I sensed everyone was sizing me up as well. Apparently, nearly everyone knew who I was. My sister, Lina, who had served as camp cook for this same crew on a recent contract, was admired by all. She was a splendid cook. To this day, I don’t believe I have met her equal. In bush camps few people are held in higher regard than a good cook, and of course she was also the boss’s partner. I suppose this minor degree of celebrity by association gave me a bit of a confidence boost as I attempted to assert myself and find my place.
People knew who I was for one other reason. I was an obsessive guitarist at the time, and a few months earlier I’d sent Lina a thirty-minute cassette tape of my playing. She shared it with several members of the crew, who were apparently impressed. While helping unload gear from the trucks, I overheard a stray comment that I was some sort of a guitar prodigy. I didn’t know it then, but getting together for evening jams was a favourite pastime for this crew and people had rather large expectations for some new sounds, especially when they spotted the acoustic guitar case poking out of my gear. I hoped I could live up to my advance billing.
After helping Denny, our cook, unload his supplies, I lent a hand with some of the bulkier camp components. The dining tent—a semicircular, metal-framed Quonset hut, six metres high by nine metres wide by fifteen metres long—was the main structure. It required a dozen people to assemble. Once erect, it would comfortably accommodate up to sixty people. The front of this massive tent was lined with a series of wooden counters where Denny would lay out lunch items each morning. The back of the tent was open ended, allowing the kitchen trailer to be pulled snugly into place. There it functioned as both a wall and a food distribution centre, operating like a food truck. It had a large window and service counter that opened up inside the Quonset hut. People would line up and fill their plates from an array of food items laid out buffet style. In front of the kitchen trailer, elevated thirty centimetres above the ground, was an expansive wooden platform that served two purposes: it gave some of the smaller people in camp enough of a lift to access the buffet counter, and once dinner was over, it served as a stage for music and entertainment.
Another crew was outside assembling our shower stalls, nailing together two-by-four frames, stretching out tarps and tacking them down tight to create walls. Rolls of thick white hose were extended down to the creek where water was sucked up by a powerful pump and fed into a propane water heater. This supplied hot water to the kitchen, as well as to a half-dozen shower heads.
Lastly there was a group of people busy with shovels excavating a number of deep pits on the periphery of our little village. These pits were to be used as shitters. It was an unenviable task, but one given an appropriate amount of care and attention.
It took about five hours to construct our little village. No detail was overlooked or ignored. It was around that time, after the main camp had been meticulously pieced together, that I began to think about setting up my own campsite. There was a slight chill in the air and the sun was beginning its hastened retreat below the horizon.
I noticed that there were several preferences in site selection. Some people pitched their tents in the heart of the camp, within metres of the Quonset hut. I later discovered that this was for security reasons: we were in bear country after all. Others who were less concerned about bear danger paced off a good one hundred metres or so from the perimeter of our village, preferring to carve out a little piece of real estate near the creek, or up on a hill with a view of the surrounding landscape. The last group put a good distance between themselves and downtown CRC Ltd., up to five hundred metres or more, preferring total isolation when they bedded down at night. I picked the top of a hill that looked down over everything, some two hundred metres away.
As I was pitching my tent, I spotted Barrett on the road below and decided to have another go at establishing some rapport. I hadn’t had a chance at the café earlier in the day. My mother succeeded in monopolizing his attention. Barrett didn’t leap at the chance to make nice. Instead, he rebuffed my comradely approach and rather coldly handed over a brand-new set of multicoloured treeplanting bags and shovel.
“This is it, kid. This is where my responsibility ends,” he said. I suddenly felt very alone in a very big and intimidating new world. I guess it was written all over my face.
“If you’re starting to get butterflies, the highway is in that direction,” he said, waving his arm in the general direction of Highway 16, our only escape route to civilization and home, which was much farther away than anyone could reasonably walk. I was taken aback by that brief, dismissive exchange and walked away with my tail between my legs. Family connections meant shit to Barrett. There would be no special treatment. I had no friend or ally in him.
The next day the breakfast horn sounded at 6:00 a.m. It was still dark. The early morning air was bracing. The sleeping bag I chose for the occasion wasn’t anywhere near compatible with the chill we experienced that first night. Midway through the night I was forced to pile every stitch of clothing I owned on top of myself for additional insulation.
As I stood out in front of my tent, teeth chattering, looking down over the thin wisps of light emanating from the Quonset hut in the distance, I could hear what sounded like reggae music.
Making my way off the hill toward camp, I observed a blanket of icy fog that had settled over the surrounding landscape—it had a palpable density to it. Judging by the ruckus coming from inside the Quonset hut, I was the last person to arrive for breakfast that morning. The music I’d heard earlier was indeed reggae, and it was coming from inside the kitchen.
The atmosphere inside the Quonset hut was frenzied, filled with tension and nervous energy as people vied for position at the lunch and breakfast counters. The beautiful women I had observed only twelve hours earlier were barely recognizable in their ponytails, thick sweaters and down jackets. The bags under people’s eyes spoke volumes. This was a time of transition. Swapping out the warmth and comfort of one’s four-poster in the city for a thin foamy and sleeping bag was not an easy trade.
I was not a morning person. I preferred to begin my day in an environment completely free of chaos and stress. I wrestled with the idea that this discordant early morning routine would greet each and every one of my days for the next three months. Home had never felt so far away.
By 6:50 a.m. the mosh pit in the Quonset hut was reduced to a dull roar. By 7:00 a.m. the crew had assembled outside for a meeting with Barrett and his foreman. People were outfitted with backpacks, rain gear, work boots, water bottles, shovels and treeplanting bags.2 After the meeting, people broke into three smaller crews and walked off in the direction of the large clearcut that loomed ominously over our tiny village. I, along with five other stragglers, watched as the procession of planters crossed a small bridge over the creek before disappearing into the fog-shrouded landscape. Those of us who remained formed the “rookie” crew. And we were about to be served a very large dose of reality.
The rookie crew was equally split between genders—three guys, three gals. The women were the obvious standouts. They were all university students, athletic, high energy, attractive. I had an immediate connection with a tall, lean redhead named Debbie. She was a vision of loveliness. Her eyes were what drew me in: large, expressive, hazel. Her face was dotted with deep brown freckles, which I immediately found myself fixating on. Her copper hair, which tumbled along her shoulders when she walked, rounded out the vision. She also possessed a sharp wit, but you had to listen for it as she liked to speak in soft tones, especially when sarcasm was her objective. We were instant friends even though she was three years my senior. I was in love.
After a one-hour blackboard-assisted lecture on general safety and treeplanting basics, we were told what was expected of us: plant a minimum of one thousand high-quality seedlings per day by day fifteen, or go home. One thousand trees per day—judging