After dinner that night, Debbie and I took a seat next to the wood stove. There, I found myself studying the behaviours of the crew as they mixed and mingled, paying special attention to the women I’d admired at the edge of the creek one day earlier. It appeared to be a very vibrant, animated and sexually charged atmosphere. It reminded me of some of the parties I attended back in high school. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of flirting and petting going on, and I couldn’t decide if it was merely an extremely friendly group of people or the prologue to an orgy. Debbie sensed the heightened state of arousal too, and found it as intriguing as I.
Understanding that Deb had a few years on me, I decided to probe her for details regarding her private life anyway. She explained that she had a boyfriend back in Vancouver and that it was fairly serious. She also said that he planned to drive up to meet her in Prince George during the break between contracts. I wasn’t surprised. I couldn’t imagine such an incredible woman being single.
By day three, with the moral support and wise counsel of several veteran highballers, I was halfway to my target of one thousand trees per day. By the end of day four I managed to plant four full runs of two hundred trees per run—a grand total of eight hundred trees.5 It was at that point that I came to the realization that planting large numbers of trees was as much a mental process, if not more so, as it was a physical one. There appeared to be a mysterious underlying dynamic at play, one that could be tapped and exploited with the right amount of focus, forward motion and conservation of movement. I also came to realize that things could become very interesting from a monetary perspective. The crew’s average at that point was fourteen hundred trees per day. If I succeeded in achieving that level, at 11¢ per tree, I would gross $154 (the equivalent of $350 in 2019 terms). Righteous bucks!
Day five was a day of rest. Barrett had established a schedule of “four and ones”—four days on, one day off. I used the opportunity to sleep in until 6:30 a.m., do my laundry in the creek and take my first shower in nearly a week. Stripped naked, it appeared as if I were wearing a dark brown belt and suspenders—it was the exact outline of the mud-caked support straps on my treeplanting bags. It wouldn’t wash off. The dirt and grime appeared to permeate my skin cells right down to the DNA. I then understood why some of the more fastidious planters on the crew showered daily and had long-handled brushes sticking out of their shower bags.
There was something very odd about the shower setup itself: there were no dividers, no stalls—only a single large enclosure with six shower heads spaced a metre apart. Oh, how the mind wanders when you’re all of nineteen years of age, in a remote wilderness setting, surrounded by women who appeared to be more comfortable with their clothes off than on. But I was determined to stay focused. At the beginning of the contract, Barrett seemed convinced that I was some kind of a flake. He even had the temerity to show me in the direction of the highway. Despite the adversity, the punishing pace on the slopes, the dirt, the extremely cold nights and the humiliation of waking up with underwear on my head, I was determined to carve out a niche on this crew.
1. “Highballers” are the highest-producing treeplanters on a crew and are generally held in the highest regard.
2. Treeplanting bags are used to carry seedlings. They consist of a series of large pouches crafted out of heavy canvas or nylon. The pouches are attached and arranged along a thick belt with connecting shoulder straps. Two pouches ride along each hip, and a third pouch rides along one’s butt. The three pouches, if fully loaded, can carry many hundreds of seedlings at a time.
3. “Slash” refers to piles, large and small, of wood debris and waste.
4. The terms “slopes,” “clearcut,” “cutblock,” “block,” “ground,” “planting area,” “area,” “piece,” “unit” and “land” are synonymous. They all refer to an area that has been harvested or cleared of trees—an area slated to be planted with seedlings in order to grow a new forest.
5. A “run” refers to the task of filling up one’s treeplanting bags with a specific number of seedlings and planting said seedlings until one’s treeplanting bags are empty.
Chapter Two
The Stalker
The massive clearcut that loomed over our camp was completely planted within five days. Our plantation of conifers stretched out across the landscape for nearly as far as the eye could see. I was told that it took four hundred thousand seedlings to cover the entire area. Our new ground—the next clearcut on our list—was several dozen kilometres away, and getting there required a fleet of trucks. As we got ready to depart, a half-dozen four-by-fours idled in the cold, early morning April air, and billows of steam and exhaust hung over our staging area in front of the Quonset hut.
As we suspected, our rookie crew was a farm team of sorts. We were about to be split up and divided among the three existing crews. Barrett’s foremen were about to duke it out over who would get whom. The previous evening I caught Kelly, Barrett’s highest-producing foreman, sneaking a peek at our individual tree scores1 in Jeremy’s ledger and entering figures into a little notebook that he liked to carry around in his tit pocket. When he noticed that I had noticed him, he gave me a wink, as if to say, Your ass is mine, pal.
The road that led to our new ground wound through a maze of interconnected clearcuts, several dense patches of mature forest and a canyon that Nature had crudely chiselled into her landscape.
After forty-five minutes of hard driving, we crested a ridge and began descending into a wide sweeping valley, the back end of which had been mowed down into a bowl-shaped clearcut. Our destination was obvious. The road leading in was lined with tree caches, their bright white reflective tarps lending the appearance of snowbanks from a distance.2 As we entered the block, the idle banter in our truck subsided as we eyed the harvested landscape on both sides of the road, sizing up the sloping terrain, homing in on the areas that appeared most desirable.
I was on a roll. I was determined to crack a grand—one thousand planted trees—by the end of that day. By 2:30 that afternoon, I was fifty trees away from that important milestone, and while loading up for my final run of the day, Barrett pulled up alongside me riding a big beautiful trike.3 He was looking for a progress report.
Barrett had all of a sudden taken a keen interest in my progress. When I informed him that I was on the verge of cracking a grand, and then some, his face lit up like he had just flopped a full house.
A nineteen-year-old rookie who outgrows his training crew and manages to crack a grand in only a few short days is considered an extremely valuable asset to a treeplanting contractor. When I informed Barrett that a tally of thirteen hundred trees was a distinct possibility if I was given an extra hour or two at the end of the day, he asked if I knew how to operate the trike. Excited, I answered back, “Of course I can ride that thing.” I lied.
I had been riding dirt bikes since I was twelve years old but I had no idea if that skill set would transfer over to the strange-looking three-wheeler. Barrett then made me an offer I simply could not refuse: I could stay on the block as late as I wanted as long as I was willing to ride the trike back to camp—if I was certain that I knew my way back home. I promised him that I had paid close attention to all of the major intersections on the road leading in, that finding my way back to camp would be a piece of cake. I wonder if I actually believed that at the time.
That day ended at 4:30 p.m. for everyone—almost everyone. Debbie paid me a little visit at my cache before packing up her gear and jumping in the truck. She was still panting, having just finished her last run