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| Loading heavy trees onto the nets for the helicopter to lift into the block.
One morning, we see our truck filled with the largest spruce trees in stock and $0.25 listed as our tree price. This can only mean one thing – a fucking fill plant. On a more uplifting side, it’s also a heli block. Unfortunately, we are not riding in the helicopter. This means it’s a walk-in block.
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Arriving at the first cache of trees dropped by the helicopter, we bag up as much as will fit in our bags which, with these trees, is roughly 200. With 200 giant spruce, our bags feel even heavier than the 500 small trees. However, the weight lessens much quicker with the smaller number of trees. Partway up the first run, Rainer comes over to where I’m planting.
“You know you’re on the wrong side of the line,” he says. I didn’t know that. He starts walking and gesturing so I follow him to the other side of the line. Arriving at the other side of the line, he begins eyeing up the ground while reaching toward my shovel. I know exactly what this is, I think, grinning to myself and remembering last year when Rainer planted almost 150 trees for me. He thrusts the shovel into the ground, explaining the ground and the trees around it and the intention behind this spot the whole time, without looking up, he sticks his hand out, I put a tree in it, he plants it, closes the hole, moves forward. I flag the tree and follow him, all the while listening to him explain how to plant quickly in this type of block.
After a few more trees, James’ voice starts to enter my mind: you just have this way of making people want to do things for you and take care of you. Like you can’t take care of yourself. I feel anger welling up inside and almost ask to have my shovel back so I can plant my own trees. But Rainer already has a hole open and his hand is held out, waiting for another tree as he’s looking forward at the ground ahead, scouting out the next spot. I put the tree in his hand, he plants it, and starts walking toward the spot he’s already scouted, explaining everything as he does it. I flag the tree and follow along. Free trees and free advice are still fucking free trees and free advice, I justify to myself, if someone wants to plant trees for me, they are more than welcome to.
“Hey, Rainer, I think I need some help with my fill planting technique,” Molly hoots from above.
“Yeah yeah,” Rainer mutters under his breath without breaking stride. I grin.
Slightly over 100 trees later, I am completely bagged out. Rainer hands my shovel back and finds the next cache for me. Here I bag up again and start up toward the treeline, planting my own trees this time. After a pretty damn good start, I’m loaded with energy and advice for the rest of the day.
This is the first (and probably only) day where I highball the crew. I’m 99% sure they were good trees too yo ;)
A few hours later, I pass a section of block packed with little stinging nettle plants. Remembering the delicious soup Nina had made last year from nettles off the block, I drop my shovel for a few moments to begin collecting them. Hands safely protected with gloves, I grasp bunches of stinging nettle at the stems and drop them into my back bag.
“You know they’re too early to pick?” laughs Molly upon learning about the nettles in my back bag, “they rip up the whole root if you pick them now. If you wait a few weeks, they’ll be bigger and easier to pick. Right now, you’re basically slaughtering baby nettles before they can really grow.”
I did not know that.
Upon arriving back at camp, Uncle Jim notices me carrying the massive handful of nettles toward the mess tent. He gives me one of those looks that are really difficult to differentiate between a frown and a grin.
“I know, they’re too early to pick!” I say defensively, grinning.
“Oh nooo,” he hoots, “baby nettles are fine; they’re the most tender. But you’re not supposed to get them dirty like that because they’re real difficult to clean.”
I carry the dirty and slaughtered baby nettles the rest of the journey into the mess tent, hoping they’re at least somewhat useable in all their deficiencies.
“Oooh are those for me?!” Bee coos as I enter the cook shack with the nettles, “this is so exciting – someone else already brought me a whole bag full of fresh morels off the block.”
Two days later, we have a delicious creamy “block soup” made with morels and nettles.
One shift, we are planting a Canfor block again. This means that there is a higher chance of a forester showing up (or rather, there actually is a chance of a forester showing up). On one of these days, I notice Molly walking around an area of block that we’d finished planting, two men covered in hi-viz accompanying her. Molly is acting much more energetic and happy than usual. Those must be the foresters.
After a while, my shoulders start to feel strained so I reach up to unclasp my shoulder straps to let them fall into my back bag. Once my bags start to get lighter, around halfway through my bag-up, I often drop the shoulder straps to rest the weight of my bags on my hips, giving my shoulders a break. However, after I do that this time, I suddenly remember that my hi-viz is strapped to the back of my shoulder straps. Guiltily looking behind, I see that Molly and the foresters are not looking, so I pull the straps back up onto my shoulders. My poor shoulders carry those damn things for the entire rest of the bag-up.
