"It's Gypsy"

(This is my take on what happened. I wasn't there. My imagination fills in where facts are lacking. I wrote this and put it on hold because I wasn't sure it was my story to tell. I've come to the realization that it is my story. As Nick relayed the events of her death to me I experienced it and was traumatized by what I could see in my mind, and I was traumatized by his grief, and I grieve still).


     I answered the phone. It was our good friend Nick from treeplanting. The one who convinced me to come back for another season after my premature "tree-tirement." My crewboss, and Jon’s right hand man. Our very own Zorba the Greek; an accidental wise man who often muddles the words of common sayings in such a way as to make them less cliché and more true to life.  I was so happy he was calling. It's always great to hear his voice. I wanted to hear about their plans, when he and Carrie would finally be done the berry-pick, finished with the season so they could join us in the Yukon.

I must have joked to him about something. It was always jokes between us. Then silence.
“This isn’t a happy call,” His voice broke. He inhaled and a raw choking, guttural weeping noise came over the phone. “It’s Gypsy.” And instantly my heart was pounding. I was begging him to say she was ok. The words flew out of his mouth. I saw it happen. I witnessed everything through his words. I choked and wailed. Looking back, I have never cried so freely, with such lack of self consciousness. OFten I have cried and become wrapped up in the romance of it and when the sensation of sorrow passes I make an attempt at keeping the tears flowing. This time I did not have to try. The sorrow did not pass. We were in the car, parked outside the ambulance station where Jon works and I didn't care who saw or heard me. I was saying no! No. No. No. The whole time. I was seeing it. Nick is a storyteller. I was there.

They pull up at the side of the dirt road and let the dogs out of the truck. Spade and Gypo run off to do their thing. The four veteran treeplanters amble around to the tailgate. Sit and light cigarettes, and drink strong coffee from dented travel mugs as a sparse rain falls. It's early September and all of the trees are in the ground. These four have paid their dues and so they are granted a few extra weeks work at a decent day-wage for picking berries that will later be processed for the seed, grown in a green house, and replanted as part of forest reclamation projects. It is meticulous, though easy work. There is no quota and the day rate allows lots of time for breaks, making it an ideal cool down to the hardcore pace of the planting season.

There are fresh truck tracks in the mud of the road and the planters don’t think anything of it. The dogs run free, happy to be out of the motel for a day of work. Spade darts into the bush, Gypo  up the road to check things out. 

A few days before Nick came upon Gypsy with a discarded deer head. He took a video. “Here’s my little dog, my little girl," He says affectionately. "I don’t know if you can see what she is doing, but she is eating the brains out of a deer head.” She was not one to frolic with the other dogs, she commanded respect. Not aloof, just damn majestic, a husky-greyhound hybrid plucked as a puppy from the kennel of a legendary Dawson City musher to live the nomadic life of the dog of two treeplanters. I once saw this dog chase a black bear through a clear-cut and bite it in the ass. At the time, terrified, I screamed out her name. She ignored me. She knew what she was doing. At a plant north of Fort MacMurray she flew with us in a helicopter, sitting tall and peering out the window in wonder as we commuted from our remote camp site. Carrie said Gypsy had realized her life long dream of flying like the birds. 
Throughout my time as a planter, I wouldn’t see her for a year and then I would, and I would call to her and she would run towards me at dog-race speed, smiling, teeth barred, she would say a quick hi, take a pat, then go off and do her own thing. She didn’t like to be fawned over.

On this particular day last fall, the group climbs back into the truck and  they continue up the dirt road, looking for a good work site for the day. They round a bend. A pick-up truck appears up ahead in the drizzle and Gypsy is running along beside it on the other side of the ditch. She is getting old but still has an elegance to her stride, her waist tucked in dramatically behind her deep chest, betraying the greyhound genes within her. The planters gain on the truck. (I’m watching it all in slow motion as Nick speaks). Perhaps the occupants of the truck yell out to her, because Gypsy bends her neck ever so slightly, looking over at them. There are two of them. It’s somewhere in Northern Alberta. Lake La fucking Biche or some shit hole. And this beautiful creature is running along side this strange truck. Her strong, graceful neck arched towards them. The group of four berry-pickers get closer and closer. And then they see it. A gun. Pointed at their beautiful dog. There is nothing they can do. They hear it. A single shot. Those red-neck fuckers fucking shoot her. A deafening bang and she falls hard to the ground, her neck twisting back, her bright orange collar visible amongst the luscious wet greyness of her fur. She is heaving in the wet grass of the shallow ditch. The truck drives off. I can hear the incredulous screaming. "You fucking shot my dog!" 
They carry her bleeding into the truck and Carrie holds her. The love of their lives. Their entire universe. They want to follow the truck but are scared of the gun, scared to go anywhere but towards help for Gypsy, bleeding and moaning. They wrap her up and Carrie holds her as they drive to town, her rain gear sopping red with blood. Just blood everywhere and she is in so much pain and she is dying and she does die. She turns cold in Carrie’s arms. And Spade is never the same dog after that. And no one is the same. And I am not the same. I saw it all through Nick’s words. I felt it all through Nick’s grief, as well as through my own.

