actually go dance, but I’m loving this. When the music stops, we just stand there holding each other until it starts again. Eventually, we make our way back to the fire to sit down. Before long, Dale is right there again, calling me adorable and stroking my back. Molly leans over again and starts talking with him. At one point, they are talking about Uncle Jim.
“How long have you known him for?” she asks Dale confidently. Oh my goooood, I think again, why is this happening? Internally, I’m totally killing myself with laughter.
“Oh, I started working with him around four years ago,” he answers.
“Yeah? I’ve known him for fourteen years,” she brags, “fourteen years!”
“Weeeellll,” I brag jokingly, sticking my hand between the two of them, “I’ve known him for twenty-one years.”
“Okay, well you just shut up!” Molly snaps at me, grinning.
After around an hour longer, I am curled up in Molly’s lap staring at the fire while she sweetly strokes my hair. Dale is still sitting beside us.
“I love this girl!” he shouts, reaching over to place his hand on my side.
“Not as much as I love her!” Molly laughs in response, her arm firmly around me.
I catch only snippets of what she and Dale talk about while I stare into the fire, perfectly happy to just lay curled up in Molly’s lap. At one point, I hear Dale say, “now that was when I started working out here around twenty years ago.” Holy shit, how old is this dude?
Eventually, it becomes pretty clear that Max is ready to head to bed.
“Well I guess we’ll leave you here to ward off the boys on your own,” he teases me as both he and Molly get up.
“I don’t like those odds,” I hear Molly say firmly. What odds? I start to wonder, but I’m already half asleep. At first, I don’t want to leave, but Molly offers to sing me a lullaby with Max, and then I agree to come.
The two of them crawl into my tent with me, laying on either side of me. Curled up between the two of them, I listen as Max attempts to sing Raffi’s “Baby Beluga”. Although he chose the song, I end up having to remind him of a bunch of the words. Molly and I sing “Hush Little Baby” together, and then the two of them give me a hug and head out. I fall asleep pretty darn quickly after a goodnight as sweet as that one.
The next morning, there are a bunch of us sitting at one of the tables outside the mess tent. Some of us are planning to head out to The Painted Turtle for breakfast.
“So what are your plans for the four days off?” Dale asks as I sit down.
“I was thinking of hitchhiking to Revelstoke,” I answer, “I’ve never spent much time there and it seems like a really interesting little place.”
“Hey, I’m headed that way, honey, I can give you a ride to Revelstoke!” responds Dale. Of course you are, I think.
While at The Painted Turtle, Chad mentions how he is planning to head to Vernon for the four days off. Vernon is over half the way to Revelstoke.
“You should go with Chad,” Molly says to me from across the table, “I don’t trust Dale.” (Dale was not at the restaurant for breakfast.)
When we get back to camp, however, Dale is right there to greet us as we pull in.
“Where’s that little hippie girl?” he calls as we are all climbing out of the truck. As I come around the side of the truck, he says, “there you are! Hey, I’ve got the truck all packed up. Still wanna come?”
“Um… sure,” I answer, slightly thrown off by how quickly he appeared. A ride directly to Revelstoke would definitely be much easier than hitchhiking from Vernon.
“All right, well my truck’s right over there,” he points to the crew cab beside his trailer, “load up your stuff; we can leave whenever you’re ready!” I nod and head into the mess tent.
On my way out, Molly immediately walks over to me.
“So you’re going with Dale?” she eyes me questioningly. I shrug, and she puts her arm around me, walking with me toward my tent. “Be careful, Anneke,” she continues, “don’t get involved with him.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I say, “I kinda just want a ride to Revelstoke.”
“I know,” she says, stopping and turning toward me so she’s staring straight at me, “so just be clear on that. He’s just giving you a ride to Revelstoke; you don’t owe him anything.”
Walking up toward us, Chad looks at me. “So you’re getting a ride with Dale then?” he asks, overhearing our conversation. I nod and he shrugs, heading back toward his own truck.
“Be clear and confident,” she continues, looking earnestly at me, “take care of yourself.”
I nod. “Since I lost my iPod, can I write down your number?” I ask.
“Absolutely!” she responds, “call me for absolutely anything.” I pull out a notebook and write down the number as she recites. “Have fun in Revelstoke,” she says, leaning forward to kiss me on the forehead before turning back toward the mess tent. I grab a bunch of stuff from my tent before heading back out and throwing it onto the pile of stuff on the back seat of the crew cab.
“Alright, let’s go!” Dale says happily, jumping into the driver’s seat and I climb into the passenger seat.
The drive turns out perfectly fine. Dale is an extremely friendly, cheerful person; a little flirty, but not dangerous at all. I start to feel pretty guilty about being dismissive of him. He is driving to Kaslo and offers to take me with him, but I tell him I’d rather stay in Revelstoke for the next few days. Then he drops me off at the hostel I’m planning to stay at and heads on his way.
One of the girls in the hostel works at an adventuring company called “Flexpeditions”. Apparently, one of their events was canceled and they have something else planned instead for the evening, but there aren’t many people going anymore.
“Would you like to come?” she asks, a thick English accent showing through, “we’re going to rappel down a giant cliff into a canyon, then zipline across the river at the bottom of the canyon, then scale the other side of the canyon to get back up. The original plan would have been $65, but because of the change of plans, it’s going to be $40.”