When the foresters leave, Molly gives us all a huge grin.
“Well done, everyone!” she shouts ecstatically, “we made a great impression on the foresters. They said your trees are fantastic!” She pumps her fist in the air in excitement, boosting all of our spirits.
William, apparently, didn’t make such a good impression. (Who, by the way, has clarified that he doesn’t pick his nose and eat his boogers. Rather, he sometimes eats the dirt out from under his fingernails and could easily have been scratching his nose beforehand. Personally, I don’t see how this is any less disgusting but nevertheless, the distinction has been made.)
“The foresters said they took a random plot and found a bunch of loose trees,” Molly said, “and one of the plots was something like a 12 when they were supposed to planting 8s. So coming from that block may have helped their positive impression of us. I dunno if William just wasn’t checking his crew or what.”
A few days later, William mentions Rainer’s response to him after the foresters came by his block.
“He [Rainer] just said ‘I was going to say something to you, but I was too angry, so I just walked away to calm down first’,” William says, “and I thought ‘Wow, I think Rainer just demonstrated some sense of emotion.’ It was kind of shocking.”
--> “Pull! Pull!” Sophia screams as Melinda yanks with all her might, trying unsuccessfully to rip the trail off the dress.
After a difficult shift of lousy blocks and staying late, our crew is ecstatic to drive out of the block at almost exactly 4:30 one evening. It’s also that night of the joint camp party and a bunch of us are planning to drive to Marty’s camp in Cranbrook after dinner tonight (this is the “sister camp” where Gwen is planting this year).
Halfway down the logging road, there is a weird sort of rumble in the truck and Molly rolls down her window, frowning. Looking out and down at the truck, she lets out a long sigh and pulls over on the side of the road. Without saying a word to us, she parks the truck and bitterly picks up her radio.
“Hello Rainer,” she calls into it, her voice betraying her exhausted frustration at whatever she’d just discovered.
“Yea, hullo,” comes Rainer’s response.
“We have a flat,” she says frankly, “on the front tire.” Several shifts ago, we’d had another flat tire and had spent our single spare.
A pause.
“Use one of the wheels off the dually,” Rainer responds after a moment.
Another pause, during which Molly clicks her radio twice, indicating to Rainer that she’d heard and understood.
“Well, guys,” she said, “settle in cuz it’s gonna be a long wait.”
It takes roughly an hour for the whole operation. Jacking up the back of the truck, unscrewing the wheel, rolling it to the front, tightening the screws back onto the inner tire, lowering the jack back down, repeating the whole thing for the front of the truck, putting the outer tire from the back onto the front, tightening it, hauling the flat into the back of the truck, and everything else required for fixing a flat. Chances are, whoever’s reading this knows more about fixing flats than I did at the time. Now, however, I know exactly what to do. Woot woot!
Arriving back at camp later than intended, we also leave camp for the Cranbrook party later than expected. Hitching a ride with William and One, a girl on my crew, we stop at one of the BC Liquor stores along the way to stock up. It’s a solid 2-hour drive from our camp to Marty’s camp in Cranbrook, so we arrive around 10pm. However, Marty’s camp is known as “the party camp” so they are still in full swing. Gwen is the first person we see upon exiting William’s truck and we are all ecstatic to see her.
“I’m sooo happy you guys came!” she squeals, wrapping each of us in a giant hug and a kiss.
They’ve laid flattened boxes all over ground around the fire and leading in/out of the mess tent, creating a dry path and dancefloor to walk on. The couches from the mess tent are circled around the fire so people can sit comfortably without leaving the party. A large sound system is off to the side blaring all sorts of techno music while some sort of laser creates green figures all over the trees. The theme for the party, “Gemini Twins”, is clearly successful – everyone is dressed up either absurdly, exactly as someone else, or both.
Carter, one of the guys from our camp, and I are partners for this party and we did not dress up. How lame.
“We’re fraternal twins!” I shout over the music, throwing an arm around him.
“And we dressed really comfortably,” he hollers back, gesturing to our outfits which are anything but party-like, “we’re fraternal comfort twins!” He’s wearing jeans and a plaid shirt; I’m in giant fluffy PJ pants underneath a strapless dress. We settle on fraternal comfort twins and continue dancing around the fire.
I’m thrilled to meet Fred and Marty for the first time. Marty took the camp over from his father, Fred, several years ago, but Fred is still very much present in camp. When I meet them, they are wearing giant onesies: Marty a leopard and Fred a tiger (if I remember correctly – I was several shots in before meeting them, after all). It’s a pretty damn great introduction to the two.