Wisers Whisky

There is a place under the oats, under the sky, where you buried treasure for your future children. To make them strong. They would dig not knowing how deep. Not knowing if they were in the right place, until they were, or until they gave up. 

If I were to talk about it, you wouldn't remember the time you bled the walls red. Your blood Josef. Painted the walls. I made you believe you were asleep. Cleaned you and put you to bed. Alone I scrubbed away the traces. Rung the towels until the water ran clear.

It was the car I loved if not you. Volkswagen Jetta. Sheep skin seats. Filthy as fuck but well built. It was the same colour as your skin exposed to the sun all those hours working outdoors. 

Most saw the smile lines and freckles, the arms, large and brown. They thought you were simple. And you were. Except your simplicity was a distillation of great wisdom. There is something to be said about brawn gained stacking bales of hay, and brains nourished on fresh air and open spaces. You were dazed and rugged to everyone else, but pristine in private as I read you to sleep.

Do you remember the night I screamed? Everyone heard. You woke and it was real and you were scared too. The bear breathing inches from our heads. Huffing and sniffing. And then terror. The huge paw pressed against the wall of the tent. And I was wrapped up in it, suffocating and so I screamed bloody goddam murder. So loud Saskatchewan heard me. But then it wasn't real. It was just nighttime and I was just dreaming and you said "What the Shit" in the stoned-surfer way you had of speaking sometimes when you were half asleep, and the people camped around us who thought I was dying laughed when they heard you because they knew I was okay, you were there. 

I'm convinced you knew I was begging the universe. Chanting, chanting, chanting. Taking the Whisky like it was communion. But it wasn't time. They found your car abandoned in the airport parking lot. Your tin of weed wrapped in a bread bag, wedged in haste under the seat, 4 joints expertly rolled.  

You were gone. They'd tease me and tell me you were coming back to dig us out of the mess we were in. You'd bring a flat bed truck loaded with dirt bikes for everyone and we wouldn't have to walk for hours through the mud anymore. I believed them. Time trudged on, knee deep. And gradually your absence became so real and everywhere felt so empty. I stopped looking. Stopped waiting. Stopped and savoured how completely free I was to remember the straw of your hair, the lines of your face, and the smooth white skin underneath it all.

post planting poundage

huge slashpile somewhere in alberta 

I'm not one to exercise. I like sports and doing fun activities in nature, but exercising for the sake of exercise or to reduce or to get muscles has never really been my thing.

For a bunch of years in my twenties I spent 4 months of the year running a marathon for 6 days a week. A marathon called tree planting. Ok, yes, when you are planting trees you aren't running (unless you count the few times you run from bears, not recommended, but when the bear is just as scared as you and is running in the opposite direction it is fine). You aren't running, but you are strapping 200-400 saplings to your waist (50 poundsish) and then trudging (all day long) through some drunken logger's massive impression of pick-up-sticks (the term clear cut is insulting to me, that shit ain't clear). 


And while you are maneuvering through this maze of nature, chewed up and spit out for your specific inconvenience, you are expected, every few steps, to slam a shovel into the ground, crack open Canada, bend over and feed her a tree, a few thousand times. 


Let's not forget how you get to this slash laden workplace. You walk. You walk for maybe an hour, maybe more maybe less, with all of your gear, sometimes carrying full bags of trees, always carrying the shit ton of water you need to consume so you don’t die. HeeHaw. And always along some path where trucks don't go, where trucks don't go for a reason, because, before you put one tree into the ground, you are expected to complete some seemingly impossible feat. Something like swimming the English Channel, or tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. Something like crossing a raging river in a dingy, or walking for 7 miles over muskeg, MUSKEG, you know, the kind of mossy watery spongy swampy expanse that probably swallowed all of Dinotopia. 

One plus to tree planting is you are basically being paid to go to fat camp. You start the season soft and you end it hard. You end it athlete hard. The trade off is a few months of hell and some really bad tan lines. 


And another thing, while you are there you can eat as much crap as you want. I'm talking  archipelagos of French fries swimming in seas of cheese and gravy. I’m talking Andes of pasta. Rivers of powdered sugar “juice.” Entire Saskatchewans of bread. If you wake up early enough and your camp cook lets her guard down for mere seconds, you may experience that magic moment where you eat your own weight in bacon.

Because of this I haven’t really had a problem with weight or body image or anything like that for a long time. And if I did, I would just wait a few months and it would be spring again, time to mash a lifetime’s worth of working out (and eating) into a few months.

But I just had a baby. And for the last bit of my pregnancy I was on bed rest. I was a beached whale (ya I said it) kept alive with the splashes of food Squanch brought me and my own faith that one day soon the tide would come high enough to reach me and I would be able to swim once again.

