David After Dark

The Big Green Coach

Oct 6 2016

There was a pretty good current in the river and ice starting to form around the edges. Wearing a parka was a necessity. The raft that we pulled ourselves and all of our supplies across the river on was tethered to a rope stretched taught between two trees on either side of the river. You loaded up the raft and pulled yourself across with the rope stretched between the two trees.

We used to love going to farm auctions and got pretty good at the bidding process. Every now and again we’d luck out and no one would want what we had our eye on and this was the case with a beautiful couch at one auction.  The couch was dark green, curvaceous and huge. You could really stretch out and nap on it. The trick at an auction is to hold back on your bid to see who’s keen and new to the auction process. The auctioneer will suggest a ridiculously high bid to get things started and hope for a newbie to jump in. This time, no takers. The auctioneer will then start suggesting lower bids in the hopes someone will jump in. It’s the power of suggestion at it’s best but not in the case of this couch. To my joy and surprise no one, except me, was interested in this couch.  Finally I yelled out, “I’ll give you a buck” to which the auctioneer yelled back “sold”.  My next surprise was how heavy my treasured couch was.  This thing was built ‘old school’, very solid and consequently heavy. We got it to our river property but now we had to get it to the A frame on the other side of the river.  I enlisted the help of my younger brother Greg and we very carefully loaded the big couch onto the barrel raft floating in the icy river. There was barely room for both of us plus the couch to stand and get across. The weight on the raft made it very difficult to manage for the crossing and the river icing up didn’t help either. I remember being half way across when both of us looked at the tether rope holding us to the rope held taught between the two trees on either side of the river and realised at the same moment that it had worn through and was just holding us there against the current and certain death under the ice by a thread.  I’m pretty sure my life flashed before my eyes and my brother in a great understatement said “well that’s just peachy”. We both grabbed the rope stretched between the two trees on either side and managed to get us and the couch safely across and into the A frame cabin.

Tree Planting

26 June 2026

A broken heart should only last a week or two but that’s never the case. Myles had been moping around for a month, always with that nagging pain in his heart. He had lived together with Christie for a year until she had found someone new and moved out. To top it off and perhaps because of his glum mood, he had been let go from his job as a garbage man. At age 22, he’d never heard of a garbage man being let go in the history of garbage men but there it was.

The next morning, he and his friend Peter were having breakfast at the ‘Frog and Peach’ when Peter told Myles about a job as a camp cook with the outfit he had been tree planting with. “You have to be able to cook for 10 or 15 guys” said Peter. Myles knew how to cook in his own kitchen, in fact he was pretty good, but cooking for 15 was a different game. Myles paused briefly then told Peter, “yes” he’d take the job and that he had lots of experience. Peter gave Myles a skeptical look but said okay, he’d ask. “You know that the job is deep in the B.C. bush. Often we’re a days drive from anything”. This didn’t faze Myles. A broken heart left him feeling that he had nothing to loose. “No problem” he said. “Do you have ‘First Aid’ by any chance”, asked Peter? “That would help a lot. They’re required to have someone certified in First Aid in camp.” As it happened, a few years ago Myles had taken a course called “Advanced First Aid”. “That will help” said Peter.

Back at his apartment, Myles called his older cousin to ask her about what to expect for this camp cook job as she had been a camp cook for several years. Margaret was dubious about Myles chances, but explained how it worked in her camp. She also told Myles to come and borrow her book called “Food for 50”. This treasure of a book had generic recipes scaled up for 50 people. Peter called Myles the next morning and said Myles had the job. They had to be in ‘100 Mile House’ 2 days from now. Peter explained to Myles that he needed to take everything. He’d be sleeping in his own tent. They worked 14 days on, 2 days off. As it happened, Myles had a very good tent, a tarp to shade the tent, a ground tarp, sleeping bag, sleeping pads (one is not enough for long term camping) and a backpack with a few changes of clothes. He had given notice for his apartment and since he owned next to nothing, he either threw things out or stored them at his brothers. All the excitement of winging it as a camp cook and getting ready had made him forget about his wounded heart.

The bus ride north seemed to take forever and was loaded with people like Myles with all their worldly possessions on their back. The bus let them all off in a parking lot at 100 Mile House, but the parking lot was full of similar looking pickup trucks, all waiting. Myles had been expecting just one obvious truck so he had no idea which truck was the right truck. Finally, a guy came up to him and asked if he was Myles. He and 4 other guys got in the back of a pickup truck which headed north again for the 3 hour trip to Quesnel where there was another rallying point. At the rallying point, there were a number of different camps being organized. Myles was assigned a group and they were all loaded into crew cab trucks for the 2 hour trip over logging roads to the camp site.

