Chapter 5: Canada Tree Planting

Jim’s Chevy truck pulled over to pick up the wizened  local woman hitching a ride across the Fraser River. She climbed in the cab and settled in between us. She wreaked of rough living and a long night of boozing. With a toothless grin, a lecherous wink, and a wrinkled hand on each of our knees she offered us felatio in exchange for whatever we could spare. We gave her a beer and passed on any form of repayment. The beer kept one hand out of our laps. Half the beer went in one gulp. Her eyes glazed a bit. She seemed to switch to some unintelligible mix of English and her native language and drift off into a rambling chant.

Across the bridge was Prince George, our destination. For the next two to three months we were going to be planting Douglas fir for a Kiwi friend who played rugby with us in New Orleans. The other part of our “crew” (Bob, Patty, Zoe, Dave, Patsy, and the two dogs - Chanelle and Panda) were in a Volkswagen van behind us. The last few hundred miles since Banff we had been racing as much as a beat-up old Chevy truck with a homemade camper on back and Bob’s van loaded with four adults, a two year-old, two dogs, and camping gear could race. Both vehicles complained mechanically when they approached the speed limit. About fifty miles out of Prince George the van had to make a pit stop. Jim and I took the lead. Picking-up the ageless lady gave the van a chance to catch-up.

As we crossed the Fraser River the almost welcome smell of the pulp mills helped cover our local friend’s special odors. Bob closed in on us and the race to downtown Prince George was on. In the end it was so close to a draw that the only victory each driver was happy about was that their vehicle had made it. We piled out onto the streets of downtown Prince George, sent our local friend on her way with another beer and five dollars, and celebrated our arrival after the two thousand mile trip from New Orleans with a Mohlson’s. 

No sooner had we popped the tops on the beers than we met our next Canadian, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We had been warned not to be too conspicuous as we were going to be working illegally. This was not a good beginning.

He asked what we were doing in Canada. 

We lied with a grace that would have made a politician smile.

“We’re traveling through. On our way to Alaska. Doing some sightseeing.”

He considered us for a second and then said, “It is against the law to drink on the streets here.”

With convincing expressions of remorse and surprise, “Really? We’re from New Orleans. Everybody drinks on the streets there, all the time.”

He watched us as we poured out our beers. 

The planting site wasn’t ready yet. There was still too much snow on the ground. We hung around Prince George for a few days setting up a bank account where we could deposit our tree planting checks, preparing for at least a month in the bush at our first site, and exploring the joys that the Canada Hotel provided.

Our crew played with various business names before settling on CURF Services which was the first letter of each of the planting members’ last name. The lady at the bank was very helpful. When she asked what was our business, we had been told not to tell anyone we were planting trees. We told her we did odd jobs.

She very kindly started trying to help us. “I have some rooms that need painting.”

“No, we don’t have any painting equipment.”

Sympathetically she tried again, “I have a pressure washer and you could pressure wash my trailer.”

We looked at each other. The thought silently passed between us that possibly we should take the pressure washinng job just so we didn’t look too suspicious, but in the end we said, “No, we’re not really looking for pressure washing jobs.”

A little light dawned behind her very kind eyes, “I see. I think you boys are into monkey business.” But she opened our account and CURF Services was in the  monkey business.

After a couple days in a motel our Kiwi benefactor said we could set up camp beside a lake that was not too far from where the first planting site would be.

I set my two-man tent on a small hill, so I would have good drainage. There was some scrap metal roofing around the campsite. I spent an afternoon building a little metal roof over the tent. Soon after that a wind lifted was the metal roof off the frame. It flew over the tent and shredded the side of the tent. An indoor wading pool was now a feature in half my tent. The wading pool side of the tent hung down the little hill on which the tiny orange tent perched. I was able to keep dry by huddling toward the uphill side and not moving about too much. After a couple days I found some plastic to cover the whole tent and did not try any more roofing projects.

