“It’s not this quiet as a rule,” he says. “They’ve timed this tree-planting with a shutdown for maintenance.”
“That’s convenient,” my grandfather mutters. “Visitors won’t get to see what goes on around here.”
Frank snaps. “Look, Dad, this company pays my wages, remember that. It pays for the roof over our heads and the food that goes in our bellies — yours too.”
“There was a time nobody had to pay for our food!” my grandfather counters. “We ate real fish and real game, not these hot dogs and hamburgers you call food. We drank water from the lake too, not from plastic bottles.”
I don’t get my grandfather’s point. I really like hotdogs and hamburgers. And pop beats water any day. I stick my earbuds in, trying to drown them out with my music.
Frank drives across the moonscape to a place where massive machinery is parked. I perk up.
“Those are the 797s,” Frank says.
“You drive one of those?” I shriek.
He nods. “I told you they were big.”
“Big? You’re kidding. They’re colossal.”
“As tall as a two-storey house,” he says.
“Are they hard to drive?”
“Not really. They have power steering, so they’re light and responsive. The hardest part is getting into them. You get a workout climbing up and down that ladder.”
“Can you take me for a ride?” I ask.
“I wish I could….”
He pulls away from the monster trucks, and we go up a slope to a place where a crowd is gathering. Frank tells me to leave my iPhone in the car. I don’t; I stuff it deep in my pocket. We sit on the tailgate, taking off our shoes and waiting for Frank to hand us each a pair of black rubber boots that he bought from Canadian Tire just for today. I’m not happy about Frank choosing my footwear, but I go along with it since I really don’t want to wreck my new kicks.
“Perfect for tree-planting,” he says, talking about the boots, “and perfect weather too. Early spring, like this … soil still damp from the melt. It’s perfect.”
“Just perfect,” I say under my breath.
Frank covers his face and neck with bug spray and then hands the aerosol can down the line for us to do the same. You can barely smell the DEET because there’s something stronger in the air, like when you drive past a road crew filling potholes, only much more powerful. Then I realize it’s the smell of the oil industry: summer road works.
Frank gives us matching red baseball caps too, but there’s no way I’m wearing one. They look like freebies from Canadian Tire! I yank my Oilers cap firmly onto my head and stare at him coldly until he looks away. We walk toward the group. The perfect family. Frank tosses an arm over my grandfather’s shoulder, pulling him close. If you didn’t know him, you’d think they actually liked each other, but Frank’s quiet voice is tinged with threat. “Watch what you say today, Dad. I know you have strong opinions about the mining, but keep them to yourself … for my sake.”
My grandfather looks Frank in the eye and says nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A male fish hawk flies high over the heads of the tree planters. Their eyes are downcast and he passes by, unseen. Like the female with the missing talon, this white-chested male is also returning to the place of his birth for the first time.
Three years earlier, he had been the only surviving juvenile from the summer’s brood. When icy winds had gusted through the trees and his parents had flown away from the nest, he followed them. But when they went their separate ways, he shadowed his mother. She had led him on his first migration.
Guided by the curving lifelines of the rivers, mother and son flew south over America’s heartland, avoiding the pockets of industrialization where the air was thick. Instead, they flew high above the Great Plains, where gangs of man-machines moved across the brown earth in unnaturally straight lines, leaving clouds of dust in their wake.
Each beat of the young bird’s wings had brought him closer to maturity, closer to independence, until he suddenly stopped following his mother and headed out in his own direction.
Before long, the air warmed and tasted of salt. Something told him it was where he was supposed to be. So there, in the solitude of Louisiana’s bayous and backwaters, he had made his home.
Two winters passed.
Then the urge to find a mate overcame his need for food and comfort. His wings had a mind of their own, launching him high into the air to carry him back to northern Alberta where he was born. But he did not retrace his original flight path. Instead, he flew westward to the edge of the great mountains, then north alongside them — three thousand miles, over a landscape that he had never seen before, to the place of his birth.
But the place of his birth is nowhere to be found.
Shaded from the spring sunshine by a white canopy, the men in suits say it’s a great day, an auspicious day, and one that has been a long time coming. They say it’s proof that the company takes its environmental responsibility seriously and that they are proud of this new phase in the oil sands industry. They say that Energyse has been working for many years to reclaim a tailings pond and that all the effort and expense have led to this wonderful day when trees are delivered from the nursery and are planted by hundreds of volunteers. I feel a swell of pride to be included in the process, but then the suits go on … and on … and on. It’s boring. I put in my earbuds and pull my hoodie around my neck to hide them.
Finally, the speeches end and each of the suits plants a tiny tree, pausing mid-dig for photo ops. Frank spots my earbuds and glares at me. I glare back, and he turns away, but even over my music I can hear him talking to others.
“I hope these photos get into newspapers across the country,” he says. “People need to see that the land is being put back to how it was before the mining started.”
I can’t imagine that all this bare ground will become forest again with trees as big as the ones we saw on the drive up, but the people here seem to know what they are doing, and obviously reforestation is a priority, so I don’t get why my grandfather is so negative about it. I guess he’s stuck in his old ways and doesn’t want to see anything change, not even when it’s for the good of the country.
Having planted their little trees, the suits quickly climb into the limos and take off, leaving us choking on dust. The supervisor is giving us instructions, so I take out my earbuds and listen. He tells us to pair up and work across the land in rows. Frank quickly throws his arm around Angela’s shoulder, leaving me to work with my grandfather. None of us would have it any other way. I place each little tree into the shallow hole that my grandfather digs and then use the toe of my boot to gently press the earth back into place around the stem. Apparently the trees with long soft needles are pines, the ones with shorter prickly needles are spruces, and the ones that look like dead twigs are poplars. My grandfather shows me the faintest trace of buds breaking on the stems.
I’m