At camp, Myles was introduced to a gruff, roly-poly guy, named Earl who had that ‘biker’ air about him and was told he would be cooking with him for the first week. This was all news to Myles and also a relief because he had no idea how he was going to pull off his bluff otherwise. The camp was very utilitarian, consisting of a huge white canvas tent which was the kitchen and dining tent. There was an assortment of tree planter tents of various configurations plopped where ever there was a mostly level spot on the ground. They looked like assorted Skittles scattered across a burnt landscape. The surrounding area, as far as Myles could see was a desolate wasteland called ‘slash and burn’. ‘Slash and burn’ is a forest process where they take all the valuable timber then do a controlled burn of all the underbrush leaving a desolate landscape for the tree planters to work in.

What Myles learned from Earl about cooking is that Earl was a terrible cook. This put Myles mind at ease because he realized he could do much better than Earl. At the moment they were cooking for 30 planters, all young men and 2 young women as they had combined 2 camps. Myles had no idea what tree planting entailed and was glad he had the cooking job when he learned how planting worked. The Planters were paid piece work. They got so many cents per tree planted depending on the terrain. They were constantly checked and if the tree wasn’t planted correctly in any way, the planter was not paid. New planters tied an 8 foot rope to their ankle as the trees had to be spaced exactly 8 feet apart, give or take a foot. Given the rough terrain, even the rope measure was subjective. Beginner Planters could be carrying 50 pounds of trees in a 2 or 3 bag harness. The experienced Planters will carry 100 pounds. The beginner planters often do not make enough money to cover their $20 per day camp costs. The experienced planters can make $100 per day after camp costs.

There is a certain mystique about tree planting. It comes across as a way to make big money in a few short months and it is, if you are an experienced and fit, planter. There is an art to planting. For example, little things experienced planters don’t do is listen to music while planting. The reason being that bears are prevalent and if you don’t hear them come up on you, you don’t have time to grab your bear spray or boat horn. Experienced planters are also quite fit so that they can carry more trees. The less often they have to refill, the more time spent planting. When new glassy eyed planters arrive in camp we look at them with a withering look, especially on their first day. They go out all excited and come back like a dejected dish rag.

Some of the planters were Quebecois beef cakes and very good planters. Others were students paying their way through university and seasoned planters. They also did very well. Some had drinking problems and consequently had trouble with the 5 a.m. wake up call which was done by Myles. They had to be up, fed, gear ready to go and on the truck by 6 a.m. The crew bosses were heartless. If the planter wasn’t on the truck, the truck left without him or her and then they were left in camp for the day with nothing to do and still had to cover the daily camp cost.

One morning Myles woke up to the sound of trucks in the yard. The two crews were being split. Myles crew was now down to 15. It didn’t change his daily routine too much. Myles got up at 4:30 in the morning to start breakfast so the planters could be ready for the trucks to leave at 6 a.m. sharp. Myles also had to layout a cold cuts table for the planters to make their own lunch to pack out with. After that he would do up all the dishes, and then around 2, Myles would go back to bed then up again to start supper at 4:30. The crew would return at 6:30 and would want to eat right away. After supper Myles did the dishes and got to bed by 10 pm. Myles also had to procure all food for the crew. The company would set up an account at the nearest grocery store. Myles would phone in the order then take a truck to pick everything up. The logistics of this were tricky. This meant that Myles didn’t get his afternoon catch up sleep so that day was rough. Where they were, outside of Quesnel, it took 2 hours in and 2 hours return and still had to make supper. They also drank lots of water because staying hydrated on the hot mountain slopes, without cover was important. Some of the beginner planters came back sick because they hadn’t taken enough water with them. A sick planter was not treated very well by the crew boss. Being short a planter affected his performance numbers and consequently his pay, so a sick planter was cajoled when they wanted to stay in camp.plus shopping and unloading. Refrigerated items were kept in a large hole dug in the ground by the planters which worked okay. Things were cool but not cold. This meant I had to plan my menu according to how fast things went bad. I was also responsible for keeping the food costs down. No steak for this crew.

When they were setting up camp, after digging the refrigerator pit in the ground, the planters had to dig an outhouse pit. What they didn’t seem to realize was that using a black tarp for privacy made the pit privy more of a stinking sauna. Myles never used it but just passing it made your eyes water.

Garbage was kept in a log crib which, because of the odors, got visited by a bear. The logs were of no consequence to the bear. The crew boss had the strongest men move the biggest logs they could find to build another log crib to contain the garbage. This took the bear seconds to swipe the logs aside like they were toothpicks which gave them pause to think of the strength of the bear. The next night Myles was sleeping when around 1 in the morning there was a loud explosion, immediately followed by screaming from one of the tents. The explosion was gun fire. The crew boss and the owner had decided the bear was too dangerous and shot it from their perch on top of one of the trucks. They immediately dragged the bear into the back of the truck and disposed of the body because it was quite illegal to shoot a bear, even if it was a nuisance bear. Sadly the screaming was from one of the planters, a man from El Salvador. He had escaped a civil war in El Salvador and was traumatized by gun fire. He had been woken from a deep sleep and thought he was back in the war.