The scenery was beautiful and the lake was frigid. The Canadian crews that were gathering would lather up and run into the lake to wash off.One or two of our crew tried that. My first  attempt at a lake bath ended with me getting all lathered up and easing in to about mid-calf. At which point I could no longer feel my feet. With a cold wet washcloth I wiped the soap off and never tried the lake bath again.

It was the beginning of May. Day light had already almost obliterated what I saw of night, but it was still chilly. Heck, it snowed on June 1st and July 1st. It was like a warning to the locals to not get too comfortable with everything not being covered in white. We had seen a little bit of the town before moving to the lake. The Canada Hotel had reasonable draft served by very pretty waitresses who would occasionally strip for tips on the weekend. Also, there was guaranteed to be a fight on Friday night. I was there a couple of Fridays, and there were at least two fights on both of those nights. There was a lot of graffiti in the bathroom. One that has particularly struck in my mind is “Hooray, Hooray! The first of May, outdoor fucking starts today.”

The day came to move into the planting sight. We made a last run the thirty miles into Prince George and back to get supplies for a week. The company would take an order and send in supplies every week by helicopter. The volume of what we could order was limited. It was a lot of rice, beans, eggs, and fruit and a case of beer. There was also a lot of bug spray. The black flies could truly drive you mad. They seemed to become immune to the bug spray. We began to try folklore natural bug sprays. I found rubbing myself with orange peels seemed to help. The trip into Prince George became a ritual. First stop was the YMCA for a hot shower. Next we went to the Canada Hotel for a beer followed by supply buying and a root beer float at the Dairy Queen on the road back to the lake.

When we moved we walked alongside a large track vehicle which carried mostly trees and the gear and supplies for the four or five crews working the site. There were the Butler Brothers, Earl and his crew from Fraser River, and possibly a couple of skier crews. The Butler Brothers crew consisted of two Canadian brothers who spent the other nine months of the year in Las Vegas counting cards. They had two Vegas showgirls as their support team. 

Earl’s crew were from not too far away. They were basically locals who made extra money in the summer. Earl invited us to stay with him between planting sites. The house was nice and sat with a great view of the rapids of the Fraser River and the Rockies.  He had an outhouse that had a similar view. Windows were small. It was built for the cold with a pot bellied stove for heat. His crew was supported by their wives. The skier groups were guys who spent the winters skiiing. On one crew was someone on the Canadian Olympic team. They could plant some trees. A few of them got up to a regular 3,000 trees a day. I was happy with a thousand a day. That was a hundred dollars a day with a percentage to our support team, Patty and Patsy. We would work ten days and then take a day off for the trip to Prince George routine: hike out ten miles, drive thirty miles to Prince George, YMCA shower, beer at Canada Hotel, buy supplies, Dairy Queen, drive back thirty miles, hike in ten miles.

Bears were occasionally a problem. The Canadians would just run them off until the bears got food. Then they shot them. Dave’s dog, Chanelle, had the unfortunate curiosity to be repeatedly fascinated by porcupines. Neither Chanelle nor Panda were interested in running off bears. It became fairly common to just yell at a bear and throw something at it. The dogs would then bark at it a little bit. We were moving between planting sites and camping over night in a park.  I decided to just sleep in Bob’s van and not bother setting up my shredded tent wrapped in plastic . Just as the morning was dawning I heard a noise in Jim’s truck parked no more than a meter away. I slid open the van door to see what is going on. A bear is on the other side of Jim’s truck trying to break in. The bear was visible through the front windows. 

I yelled at the bear, “Hey bear, Get out of here!!”

There were probably better things I could have have said because this kind of caught the bear’s attention. He stretched up over the roof of the cab and then dropped down. The next thing I know the bear has turned to come between the truck and the van. 

