Monthly Archives: May 2010

05/30/10

Republic of Cohen

He asked the question knowing that no matter the response, the follow up would be the same,
“Ever shot a gun?”
The answer was no and the follow up was, “Well do ya wanna shoot one?”
Mike, missing front teeth, built solid and lacking in the ability to include the letter G at the end of words like ‘fishin’, ‘shootin’, ‘goin’ and his two friends had decided to join our camp as we celebrated our night off. Natives of the Nazko Valley, we met them with certain apprehention but mostly thought nothing of them.

Mike led me to his truck where his two friends we sitting inside. Obviously drunk at this point, Mike pulls out a .303 rifle, loads it with a bullet and hands it off to me. This was probably when I realized that maybe these weren’t the type of people who should be handling firearms. Any doubts in my head were quickly erased as I watched all three of them do excessive amounts of cocaine. Being the friendly folk that they are, they offered and I flatly refused.
“Anyone here do hard shit or are they all pussies smokin’ weed? Tell them we got extasy for sale”

My nights sleep was lovely and included getting woken up at 4am by gunshots, yelling, threats of fire, threats of theft, fist fights and car tires screeching off.

This was a week before our 6 day shift to end our first contract. Our final day ended in a small blizzard but was made up for by 3 days in the city and a hottub at our motel.

We find ourselves in Vanderhoof for this contract and can be found at kilometer 124 on the Kluskus. This puts us 2hrs away from the nearest town.
The atmosphere in our camp is tense. If an Elementary school Model UN Club and the participants of the Special Olympics formed a group and were given pointy sticks and duct tape, it would very much resemble our camp rivalry. We are divided into little suburbs of tents and war has been declared between my Republic(led by me) and Fuzistan(which is led by Fuz and includes Zakrak and Timdia)
It started with me stealing Fuz’s flag, was followed by Fuz spreading toilet paper around my tent and ended with me locking Fuz out of his tent. While a treaty was brokered for night off, I fully expect to come back to the burnt remains of my tent later today.

05/10/10

One Week In

The sun was shining on the day I left. Running to the bank and dollar store before heading to the airport left beads of sweat running down my face. Even as thunder clouds started making noise in the distance, I relished in the warmth of my Montreal home knowing full well that the one place in the country not enjoying the same treatment was where I would be spending the next 3 months.
And how right I was.

The mornings are cold. The mornings are cold enough to freeze the water in our bottles, freeze the pipes carrying our dish/shower water, cold enough to freeze wet dishes together and leave a thick coating of frost on every truck window. We don’t expose our hands and most of us drink the awful coffee not for the taste but so our hands can touch something a little warmer than the inside of our pockets.
While the mornings are hard to bare, the days have been nice. You quickly undress as you begin your day and apart from the few flakes of snow, we’ve been lucky enough to see mostly sunshine.

We have a lot of new people in our camp this year. It’s really interesting to watch them plant and think: “was that really me?”
The best thing about having a camp of rookies is that everyone gets along. No cliques are made, everyone enjoys the campfire and tries to remember everyones names(this is with the exception of one crew which has completely isolated itself from the rest of camp for whatever reason)

And it should be noted that unlike last year, the food in great and the cooks are wonderful! While I hoped to really focus on life as a vegan tree planting, I have not made that a focus on this blog. The first 2 seasons we had a wonderful cook who really took care of me as the only vegan. Last year…well I will sum up last year with a quote from the cook to myself:
“if you think we have a problem, I’ll fucking headbutt you, then we’ll see who has a problem” Needless to say, we didn’t get along and when he didn’t refuse to feed me, I still ended up going to bed hungry.
This year has seen a return to the great food one should expect from the cooks. The soups are vegan, the bread is vegan and delicious and the options have been wonderful.