by Shania Twain
By now, the sun had set completely. At last, I could make out, through the near impenetrable curtain of white, a faint black haze in front of me. My dad, realizing that I must have lost my sight line, was standing by the water’s edge. As soon as he heard the growl of the motor, he started to wave his flashlight in my direction. The flickering light caught my eye. I’d made it! Ironically, what had been a potentially life-and-death drama for me went entirely unnoticed by the men, who were probably wondering only “What the hell took her so long?”
In the North, most people do things like this, even though we all know the risks involved. In that rough environment, you develop survival skills and attitudes that get you through; your senses seem to sharpen, too. Being out in hazardous weather teaches you to become resourceful and mentally tough enough so that, when confronted by situations like this one, you just carry on. It wasn’t as if we didn’t respect the power of Mother Nature; I mean, God knows, every winter you’d hear about people who’d died from exposure in the North. I guess we just never thought it would ever happen to us, and so there were no shortage of stories about close calls, usually shared around a warm fire with plenty of laughter.
Not my mother’s brother, Uncle Don, though. One time he and my cousin Roger cheated death by the skin of their teeth.
It was a cold December morning. Now, with a temperature of twenty degrees below or so, you might assume that a frozen lake would be as hard as concrete. Not necessarily. If there hadn’t been enough cold days in a row, you might encounter some weak patches of ice. My uncle and his twenty-four-year-old son, riding tandem, were the last in a small party of snowmobilers crossing the lake together. The other machines left a slushy trail behind them—a sign of brittle ice—so my uncle, who was steering, veered off to the side a bit.
Before either of them knew what was happening, the back end of the snowmobile plunged through the ice. Roger managed to jump off and scramble onto solid ice, but my uncle, in heavy boots and bulky winter gear, fell into the water. Don swam over to where his son was lying on his stomach. The first thing he said to him—and this will never cease to amaze me—was a reminder to place their helmets on the ice as a courtesy to other snowmobilers, to warn them of the danger.
Roger attempted once, then twice, to pull his father out of the water. But my uncle is a big, tall man, and between his size and his waterlogged snow gear, it was impossible to rescue him alone. My cousin turned and looked longingly at the lodge in the distance; there simply was not enough time for him to run there, fetch help, and get back to save his father. Not only that, but now the ice beneath my cousin was starting to crack. My uncle Don was getting weaker and weaker, and gasping for breath.
“Go on! Leave me!” he blurted. Later my uncle would tell me that he couldn’t bear the thought of his poor wife having to bury both her husband and her son. But Roger, something of the family rebel, wouldn’t hear of it. “No!” he shouted. “If you go, we both go!”
It’s hard to explain what it’s like to be soaking wet in twenty-below-zero temperatures to anyone who’s never experienced it, but it is physically painful to endure and very scary realizing that your time is ticking down irrevocably.
Don, who had reached the end of his strength, had a last-resort idea: he removed his long snow gloves and handed one end to Roger. This would give them a few additional inches of leverage. Despite the numbness in his fingers, my uncle gripped on as tightly as he could. “Pull!” he instructed. Both of them knew that this was probably their last chance.
“Kick, you fucker!” my cousin screamed. “Kick!” According to him, it was the first time he’d ever sworn at his father.
Maybe it helped. My uncle pumped his legs enough that Roger was able to pull him out. But the two of them weren’t out of danger, by any means.
With the shelf of ice still cracking beneath them, they inched forward on their bellies for some time until the surface was thick enough to support their weight. When they got to their feet, they hugged each other tightly, shaking violently from the cold.
My uncle’s first words to Roger? “I will never call you my rebel son ever again,” he said solemnly. From that terrifying experience, father and son formed a bond that would never be broken and developed a newfound respect for each other. In the name of love, neither of them was willing to give up on the other.
Three weeks later, my uncle’s snow machine was recovered in twenty feet of water.