I tugged on the sliding door. It seemed stuck. It was like in a dream where everything goes in slow motion. The latch was on. The bear was coming closer. I’m thinking, “What does the bear think I said. Come for breakfast. It was clearly. Go Away!”.  I yelled the last two words as Jim crawled out of his tent and hurled his shoes at the bear. One hit the bear on the back of his shoulder. The bear turned and ran away. I hear bears are very sensitive to smells. I think it was perhaps more the smell of the boots that had been planting trees for over a month than the force of the throw that caused the bear to scamper. Once the bear was clear of the campsite the dogs came out to lend their barking abilities to bear security effort.

After about thirty days of planting I developed tendinitis in a shoulder. The repetitive slamming the shovel into the sometimes rocky ground had started an inflammation in my right shoulder. I decided to take a vacation. We had moved farther into the remains of the logging enterprise. The company was now helicoptering in supplies. I remember almost watching Bob get chopped into pieces in front of Patty and Zoe by the rear vertical propeller on the helicopter when he ran out to help unhook the net with the supplies in it. I hitched a ride back to Prince George on the helicopter. There were bears everywhere as we skimmed over the trees where I caught a train to a ski resort town after a Friday night at the Canada Hotel. I think this town held the Olympics some years later. From there I hitched to Prince Rupert. 

Most of the people who picked me up were very nice. They were just helping out someone going the same way. You don’t really remember them very distinctly. There were a couple guys who stuck out on this journey. This one guy in a pick up truck with a couple guns in the gunrack is one. I think he had been already drinking when he picked me up , but he handed me a beer after opening one for himself. Before too long he pulled over to pee. He gets one of the guns to pee. I have to pee, too, but I don’t want to get out of the cab. I’m thinking he won’t kill me in his cab because of the mess. He starts shooting at something in the trees. Finally I have to pee so badly I figure he might shoot me in his cab if he already has a mess to clean up.

I got out and walked the other way behind a tree and peed. He had my pack in his truck, but I was ok with him driving away. He met me at the truck. He handed me the gun and asked me if I wanted to take a few shots. I passed. He insisted. I took a few shots at birds. We asked how did that feel. I told him the gun had smooth action. I got off at the next town. There the guy who picked me up was going to stop in a bar before driving home. His home was closer to Prince Rupert, I wasn’t in a hurry, so I stopped with him. He was older. He told me his wife was dead. We talked about his family who all lived away, and I talked about New Orleans.

We spent a few hours in the bar meeting his friends who all hated Americans. By the end of the night I was the exception to the rule. The old gentleman offered to let me stay at his home. The house was built just off the highway and hung down the side of a hill with a back porch that was off the ground twelve feet and had a gorgeous view of the valley. He said I could sleep in a bedroom or on the back porch. The house showed signs of an old man who had been living alone for quite some time. There were lots of family pictures. The guest bedroom was tidy and looked like no one had stayed in awhile. The back porch looked lived-in. There was an old cot with a blanket thrown over it. The old man explained that he often slept here. There was a funnel in the  short wall that separated the porch from the drop-off to the back yard. He said, “That’s where I pee.”

I looked over the wall. There was a short pipe at the other end of the funnel that hung over the backyard. Later when I was in the backyard, I found myself very cognizant of if my new friend was on the back porch or not. We sat around, had a couple more beers, watched it finally get dark around 10 pm and talked for awhile about how people like to stereotype nationalities, about life in the Canadian northwest, and about life after the person you loved is gone. I decided to spend the night on the back porch. It was lovely with the stars sparkling over the Rockies. The funnel came in handy, also.

In Prince Rupert I found a public park on a cliff overlooking the harbor where I could hide my pack and tent. My shoulder was still bothering me so much that it was hard to sleep. There was a small hospital a couple miles away. The doctor had several questions about how I hurt my shoulder. None of which I could answer, “By planting trees.” They gave me some anti-inflammatory and extra-strength Tylenol, and the advice to stop rock-climbing for a couple weeks. 

