liked to say. One day, halfway through the first contract, while on his way to deliver trees to Curt, Jessy picked up on the scent of something he couldn’t resist and gave chase. When he finally returned, panting from exhaustion, his tree bags were empty, having been jostled free during the wild chase through the woods. Curt didn’t like being reminded of that little episode.
In the first two weeks of the season, Curt had urged me to join him up on stage with my guitar in the evenings. I rejected his invitations, time and again. One night, after listening to the same old litany of tired excuses, he advised, “You need to find a balance here—you’re missing out on some really cool shit, man.”
I happened to be carrying my acoustic guitar with me on the water taxi that morning. It was too valuable to risk sending off on the barge unattended. Having several hours of downtime until the barge arrived, I decided to take it out and tune it up in front of Curt. His face lit up like a pinball machine.
Curt was prepared. Apparently, he’d had a good listen to the cassette tape I sent to my sister months earlier and knew that I wasn’t much of a rhythm guitar player. He understood that I was more into improvising rather than providing a foundation for others to play off of. He understood that I was selfish, that I liked to show off. The guitar rhythm he laid down for me was inspiring. We were off. Within a matter of minutes, we had twenty-five people packed into our tiny room and at least a dozen more in the hallway trying to squeeze inside. I’ll never forget Barrett pushing his maps aside, turning his clipboard upside down and using it as a drum (thank goodness everyone’s bongo drums were safely stowed away on the barge miles offshore). We played for well over an hour, and it was an incredibly moving experience for both of us. In my six years of obsessing on the frets, three of which were spent experimenting with a number of different bands, rarely had I achieved that level of musicianship. We would have continued playing long into the mid-morning drizzle if it weren’t for the mysterious truck that pulled into the camp compound and blasted its horn.
From an old beat-up pickup truck, an elderly First Nations gentleman emerged, leaving a wide-eyed young girl behind in the front seat. He was more than a little overwhelmed when all forty of us spilled out of the gutted trailer. After hearing our story and shaking a half-dozen outstretched hands, his relief was palpable. He immediately asked us if we had any food. When Barrett threw his hands up in the air and joked about sending a small crew out into the woods to forage for grubs, the old guy, without saying a word, jumped back into his truck and sped off.
The sun had just broken through the clouds when he returned thirty minutes later. Without ceremony, he and his granddaughter, Anna, pulled down the tailgate to his truck, spread out a woollen blanket and carefully began laying out an assortment of local delicacies. There were jars of fish, bright red fillets of smoked trout, an assortment of pickled vegetables and two tall stacks of fried bannock. The outpouring of gratitude from every one of us nearly brought the old man to tears. Young Anna took the opportunity to mingle with the ladies on the crew, and before long, they were pampering her with every indulgence one might expect from a five-star spa. She sat propped on Debbie’s knee while several of the girls worked on styling her hair, dabbing her with various perfume oils and applying “stuff” to her tiny excited face. It was a beautiful scene.
It was late in the afternoon when Dr. Josh, while engaged in a spirited round of hacky sack with the crew’s French Canadian “hacky contingent,” hollered with an outstretched finger in an exaggerated French Canadian accent, “Oua de la barge!” (I don’t think Josh was much of a francophone.) That put an abrupt end to the festivities.
Positioned at the front of the barge was a large backhoe, and within minutes, it was up on the beach busily tossing logs in all directions. Within fifteen minutes, there was a gap in the wall of wood large enough to allow our vehicles to pass through. And just like that, we were a mobile crew again.
Bidding our First Nations friends farewell triggered the waterworks. Poor little Anna didn’t want the afternoon to end. Her grandfather did his best to comfort her as we pulled away, but she couldn’t hold back the tears. I don’t think there was a dry eye among the crew either. We later learned that Anna’s family was employed by the logging company to provide “care and maintenance” for the camp. It must have been extremely lonely for them in such a remote setting.
After a forty-five-minute drive through a succession of clearcuts and patches of mature virgin timber, across fast-running creeks and a river, our convoy came to rest in the middle of a large clearcut at the edge of a riparian zone—a lush oasis of trees and running water that was left untouched by the logging company.1 This wasn’t just any large clearcut. This was truly epic in scale.
It was apparent that we were about to set up our camp along the edge of the largest cutblock on the contract. Every square inch of land around us, right up to our tent pegs, would soon bear our seedlings. The fact that we would be walking to work, rather than driving, for the first few shifts of the contract anyway, spelled opportunity. I was planting an average of sixteen hundred trees per day at that point. I calculated that by working an extra hour or two each day, I could potentially tack several hundred additional trees onto my daily average. That would put me in the running to become Barrett’s top planter—his top highballer. It was a ridiculous goal, especially for a rookie working among some of the best planters in the sector, but it became my objective nonetheless. It wasn’t just a greed thing, it was a satisfaction thing. I felt sufficiently motivated to make my mark.
It was getting late in the day and we needed to erect a fully functional camp by sunset. We all knew what to do and we threw ourselves at the task. Due to the extended time frame of the project—six weeks—an effort was made to create a more comfortable and fulsome setting. After the Quonset hut and kitchen were squared away, a spacious shower complex with multiple wings was envisaged, as was a sauna. Both structures were masterfully constructed, limb by limb, plank by plank, under the bountiful shade of the conifers that lined the edge of our cold-running creek.
With only thirty minutes of light remaining in the day, I followed the perimeter of our riparian zone and discovered a lush opening in the trees, some 250 metres away from our little village. The spot had shade, it was private and it was far enough away from the sounds of the camp generator—a very important consideration (Denny started his day at 4:30 a.m. and his first order of business was cranking up the camp generator in order to light his way around the kitchen). The generator weighed well over a hundred pounds and it made a racket. If you were camped too close to the kitchen and were a light sleeper, as I was, you risked being robbed of precious sleep. Of course, there’s always a risk in separating yourself from the herd. There was a robust bear population in the area, and having been stalked earlier in the season, I moderated an internal debate. Peace, quiet and solitude won out in the end.
Having pitched my tent and arranged my bedding, I stood back and witnessed the last vestiges of light retreating from the stealthy approach of night. The luxuriant canopy above my campsite filtered a setting sun that cast a smoldering orange glow across the late evening sky. I was spellbound. It was a superb moment, one of cogitation and inward reflection. Aside from a few distant female voices, the only sounds I could detect were from leaves fluttering in the caress of a soft breeze above, and the gentle lapping of water from the brook below. This would be my home for the next six weeks.
Supper was late that night and, as predicted, very simple. Setting up the kitchen, unpacking, arranging and storing the tons of food that accompanied us left limited time for Denny to fuss over an elaborate dinner. On the menu that night: spaghetti with meat sauce and salad. Even the simplest of meals taste absolutely amazing when you’re camped out under a big beautiful northern British Columbia sky.
There were several new additions to the crew, and curiously, one of the new girls seemed to know Barrett rather well. They both appeared to be quite taken with one another. Barrett and my sister lived together, as far as I knew, but I wasn’t privy to their exact arrangement as a couple (my sister and I rarely communicated—I