In the spring, the Twain family got into the reforestation business. Our apartment now doubled as an office. I can remember my parents and my aunt sitting around the kitchen table, which was covered with maps held open with coffee cups. While I prepared an after-school snack, the dog barked at the mailman, my brothers dashed in and out of the front door on their way to play street hockey, my dad tossed out ideas, my mom studiously jotted things down, and Aunt Karen calculated all the figures, trying her best to keep up with them.
From being present at so many of these kitchen sessions, I came to understand the principles of tree planting. Since I was good at reading maps, loved being in the bush, and was both physically fit and a tomboy, my father decided to let me try being a crew boss, which entailed being in charge of twelve or thirteen grown men.
My parents expressed their confidence that I could handle the responsibility, which is what really gave me the courage to go do it. The men in my crew, however, were a different story, and the moment I arrived on the job site, I can tell you that I felt very out of place. Not only was I just seventeen years old, but, as usual, I was the only person in the entire company who was missing a Y chromosome.
To be blunt, the men didn’t take me seriously at all at first. And I certainly didn’t help matters any when, on the first day, I basically treated them like schoolchildren, lecturing them as if I were their teacher. Never mind that this was my first tree plant, not theirs. I can only imagine what they thought of this inexperienced, skinny little white girl; they probably regarded me as almost as much of a nuisance as the ruthless black flies that infest the bush at certain times of the year, swarming around your head. (Know why they do this? Because they’re attracted to the carbon dioxide that we exhale.) They leave bites that are similar to a mosquito’s, only more painful, and they make you drip blood.
Basically, my crew humored me, no doubt for two reasons: one, I was the big boss’s daughter, the importance of which should not be underestimated. And, two, like every one of the workers, the big boss was a Native, like themselves.
The first planting proved to be a harsh introduction physically as well as mentally. Tree planters, you see, are paid according to the number of trees they plant and need to meet their daily quota. If you’re too slow, you’re not going to stay on the job long. That should be obvious. But also, we base our tree orders on how many we estimate we can plant within an allotted time. If we order more trees than we can plant, we lose money, because the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources stipulates very clearly that trees must be planted as soon as possible and no later than a few days after being delivered from the nursery. The reason is that in order to ensure the highest success rate, trees need to be planted promptly before the roots begin to lengthen and grow together, and they must be kept cool and damp. Therefore, the ministry closely monitored not only the quantity of trees planted but also the quality of the job. So there is a lot of pressure on private contractors like my dad to plant the trees in good shape as well as quickly.
The first part of my job called for me to review the map indicating the areas my crew had been assigned to plant, and which trees went where. I would mark off these sections using colored flagging tape, then dispatch the men to their designated jobs, preferably without getting them lost. There’s no surer way to dent morale than by sending men from the base camp to the place where a cache of fresh trees supposedly awaits planting, only for them to arrive forty minutes later and find nothing there. Or, worse, having them lug one of these heavy bags full of trees to a patch, and it turns out that
you inadvertently pointed them in the wrong direction. Understandably, planters get pretty pissed off whenever this happens.
With experience, I became quite good at deciphering the maps and getting my crews where they needed to be. I also learned to judge my expectations of each crew member based on his average as well as the space and ground type. Ricky, for example, could plant 1,500 trees a day, and 1,700 if it was white pine with sandy soil, not too gravelly. But he might be reduced to under 1,000 a day if his job was to plant black spruce, for which the soil is swampy and stumpy and hard to maneuver.
Even when everything goes right, though, this is a difficult job. Think about it: you’re working out in the exposed elements over long hours, subjected to temperamental weather, those unforgiving black flies, mosquitoes, and a host of other things that can make you uncomfortable, such as planting in a prescribed burn patch where the ground underneath you is still smoldering in places. Sometimes you step into dangerous hot spots of smoldering coals, the black soot coats your nostrils, and you feel like you’ve been working in a coal mine. The trees are prickly and uncomfortable to handle, the bags are heavy, and did I mention the bears, let alone moose during rutting season? They are particularly dangerous at this time of year, the fall, when they are mating. The bull moose are especially aggressive and will charge and trample you, if agitated, much like most people know the black bull to do. Only moose are several times a bull’s size!