That evening I set up my Coleman stove on a picnic table in the park where I was camping to heat up some beans. The picnic table overlooked Prince Rupert with a great view of  the oceanfront. Two guys pulled-up in an old Chevy Nova and asked, “Can you cook fish on that thing?”

I assured them I could. The bean pot was moved to the side and I brought out my frying pan.

One went back to the car and pulled a salmon out of the trunk. It was already gutted with the head cut off, and it was easily three feet of fish. We cut inch thick salmon steaks, turned the fire up, and seared each side. That was the best salmon I will probably ever eat. They told me they stole the fish. The shorter of the two would go and distract the people on the dock by asking if anyone needed help while the other one grabbed a fish. The next day I was walking around the dock, and I watched them. The short guy walked up to a couple fishermen unloading a boat. He pointed at things in the distance and asked something. The taller one then dashed around the corner with a halibut. The fish was so big it dragged between his legs as he tried to run. I set up my stove in the same place that night , but the halibut didn’t show-up for dinner.  

The next day in Prince Rupert I contemplated going to Alaska. My shoulder was feeling better. Alaska would always be there, I thought. Tree planting money was only going to last for another six weeks. I headed back to Prince George and got a ride back to the lake and hiked back into our site. 

When I arrived back at the site it was thought there wasn’t much left to plant. There ended up being several other pockets of acreage that needed to be planted. The contractors  were trying to avoid the expense of another shipment of supplies and my unexpected return to the crew  put a strain on our supplies. On the last day we planted the site, we had nothing left to eat for seven of us and two dogs except rice and a couple loaves of bread. It was beginning to rain. This was good because it kept the mosquitoes and gnats away, but it was bad because it made everything muddy. After a very long day of having a bowl of rice porridge for breakfast, putting a forty pound box of 800 seedlings on my back, hiking two miles to plant the seedlings, coming back to pick-up another box and  plant them, pack-up all our gear and put it on the track vehicle that brought us in, riding out because there is room on the track vehicle now that the trees are planted, unloading all the gear, separating the gear, loading the gear on the van and the truck, starting to drive to Prince George, gear falling off the top of van, saying f-it we’ll get the gear tomorrow, and driving thirty miles to Prince George we arrived at McDonald’s. 

I had been back in the bush for a week before the move, but for the rest of the crew it had been a little longer since their last visit to town. The days had gotten increasingly muddy especially on the logging roads we used. Coming out some of the Canadian crews started sledding behind the track vehicle on plywood. Several on our crew gave it a go. That got particularly muddy when you fell off. We were quite the sight when we arrived at McDonald’s at 11 pm having had nothing to eat since a rice sandwich at lunch, dripping mud, and wreaking of rough living.  By the time we left there was a thick trail of mud from our two booths to the counter. The next morning I imagine they had to change the number of hamburgers sold on their sign. 

There were a couple more planting sites, but none close to the size of the first one. Moving and setting up camp became a routine. We took off a day for the Fourth of July. It was 1976, the bicentennial of the USA. To celebrate we went to a bar not too far from the new planting site. The new site was easier to access. Inspired by Cool Hand Luke’s egg eating, I tried to drink a  Canadian beer for each state. I was toasting the states alphabetically. I think I fell asleep in Jim’s truck not long after Hawaii. Planting the next day with a hangover really sapped a lot more fun out of the experience and shoulder pain was coming back.

Soon after this I called my planting season over. I had a few weeks before I had to report for my first actual my-own-classroom teaching job. I set off to discover some more of British Columbia. I took the train to Vancouver and then the ferry to Vancouver Island. With my tent and backpack stored in the woods by the ferry stop, I took the bus into Victoria. After wandering Victoria I went back to the ferry only to find the last ferry for the day had left. There wasn’t anything around the ferry landing once the ferry stopped running. I pitched my tent in a wooded area and went for a walk around the area. There was a large blueberry forest close to the landing. It was full of ripe blueberries. I started stuffing my face and picking some to take for the morning. Suddenly I heard a noise on the other side of the blueberry bush. Looking at me from the other side of the bush was a deer. We stared at each other for several seconds. He was a six point buck with large brown eyes that seemed curious yet slightly frightened. Then both of us went back to eating blueberries. We ate blueberries together for another ten minutes and then he wandered off. The next morning I packed up as the ferry area got busy and took the first ferry to Vancouver. 

