As I continued to press forward, I fixated on the forest edge that was now a good two hundred metres behind me. I detected no activity, no shape or form materializing from the edge of the dark corridor. Sensing that the bear had lost interest, I gave up attempting to run and limped forward. I had no idea how far I was from camp, but I hoped and prayed it was within shouting distance.
It was 2:00 a.m. when I arrived at yet another junction, one where both forks in the road cut through a sparse stand of timber. I was on my last legs.
Pausing at the junction, sensing that I was close to camp but unsure if it was left or right, I took a cursory glance behind me as I pondered my two options. Something was wrong. A black shape occupied the left side of the road approximately 150 metres behind me—it shouldn’t have been there. I could have sworn it wasn’t there the last time I scanned the terrain. I studied it for the better part of thirty seconds, and just as I was about to dismiss it as a log or a stump, I detected subtle movement. Then, suddenly, it began slowly advancing toward me.
I hollered at the creature. I screamed until my voice cracked. I whacked the ground with my shovel blade, creating as much noise as I could muster. When it appeared to hesitate, I turned around to further examine the junction in the road. Just then, I spotted a narrow beam of light coming from a dense patch of conifers roughly two hundred metres along the road to the left. It vanished. Then it appeared again, darting across the woods before abruptly trailing off.
Excited, I ignored my limp and advanced as fast as I could in the direction of the light. Then I saw it. A tent! It was a treeplanter’s tent. It belonged to one of those veteran planters on my crew who preferred privacy to convenience, carving out a nook a healthy distance away from the main camp. Pushing forward, while looking over my shoulder for evidence of my stalker, I stumbled and tripped on the road directly in front of the tent, making a horrible racket, provoking a very irritated, “What the fuck!” from within. I didn’t bother answering back. What would I say?
I wasn’t worried about my stalker from that moment on. The main Quonset hut was dead ahead.
Throwing my gear to the ground with a thud, I barged into the Quonset hut and made a beeline for the kitchen. Not bothering to grab a plate or utensils, I plucked a quarter chicken from a large baking tray in the fridge and tore into it, consuming bones, cartilage and all. Another deep tray had what appeared to be perfectly cut squares of lasagna—I fished one out with my free hand and inhaled it within seconds. Feeling only slightly satiated, I plated two additional quarter chickens, two slabs of lasagna and made my way to a table near the wood stove—it was still throwing off heat from a cedar fire that had burned hours earlier. I took my time with this plate of food, glancing at my watch every now and then, replaying the events of my evening over and over in my mind.
It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when I blew the candle out in my tent. I was asleep before my head settled into my pillow.
When I woke up it was 6:45 a.m. and Debbie was frantically unzipping the door to my tent. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “It’s quarter to seven. The trucks leave in fifteen minutes.” After I gave her a quick summary of what I had endured only hours earlier, she raced back to the Quonset hut, packed a lunch and tossed a heap of scrambled eggs into a plastic bag for me. When I arrived at the staging area where the entire crew was assembled, only a handful of people were aware of my little adventure. Of those, several erupted into spontaneous applause; others simply pointed in my direction and laughed. I spotted Barrett on the sidelines shaking his head. He wasn’t sure what to think.
I later learned that the drumming I heard from the top of the ridge, immediately prior to spotting the distant glow from our camp, was a drum circle that had apparently built up to a climax at around that time—an obnoxious climax no doubt, but one that couldn’t have been better timed. I developed a much greater tolerance for bongos after that episode.
And without the freaked-out treeplanter who probed the woods with his flashlight, unable to make heads or tails out of the horrible racket taking place a short distance his tent—I’m not sure I would have found my way home.
My final tally from the day before: 1,450 trees. My stalker, an enormous male black bear, was spotted along the road outside camp later that day. Denny apparently dealt with it, firing off several warning rounds with his shotgun. That bear was never seen again.
I was a minor celebrity that morning after my story circulated among the three crews. But by mid-morning, by the end of my second run, it became just another day on the slopes.
1. “Tree scores” or “tree totals” are the number of seedlings an individual manages to plant during the course of their day. These numbers are diligently collected and recorded at the end of each day for accounting and payroll purposes.
2. A “cache,” “tree cache” or “road cache” refers to a stockpile of seedlings that is strategically positioned along a roadside for treeplanters to draw from as they work their land. Each cache of trees is covered with a bright white Silvicool tarp—a tarp made with a special reflective material that keeps the fragile young seedlings cool and moist, even when exposed to direct sunlight.
3. A “trike” is a three-wheeled all-terrain vehicle (ATV). By the late 1980s it was taken off the market due to its instability on rough, steep terrain.
4. “Bag-up” or “bagging-up” refers to the process of loading one’s treeplanting bags full of seedlings in preparation for a run.
Chapter Three
The Highballer
By week four our first contract of the season was winding down. Those of us who began the season as hapless rookies had become, by some minor miracle, treeplanters.
We were a proud lot, though we were all still adjusting to life in a remote camp. Toward the end of the last shift of the contract I began experiencing severe stomach cramps. Actually, a number of people in camp suffered from a similar malady. Playing amateur sleuth, following the downward track of the intake hose from the water pump, I found a possible cause for the intestinal distress: we appeared to be sucking water straight from the creek. Back then, it was often argued that if your creek water was running cold and fast, it was safe to drink directly from the source. I don’t recall if Barrett had installed a filter farther up the water line, but most treeplanting camps operated without any sort of water filtration system back then. Parasite and protozoa exposure was typical.
At the time, there didn’t seem to be any real urgency to enforce a list of camp standards. There was no government oversight—not that I can recall anyway—no outside controls of any kind. It was like the Wild West in many ways. I suppose the stomach bugs we endured were a small price to pay for the freedoms we enjoyed. Bureaucrats have a way of ruining a good party.
As it turned out, Kelly, the foreman with the highest-producing crew in Barrett’s arsenal, drafted both Debbie and me. My average daily production was slightly above the crew average at sixteen hundred trees. At 11¢ per tree, that worked out to $176 per day. In 1983 dollars, that had the same buying power as about $400 in 2019. For a nineteen-year-old kid fresh out of high school, that was a king’s ransom.
For the final three days of the contract, Debbie and I were instructed to plant together, side by side. I believe Kelly, who was paid