Tree planting is just a hard job, plain and simple. It wouldn’t take much for a planter to decide that he wasn’t up to it today and, in order to meet his quota, hide, bury, and double plant his trees. Consequently, part of my job consisted of supervising the men and being on the lookout for this. I’m sure that some of them tricked me, but all in all, not too many, as we always covered the projected amount of area according to our allotted number of trees. For example, as trees are planted six feet apart in all directions, it’s not hard to work out on a map how many trees go in each plantable area. The Ministry of Natural Resources often awarded my crew an excellent 98 percent projected success rate, which means that each tree we planted was more than 90 percent likely to live long enough to mature into something flat, stamped, and green—namely, money. Sometimes I felt sad that the forests we were replanting were only being planted to be cut down. Like farmed animals, their only purpose for being brought into the world is to be killed in a very specific way at a very specific time. Our trees, depending on the type and what soil terrain conditions they were planted in, were scheduled for cutting in anywhere from fifty-five to seventy-five years, once they were mature enough to be cut for lumber. I do believe that well-managed reforestation is a very intelligent way to produce a supply in demand, so that wild and natural forests can remain untouched and protected.
I’m sure that the advent of the cell phone has made the crew leader’s job somewhat easier these days. But when I was working in the bush, we had to rely on hand signals and a lot of bellowing over long distances. We’d pass messages from one man to the next as if playing the children’s game telephone, only louder: “Where does Remy go next?!” “Chuck’s shovel is broken! Bring him a new one!” The cache, as we called it, where the trees were stored till planting, was our communication hub, so I tried to keep abreast of everyone’s position and to be there when each man came back to fill up with trees.
Back at camp at the end of the day, we’d all sit around long, bingo-style tables in a big, rectangular canvas prospector’s tent to eat. A typical meal consisted of potatoes, frozen corn, and sausages stewed in canned tomatoes, and usually cake for dessert. I typically saved my cake for breakfast, because during the hot summer months, our days began at three in the morning, and who could eat a full breakfast at that hour? Just cake and black tea for me, thank you.
After dinner, I often went right back to my trailer for the night. No playing cards, the usual camp pastime, or socializing. Are you kidding? I was beat! I would brush my teeth, take off my boots, hang up my socks on a nail in the wall to air out, and fall into bed with the rest of my clothes on. It wasn’t unusual for me to go for days without taking a good look in the mirror, which, to be honest, was quite liberating. In the morning, I’d throw on a fresh pair of underwear, a bra, and an undershirt, and I was good to go. My outer gear got washed every several days, on average. This may sound odd, but it’s true. No deodorant, no shampoo or soap, but no body odor. Not just me, but everyone. Any perfumed products attract black flies, which is a hazard, so you go au naturel, and everyone just smells like the forest. We all know that if human adults do not shower for days at a time with deodorized products, they will be rank, but our camp diet was so basic, little junk food and no chemical products. I believe that once you sweat out the initial crap in your system after the first week of hard bush labor, your odor starts to blend in with nature. This is my theory, at least from my personal experience of being in a camp with a large group of men and no showers.
My personal way of bathing was to head off to the bush; I’d often fill a tree container with water and leave it in the bed of one of my dad’s pickup trucks to heat in the sun all day. When I’d get back in the late afternoon, I’d put on the lid to avoid spilling and drive up the road to someplace where I could bathe in private. I would stand against the dropped tailgate and dip a large coffee cup or small pot in my tub of sun-warmed water and douse myself.