Dave planted a few days longer than I did before leaving camp and heading to Vancouver.  The van with Bob, Patty, Zoe, & the 2 dogs were driving to California before going back to New Orleans. Jim and Patsy were traveling around before going back to New Orleans, also. They picked up our last paychecks, cashed them through the business account, and changed them to US dollars. My first experience as an undocumented worker was successful. I don’t think we did much harm to the Canadian unemployed or economy. We probably made close to $20,000 between the four planters for a planting season of around sixty days. I suppose that is $20,000 that was taken out of the pockets of people like Earl who were trying to supplement a living that was otherwise  based on a wife that worked and home gardening, hunting, trapping, and fishing. 

One could see us as patriots. We went into Canada and took some of their currency in exchange for a service, changed it to US dollars, and brought most of it back to the USA. We took a little bit of money out of the pocket of a Canadian Olympic skier; although, that guy was a maniac planter. I think he planted every tree he possibly could. The Canadian government didn’t give us permission to do that, but nobody involved seemed bothered. We considered Earl and his crew friends. They had a place to stay if they ever got to New Orleans. It is a complicated moral issue.  When I try to figure out how the Butler Brothers’ economic enterprises of tree planting in Canada and card counting in Vegas figure in the ethical, legal, and moral picture of illegal migrants, my brain just freezes up. 

One of the charming stories from the trip and one that characterizes Patsy well is what happened when she and Jim returned from Canada. Patsy had raised wild flowers in pots while we were in the bush. She had some she wanted to bring back and U.S. customs wouldn’t let her bring them across the border. She couldn’t let them be killed by just being thrown away. She and Jim drove a few miles into the country to replant the wild flowers. The ceremonial replanting of the wildflowers took place on a hill overlooking the border where a nice gust from the north would spread the flowers’ seeds into the lower forty-eight. 

Neither Dave nor I remember how we met up in Vancouver. I recall watching a rugby match along a waterfront and thought we bumped into each other there. Dave doesn’t remember watching a rugby match in Vancouver. However it happened, once together we came up with the incredible idea to buy a canoe in Minneapolis and let the current of the Mississippi River carry us home. After a last meal at a Vancouver all-night all-u-can-eat Chinese buffet which included filling a bag with egg rolls and wontons, our first stop on the bus ride to Minneapolis was Calgary, and the Stampede was happening.

I had read someplace that there were three events everyone should experience in their lifetime. Those were the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Carnival in Rio, and The Calgary Stampede. We spent a day at The Stampede playing black jack, walking among the carnival rides, and watching the covered wagon races. It was fun, but I felt Mardi Gras in New Orleans definitely eclipsed The Stampede for wild carefree inebriated fun. I took from this that the writer didn’t know what he was talking about and crossed Carnival in Rio and being gored by a bull in Pamplona off my bucket list.

Dave and I found a place to stash our packs in bushes beside a river in downtown Calgary. We went to a building across the street from where we had hidden our gear. There was a bar and restaurant that overlooked the park where we had hidden our stuff. We were going to have a beer and see how safe our hiding place seemed. Soon after entering the bar a friendly well-dressed Canadian and his attractive female friend started talking to the bearded, shaggy strangers. Our new friend bought us a round of rye whisky and then another. We reciprocated, but this bar was a little upscale for our tree planting budget. Our new friend seemed not to have any financial concerns, so after we purchased a round, the rye whiskey flood gates opened. We stumbled into the park soon after dark. We pulled out our sleeping bags and said a little prayer to the rye whiskey god that it wouldn’t rain.