“Yeah!” I respond excitedly, “I’d love to come!” That night, we head on the mini-adventure. It is my first time rappelling, and I love it. The canyon, located around 10 minutes outside of town, is at least fifty feet up on either side, a large fast-flowing river gushing down the middle of it. Hanging onto the rope, I hop down the cliff, step by step, until I see the ground coming nearer. Reaching the bottom, I release the rope from the carabiner and step out to where the others are standing. We then latch the carabiner onto a chain attached to a rope swung across the river and pull ourselves to the other side. Once we are all across, we throw a rope between the four of us, attach ourselves together with it, and climb up the very narrow ledge back up to the top of the canyon.
The next day, I sit for a few hours in a small coffee shop I’d come across while Googling the area: La Baguette. It seems like a lovely place to sit and write, so I order breakfast and sit at the small bar. Afterward, I hike up to the Nels Nelson ski jump. Apparently, quite a few world records were set here before they built the Trans Canada highway and deactivated the jump. Reaching the jump, I look up in amazement at the massive hill in front of me and imagine a person flying off the top of it wearing a pair of skis. On the trail leading to and from the jump, I see multiple temporary warning signs for bears set up along the path: WARNING: It’s bear season! Remember to travel in groups, make lots of noise, don’t wear strong perfumes, and leave the berries for the bears. I’m not wearing any perfume, so I’m at least following one of those guidelines.
After more exploring and walking and visiting a couple museums, my little Revelstoke expedition comes to an end. Dale comes to pick me up on his way back to camp on the last day off and we head back together. He’d ended up spending the time in Nelson rather than Kaslo. I’m glad I didn’t know this earlier, otherwise it’d have been extremely difficult to not come along with him, just telling him to “just drop me off at the ferry landing”. James would have been literally just a ferry ride and 5-minute hitchhiking journey away. Jesus Christ, restrain yourself, Anneke, I roll my eyes at myself, he’d have been so pissed off at you just randomly showing up. We stop at a couple thrift stores along the way, eventually pulling back into camp with lots of time to spare.
I help Molly with her load-up at night, telling her everything that happened. She’d had a pretty comfortable, easy-going time off. With a new reefer, the thing is completely full of boxes. She groans as she sees the type of box she needs far in the back. Climbing on top of boxes, it takes a few minutes before we manage to pull even one out; she needs fifty. Eventually, another one of the crew bosses drives up; she needs the other kind of trees, the ones that are in front. We all work together to complete her load-up first, opening up a path to the type of boxes Molly needs for her load-up. Eventually, the three of us finish both load-ups and, completely out of breath now, make our way back to camp.
One hot day, we are on an extremely slashy and slippery 20-cent block. Since it had been raining earlier, the bugs are billowing in clouds around our heads. There are three crews on this block and everyone is in a crappy mood. At 2:30, right in the heat of the day, we are supposed to plant all the way down this lousy hill, refill at a cache of trees down below, then plant as far out as we can. At the end of the day, we are supposed to walk instead of plant back up that hill in order to save access. Nobody has any interest in that plan though, and it seems too frustrating and bizarre to actually be the plan. Mary, a lively and outspoken French girl from one of the other crews, eventually begins trying to rally people together to march back up the hill early in protest. She, Callie, and I are all planting around the same speed down the hill.
“Enough of this!” Mary says, “even our crew boss was like ‘we’re leaving early today’. I’m so done! Aaauuugghhh!!” I’m pretty sure one of the only reasons I’m still able to keep planting in spite of the frustrations of the day is due to Mary’s well-placed sound effects.
Soon, we spot Candace planting her way back up the hill.
“Yo, Candace!” Mary calls, “do you know what is happening? What’s the plan?”
“Yeah, I know the plan, but I didn’t like it so I made my own plan,” Candace responds. She then repeats the plan back to us, adding, “I thought that was ridiculous though, so I just bagged up at the cache down there and am planting back up to the truck. I’m done.”
“Oh, you’re brave, girl!” Mary cheers, “I saw your brother headed back up earlier. You guys got balls!”
The four of us have momentarily stopped planting and just stand around deciding whether or not to give up and head back to the truck.
“I would go plant back up,” Mary complains, “but William is down there waving like an idiot, so maybe I shouldn’t,” Looking toward William in the distance, I notice that he is indeed waving maniacally toward the cache down below.
“We probably look like some cluster of planters all plotting against him,” I laugh as we all just stand there watching him waving him shovel around, “a mutiny!”
“Mutiny?” Mary repeats, confused, “what is this word?”
“Like, when pirates all rebel against their captain,” I answer, “you know, like Jack Sparrow’s crew mutinied against him.”
“Ahh rebel! Yes, I know this!” Mary cheers enthusiastically, “yes, we will rebel! We will mutiny! Let’s go back up!” We all look back down toward William. He has started planting again but is still looking up every few moments to gesture frantically toward the cache.
“Well I am,” Candace says, throwing her shovel into the ground and continuing to plant up. Callie, Mary, and I continue downward.
When Mary bags out, she turns to walk back up the hill rather than bag up again at the cache. Eventually, Callie bags out as well and heads back up as well. By this time, however, it is nearly 4:30. I finally bag out at almost exactly 4:30, eliminating any need to go to the cache anyway. Clambering over the mountains of slash to get back up to the truck, we all collapse into the truck, relieved that the day has ended.
Every day, I swear my body screams "Dammit, Anneke, we were done planting by this time last year! You've betrayed us!" Summer trees are indeed underway.
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!