Once I got used to the routine, I came to enjoy the solitude of working in the bush and didn’t miss living in town at all, not even the conventional shower. Out there, you knew your place, your purpose, your job, and what you should and shouldn’t do. Knowing that bathing with fragrant shampoo and soap resulted in getting eaten alive by insects, I understood that if I was respectful and worked as hard and as fast as the guys, I’d earn their respect. If I ate or drank more than I should, I’d be too sluggish to make it through the long day; likewise, if I didn’t go to bed right after supper, I’d regret it the next morning. Bush camp life offered few conveniences, yet at the same time, it gave me the luxury of more freedom from the burden of too much decision making over menial things.
My sister Carrie, who was then fifteen or sixteen, decided to join me in order to make some extra money. After all, the pay was much better than at McDonald’s, where she worked after school and on weekends, but then, the work was a lot harder. Boy, was she ever in for a surprise. On her first day, we agreed that she would plant on my crew until she got the knack of everything. I would teach her how to plant the trees, how to maneuver the shovel, and so on.
Well, the black flies were out that day in numbers. Nothing attracts them like the sweet smell of someone fresh from town, all showered and wearing machine-washed clothing. Unfortunately for my sister, she’d joined the camp smelling of Wella Balsam shampoo, hair gel, and deodorant. The flies had a feast! Not only that, but although the trek from the tree cache to the planting patch wasn’t far, the terrain was full of logs and giant roots to climb over, so that Carrie was exhausted before she’d even had the chance to plant her first tree. Within the first hour, my sister was threatening to leave, yelling, “I’ve had enough!” I couldn’t help but laugh. I understood how awful she felt, but as I’d been there and survived, it now just seemed funny to me. Happily, I convinced her to stay for the season, and it was great to have my little sister as a roommate.
For privacy, our puny, run-down camper was parked up the road from the guys’ camp. One morning I looked out the window and saw a big moose grazing lazily just outside. I walked out to take a better look. It just gawked at me and went back to eating. Moose are kind of goofy looking; they have oversized heads shaped like a peanut and a giant rack of antlers between their ears.
I thought, Here is my big chance to bag a moose! I ran back inside the trailer and grabbed a gun. We kept a few around the camp for scaring off curious and hungry bears. It was a .33-caliber rifle—a bit heavy for me, but I’d had lots of practice with it from years of joining my dad target shooting.
I crept up o
n the moose until I was about one hundred feet away, and as it was not rutting season, it was actually very docile and nonaggressive. Moose will often look long and hard at you if you approach and eventually decide to run off. Once I got as close as I could before sensing his urge to turn and run, I cracked open the barrel to pop in a bullet. There was already one jammed in the chamber, so I closed it back up, aimed, and pulled the trigger, figuring the gun would fire with the bullet already there. But there was nothing. I tried pulling out the jammed bullet, but it wouldn’t budge. Now I’m getting frustrated: I can’t believe this! I’m out here alone, I have a big, fat moose standing a stone’s throw from me, and I can’t get the gun to shoot! I angrily threw the .33 to the ground (probably not my greatest idea ever; what if it had discharged?) and started stomping on it and yelling at it, “You useless, good-for-nothing son of a bitch!” I guess for fun I could say “gun” in this case, although that’s not what I said at the time. If my father had been a fly on the wall, he would have found the scene comical. But it was just me and the moose, who stared at me with puzzled eyes. His lack of concern made me feel foolish, and after a while, I gave up, at which point my erstwhile victim slowly sauntered off into the bush.
To tell you the truth, I was secretly relieved. I mean, I would have shot it, since in the culture of the North that’s what you do when you’ve grown up on moose meat, you have a moose standing right in front of you, and you have a rifle, but I sure wouldn’t have felt good about it afterward. With all the gun carrying through the bush during the hunting treks with my father and my grandparents, I’d never personally shot anything before, and for such a majestic creature to fall at my feet just because I felt like it would have bothered me deeply. Although I’d snared rabbits with my grandparents and I enjoyed the bonding and the learning of their ways, I felt uneasy, making the connection that in order for us to eat these cute, fluffy animals, they had to choke in our wire. Hunting was an integral part of our way of life, but I realized, having been able to reflect on it at this moment, it didn’t sit right with me.