Being at a new camp, I am once again “Stryker’s niece”. Even in their wildly drunken states, word eventually spreads that I am Uncle Jim’s niece and I am greeted by a thousand different versions of “say hi to your uncle for me!” and “oh Jimmy and I go way back” and “I planted on Stryker’s crew this one year fifteen years ago – tell him I say hi!” I smile and nod, promising to tell him everything (even though I’ll probably only remember like two of them) while groaning internally. Not this again, I think.
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| Kinda reminds me of this photo Molly took of Uncle Jim, aka Stryker, on the block one morning. I may complain about him being an unshakeable "shadow" over me sometimes, but in truth I'm quite proud to be related to him. There's a reason he's a legend out here. This is stolen from Molly's Instagram. |
At some point, I run into Gabor again and we have a fascinating conversation. I met Gabor around two years ago and have only run into him about four or five times but he is continually such a calm, reassuring, and wise presence with fascinating ideas. He just seems to radiate this feeling of calm and kindness, and a desire to share that with others. A truly incredible human being, but I met him through James, and our conversation tends to end up going back to James (to whom I’m likely unconsciously directing it to in my drunken state). This creates a pretty big pit in my stomach which, combined with the excessive amount of alcohol sloshing around in there as well, is rather uncomfortable. So let’s skip this one.
Sophia and Melinda (who has been mentioned several times but never named before now) managed to find two giant wedding dresses at a thrift store and the two brides receive lots of praise on their top-class twin outfit. At some point, however, Sophia becomes quite frustrated with the long trail lagging behind her, frequently tripping or nearly catching it on fire while trying to dance. Walking toward the mess tent, I see the two of them rolling around on the ground, Melinda frantically tearing at the trail while Sophia struggles forward on all fours.
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| Stolen from Sophia's Instagram |
As it reaches 2 or 3 in the morning, the sound system is switched off and people start disappearing into the night. Bro-dy (which is basically his real name but it’s hyphenated because he’s exactly the kind of guy you would picture hanging out with a bunch of bros doing bro things), tries desperately to hype the party back up as its dying down. Unperturbed by the lack of music, Bro-dy pulls out his phone and turns on some Neil Diamond version of “Sweet Caroline”.
“Sweeeeet Caaaroliine,” his sloppy, off-key voice rings out over the fire, his arm waving the phone over his head as he tries to start a sing-along, “dun dun dunnn.”
I find a couch to myself as more people leave and lay down watching the fire get smaller. Eventually, Bro-dy gives up on the sing-along and joins me on the couch. As it starts to reach around 4 or 5am, there are only Bro-dy, myself, and two others from Marty’s camp around the fire. The temperature cools down extensively and I can feel a massive shiver pass through Bro-dy’s body every few seconds. Rather than just getting up to find a blanket, I stay lodged between him and the couch, helplessly stroking his back as though that will warm him up.
By around 6 or 7, Melinda makes her way to the fire armed with blankets and jackets. She throws a bunch over Bro-dy and I, bless her soul, and makes her way back the direction she came from.
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| Also stolen from Molly's Instagram |
I’m not 100% sure at which time people started making their way to the mess tent again, but my guess is around 9am. Almost everyone from Cathy and Rainer’s camp is sitting in a circle on the grass so I go to join them. They are inspecting Edmund’s socks, which have reached an impressive state holeyness.
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“They’re my ex-girlfriend’s socks,” he says morosely, “I could make a whole outfit my ex-girlfriends’ clothes. Sara’s socks, Emily’s shirt, Kara’s leggings.”
Looking at this scenario several shifts later, it doesn't seem as funny as it did when it first occurred. I think we were all so out-of-it that everything was just hilarious.
Hitching a ride back to camp with William and One again, we stop at the mess tent of Marty camp, where the party had been. William and One "casually" walk into their mess tent and return with armfuls of bowls. Well, William looks at least somewhat casual - One's face almost looks pained with suppressed giggles as they make their way back to the truck. Climbing back into the truck, they place the bowls on the floor, most of which are still dirty with old cereal, milk, soup, and whatever else one might use a bowl for.
"We finally have bowls for camp!" William roars as we head out.
So I was going to keep writing this post but, to be completely honest, I don't feel like it.
Peace and love, friends!
Quote of the week:
Rainer: “I don’t need a key to unlock the gate – I have the master key. It’s called a Pulaski.”
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.