The camp would loose planters mostly because the work was brutally hard. So there was a moderate turnover of planters. One day they got 3 bright eyed university kids that had never planted before…or camped from the looks of things. They brought a huge, heavy 8 person canvas tent and huge backpacks. Nice guys from Ontario, but no clue. Their first week of planting saw them almost in tears. They had heard about the big money to made planting trees but not about the merciless, back breaking, painful, hot work they would have to endure, day after day. And then almost in tears again when they found out two weeks later that they weren’t making much more than camp costs for their hard work. After that, they took some lessons from the Quebecois planters and by the end of the season were making pretty good money. One of the 3 bright eyed university kids insisted on leaving and got a ride to town early on. Then there were some crazy planters. Myles was always the first up at 4:30, so he was the first to see one of the planters buck naked standing on top of a hill, waving a large Bowie knife, screaming I’m free. The RCMP came and took the young man away.

With very little notice, Myles was told they were breaking camp and moving. They didn’t even tell him where they were moving to. He found out it was 700 kilometers just north of Fort St John. Everything came apart with military precision and with lots of manpower the 3 trucks were ready to go. The next camp site was a 3 hour drive north of Fort St John which meant Myles supply run was a 6 or 7 hour part of his day. He had to be sure not to forget anything as there was no quick run to the store.

One morning, Myles woke up with a start. Something was wrong. It was far too quiet. Then he felt the sides of his A frame tent. Something soft was pushing in the sides almost to the top of the tent. Myles tent had a foyer so he quickly got dressed and slowly lowered the tent zipper. It was snow. Lots and lots of snow where there had been no snow yesterday. It had to be 3 feet of snow, that fell overnight everywhere. Myles pushed the snow away from his tent. It was light fluffy snow. The big white kitchen tent was still standing. The big 8 person canvas tent of the 3 new guys was flat and nowhere to be seen. Myles could hear voices as he made his way to the kitchen tent. The 2 new guys were there with a few others whose tents hadn’t fared well under the weight of the snow. The bosses decided to give everyone a couple of days off since it wasn’t possible to plant so we all loaded into the trucks and off we went to town. The planters liked to cut loose and party hard. 2 of the 3 motels in town would no longer accept tree planters as clients.

The slash and burn on the site outside Fort St John was particularly difficult for the planters. The slope was very steep so getting trees in the ground was hard to do. The experienced planters liked the tough terrain because they got more money per tree in the ground. The crew they had by that time was pretty tough and experienced and making good money. They ate a lot of food. Myles was woken from his mid day nap when one of the trucks came roaring back into the camp site. The crew boss helped one of the planters into the main tent and yelled for Myles. Myles could see that the guy was in serious pain. He had jumped down off a log onto a vertical spike of charred sapling. The spear had split his calf open for about 6 inches. Myles was the medic. He said to the guy he could wrap it up, but he needed to go to the hospital in Fort St John. The guy refused and wanted Myles to fix it so he could go back to planting. Myles asked if he was insane. This was a huge gash that needed a doctor and a hospital. Again, the guy vehemently said “no, just sew me up” so he could go back to planting. Myles looked at the crew boss who just shrugged and said, it’s up to him. “Okay” said Myles. I can sew it up I have nothing to numb the pain. The guy didn’t care, just sew it up. Myles irrigated the deep wound with saline, then hydrogen peroxide, picked out any bits. It didn’t look like muscle had been cut. After Myles was sure the wound was clean, he started sewing the wound closed. The guy clenched his teeth but was otherwise quiet. Once the gash was sewn up, Myles wrapped it tightly with gauze. He told the guy if the wound gets hot, starts to smell or really hurt, he needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible or he’d loose his leg or his life. The guy got back in the truck and the crew boss, shaking his head, took him back out to plant. That night Myles checked the wound, applied more hydrogen peroxide. As far as Myles knew the guy never saw a doctor and kept planting, perhaps a little slower.

The tree planting season only lasts until the fire season starts, then everything unceremoniously grinds to a halt. Myles was handed a handsome cheque, after which he breathed a sigh of relief. It was as if he had run a marathon and finally arrived at the finish line. The bus ride back to Vancouver was enjoyable. Miles stayed with his brother and his wife until he could find a place. The final band aide on his mending heart was to stop at a motorcycle shop where he bought a small motorcycle which led to other adventures.