The rest of western Canada passed in a series of bus stops and layovers in places like Regina and Moose Jaw. We would take the overnight bus, try to sleep, and wander wherever we ended up the next day in a semi-conscious daze. The stops would include a visit to the ubiquitous all-night all-u-can-eat Chinese buffet to fill up and restock our bag with egg rolls and wontons before the next bus ride. On the final leg of the bus trip we crossed the border and arrived  in St. Paul after dark. We met a group of people our own age on the bus to St.Paul who were having a little party. They offered us a place to stay in St. Paul.

The next morning we were up early to buy a canoe, a case of beans, a cooler which held twelve beers, and ice. We rented a truck and hauled everything to the Mississippi River. Dave waited with the canoe while I returned the truck and got a cab back to the river. With the twin cities of St. Paul & Minneapolis looming around us, we launched our vessel with dreams of one of us steering while the other laid back, let tree planting aches drift away, and watched the river scenery pass as the current carried us home. Reality was immediate. There was no current. As sunset approached we had paddled non-stop except when we sat for two hours waiting for a lock to open, let us enter alongside a couple tugboats and a few pleasure craft which left large wakes as they maneuvered into the space, and then the lowering of the water before we rocked through the exit of powerboats and tugboats. That night we drank our twelve bears, ate a can of beans each, and went to sleep thinking this was not such a good idea.

The next morning was a warmish sunny Sunday in Minnesota in July. We awoke to a playground on a river I had viewed all my life as a cross between a large sewage canal and a majestic international shipping port. Pretty girls were water skiing on the Mississippi River. We set forth, paddling steadily for several hours. We went through another lock. It was Sunday, so no tugboats, but more pleasure craft and some other paddle craft. A little after noon we pulled over at a riverside marina. There were signs advertising beer for sale. When we went inside, we were told, “This is Minnesota. You can’t buy beer on Sunday. You got to go to Wisconsin.”

After finding out that Wisconsin was on the other side of the river, we climbed back into the canoe, and paddled  across the Mississippi to Wisconsin where there was an almost identical marina with a wider selection of beer for sale. That night we calculated how many days it would take us to paddle all the way to New Orleans assuming we could paddle at least fifty miles a day. We had about thirty days before we were planning to start work and reopen the bar. What the heck? We would give it a few more days and see where we got. We were hearing stories at the places we stopped along the way about people who paddling the river and about a guy who swam the river. There was quite an assortment of characters we were meeting along the river. People told us about hitching rides on tugboats when they got tired of paddling. That could be an option when we got tired of paddling.

The next morning was overcast. Before we set-off we covered everything in plastic. Just as we reached a spot where the river opened up into Lake Pepin, twenty miles long and three miles wide. The wind had picked up and was blowing from the south. Waves were breaking over the front of the canoe and it was beginning to rain. It became impossible to paddle against the wind. We walked the canoe along the uneven rocky shore when a powerboat pulled up. They asked if we wanted help.

Now while I am writing this I think of the joke about the guy who drowned after refusing help because he thought God would save him. Thank you, God, for sending those people. They towed us back to their boathouse in Red Wing. They kindly showed two, dirty, wet, bearded strangers where the key was hidden. They drove us to the St.Paul/Minneapolis Airport where we rented a car, bought a roof rack, picked up the canoe and drove home to New Orleans. 

I felt at the time that the Canada trip was my journey from boyhood to manhood. At the end of the trip I was comfortable with living rough, but wouldn’t choose it as a way of life. I had a big, bushy beard; whereas before, a wispy hint of a mustache was all I could expect. In a rugged life I could survive even if I wouldn’t prosper. I was glad to be  back in New Orleans running a bar and about to start my first year teaching my own class of  twenty-four fifth graders. It would take years to understand that manhood is a journey not a destination, much like wisdom. 

When I showed up for my first day of work at one of New Orleans more exclusive private schools with my newly grown full beard, the principal’s comment was, “It makes you look older.”

(Thanks to Bob for photos.)