And so now I am feeling a bit soft. The organs that used to be tucked behind my abs are flopping out over my pants. I have a belly reminiscent of a 5 month pregnant person and pre-preggers clothes is not fitting me. The baby is 4 months old. I am not going treeplanting, but I am going to kick life up a notch and renew my teen obsession with cross-country running. My awesome red running shoes are in the mail and as soon as they get here I’m gonna be out the door!

wasted hatred

I over heard someone say "me likey" today. I spun around to see who was spouting such obsolete verbal regurgitation and then had to pretend to laugh at how funny and charming she was because she noticed me noticing her and it was either that or smacking her in the annoying ass ironic glasses clad face.

Pretty sure it was a Simpson's reference and pretty sure the only people who quote the Simpsons are trying way too hard to be cool.

Pretty sure people who quote anything in day to day dialogue are trying way to hard to be cool. Like that chic that Squanch's best friend brought over here the other weekend who was pretending to be the starving artist meanwhile daddy pays for an internship because she doesn't have to work. sorry, no amount of strategically nonchalant boho scarves will be able to cover your fucking prada purse and fur hat you poser biatch.

So anyway, she kept engaging in conversation with the guys about world politics and bla bla bla and not once did she look at me and then she would pluck some reference out of her ass and so and so scholar said this about that and I am brilliant and then look at squanch like she wanted some kind of reassurence that he thought she was smart and the whole time I was just knowing that he was thinking she was a pompous twat same as what i was thinking.

there was this feminist feeling i got from her but instead of being happy to be a strong intelligent woman she was trying to prove herself to have a dick and that it was bigger than squanchs dick, which is impossible if you ask me.

She actually bragged to the cashier at the grocery store that Squanch's friend was a poet.. haha I bet she has all kinds of fantasies about how she is slumming with a ginger, woodsy, philosopher poet. too bad he will be writing poems in spooge on the walls of the tents of whatever girls take his fancy at planting this season.

woah rant.

so much angers me these days.I know it's a waste of time but i need it out of my head so i can get on with everything else

treeplanting journal

The dust from the logging roads coats my teeth, whiter now if only for the grimy tan of my face. Squished up with duffel bags and his long legs, there is silence and there is sunshine. It’s calm in this truck limbo, and I’ve been starved for calm.

The dandelions have burst forth overnight from the prairie floor. I’m planning a painting in my mind, how I’ll use an old toothbrush to splatter the yellow in atop the green grass, fluorescent in the lazy afternoon sunshine. The sky is bigger here than any sky I have ever seen. I can’t fathom a canvas big enough for the abundance of clouds, languid they lay about like corpulent Romans following a feast.

Beside me he shifts his hands on the steering wheel and I notice him noticing a bird flicking in the wind, its energy bursts through the stillness of the afternoon, but the fluidity of flight remains true to my tranquility. We do not speak.

(GP May 2009 planting journal excerpt)



meredith by the fire

At night, the sky smudged a gradient of cobalt to ash, she sits by the fire and makes an attempt at the moment. It’s all she can do. Zen falls like the crumbs from the cake of others and she’s there to catch a few in her swollen hands, savoring seconds of peace.

She’s pegged the restlessness of her mind to the vastness of her country, the never-ending possibilities of people and place; the hearts she’s broken and the hearts that have broken her and all the hearts lined up like bottles on a fence waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Every pair of eyes she’s ever seen stay with her, become a constant presence, watching, judging, laughing. Here in the wilderness, the layers of herself have been peeled away and her soul cowers and spins, dances and winces, a grub in the sun. And she’s not sure if this means she’s lost or if it means she’s found.

(May 2009)


waiting things

Cigarettes smoke themselves
in anticipation
collars darken like the day
and still, still
boot darkened socks
wait on the floor
damp and alone.
Branches accumulate
and the open space
becomes tired and dirty
strewn with waiting things
patient like the earth
beneath fingernails
calm as the filth
in hidden crevices.

conflict-free ziptie

Got the news from my pseudo-hippie University roommate that she is engaged. She tells me her fiance made sure to ask for her if the diamonds were Canadian and conflict free. I guess everyone has to sleep at night somehow and if this is what works for them then, sure.

I don't have to worry about blood diamonds because my engagement ring is a ziptie. And, Yeah, the thing cops use to mass-cuff the cuttoff wearing "bystanders" at the g-15 whatever this summer.

Ziptie. At a planting camp these little buggers are indispensable. Especially when the supervisor, (my fiance) becomes so enamored by the cook (me) that he decides to lock down her and her meal-making abilities for good. I was eating water-mellon on my cook shack porch waiting for muffins to rise when he came back to camp to get something and that's when it happened...

Enough about me. So, I went to tell the news to my other best friend from university but i dawdled because she is not yet engaged and has been with her boyfriend since forever. And yeah, I admit, if i wasn't engaged I would probably, deep down, be pissed to hear this news just as i am secretly ticked when i find out people are pregnant ("accidental" pregnancy really pisses me off especially as i do not believe it is possible but more on this later) so I'm still talking about me. So, yeah, I probably just ruined my other friends day... but the news had to come to her somehow. Sorry blondie...