Dirt Work

by Christine Byl

  Attachments The most common skid steer accoutrement is the digging bucket, but a range of implements mount on the front plate for other tasks: a snow-plow blade; pallet forks; a menacing four-foot auger (making quick history of the posthole digger); a ground trencher with a heavy-toothed cutting rim like a chainsaw bar and chain on steroids; a six-way dozer blade; and a hopper, a one-yard-capacity wheelbarrow on a front-mounted tire with a mind of its own. At lunch break on a hot day, find a hose and spigot in an out-of-the-way spot and fill the empty hopper with water: voilà!—a grimy, shoulder-deep soaking pool for a four-person crew.

  Expertise A competent operator in a skid steer is a thing of beauty if you concede that beauty can exist knee-deep in mud and laced with the smell of diesel exhaust. While a new operator relishes a simple task—fill a struck bucket and move smoothly to the dump site without losing the load—an old hand can practically brush his teeth with a skid steer. Using the bucket’s flat bottom as a grader of sorts, a good operator can buff out just-unloaded gravel into a tidy parking pad or fill slope in minutes, or remove small trees with the bucket’s corner in less time than it takes to fire up the chainsaw.

  Accidents Skid steers are nimble and tough to tip, so an adept driver will try anything, convinced that his expertise and a Bobcat’s capabilities can combine to solve all problems. Thus, it’s usually veteran operators who get into trouble. Greenhorns are too timid to drive 30 percent off-level or back over a four-foot dirt berm. If you see a Bobcat buried to the tops of the tracks, leaning off-kilter, or flipped over (very rare), chances are the operator was an expert.

  Chapter 5. Denali: Park

  (How far north can I move?)

  “Do you have jobs yet for this summer?” Ralph asked when he called in March. Gabe had spoken to the trails foreman in Denali National Park the year before, but he didn’t have two leader positions then, and we went to the Forest Service instead. Ralph seemed nice enough. Heavy on the sales pitch, but nice.

  “We’re going back to Cordova if nothing else comes up,” answered Gabe. At hiring time, we seasonals hold our cards close. “Is something coming up?”

  “It never rains here,” joked Ralph. “If it weren’t for the winters, we’d probably qualify as a desert.” Ralph guessed that, after a season in the rainforest, the desert would appeal. And he was right. Not to mention other stakes: much higher NPS wages (though proudly, we’d never yet taken a job based just on pay), and the siren song of a park that bewitches every mountain lover with its renowned peaks and ranges, a lifetime of trips in our potential backyard. We went all in.

  After he outlined the housing and the season’s projects, Ralph reminded Gabe that the job was a uniformed position. Unlike in Glacier, where backcountry trail crews lurked grungily out of view, unlike in Cordova, a remote Forest Service operation with no budget for sartorial excess, trail crews in crown-jewel Denali were clad in Green-and-Gray. I’d seen this clause on the application materials, but with jobs in hand, the reality of uniform came home to roost.

  I had not worn a uniform for work since I was eighteen, a hostess in a restaurant whose manager enforced a tight-white-shirt, black-skirt-well-above-the-knees dress code, a job from which I was eventually fired for standing up for myself and the brutally harassed waitresses. I am not partial to uniforms in any capacity, but even absent principles, how could I possibly work trails without the broken-in gear that had served me so well all these years, my security garments as comfortable as pajamas? The faded to almost-white Carhartts with reinforced knee worn through the first layer; the holey long johns; a red-plaid flannel for cool days and the lightweight oxford shirt for bug protection; the Patagonia fleece of late-eighties vintage with burn holes in the sleeves; my vast collection of caps, toques, and bandanas; the soft leather belt worn almost translucent where the pouch to my Leatherman hung. Chucking this treasured stockpile for the heinous polyester Park Service shirts with an arrowhead patch seemed sacrilegious. In Glacier, our trails clothes were holy vestments and we made fun of the rangers for their company getup. How could a traildog with any pride be caught in green pants and a green fleece—the pickle suit? And, God forbid, what if they made me wear the dorky flat hat with the badge? I felt as adamant and pissed as I did at five when my mother forced me into the kindergarten carpool in a vile woolen coat with toggle buttons that I never would have chosen.

  Gabe talked me down, as only he could do. Great pay, two jobs, a place we’d always wanted to explore. He didn’t want to wear the uniform, either, he said, but we should give it a shot. With Gabe so reasonable, I felt childish and vain by comparison. Begrudgingly, I buckled. I imagined climbing peaks in the Alaska Range. I imagined working in alpine tundra with bears and wolves all around. Every time I imagined myself in the uniform, I felt the immediate need to shower.

  The word “Denali” has its roots in the Koyukon Athabascan language group. Several variations—Denadhe, Dghelay Ka’a, and the closest in sound, Deenaalee—all translate to roughly the same meaning: “Big Mountain” or “The High One.” All were used by Interior Native people to designate the Alaska Range’s highest summit, at 20,320 feet a rank clear to locals long before the area was mapped by whites. Most Outsiders (Alaskans’ term for Lower 48 dwellers) know this peak as “Mount McKinley,” the name conferred by explorer James Dickey in 1896 in an obsequious nod to his home state of Ohio’s presidential candidate, William McKinley. When the park’s current wilderness boundaries were drawn in 1980, Mount McKinley National Park was renamed Denali National Park & Preserve, but Ohioans have fought in Congress to retain their homeboy’s claim on the actual peak, and so the “official” name of the highest mountain in North America persists on maps and in records. Pragmatists maintain that separate names for the park and the mountain make it easier to distinguish between them when speaking. But most Alaskans, Athabascan and otherwise, trust context to provide the distinction and choose to call the mountain by its older, more expressive name. Bequeathed Denali by the language that sprang from its heart.

  I finished my semester in Anchorage in late April, eager, once again, to box up folders and trade laptop for shovel and Danskos for Danners. We sublet our apartment, piled into the truck, and drove north, past Eagle River and Eklutna Lake, into the Mat-Su Borough, off the Glen Highway and onto the Parks, which runs clear to Fairbanks, two lanes all the way. Across the huge Susitna, north past the Talkeetna Spur Road, through Denali State Park with startling views of the Alaska Range—Denali, Foraker, Hunter, the Moose’s Tooth—across the Chulitna River, over Broad Pass. And farther north still: past Cantwell and the Denali Highway heading off to the east, along the Nenana River, north, north, north, until we turned west onto the Denali Park Road. Snow, long gone in Anchorage, still lined the shoulders. The air was crisp.

  We parked at our cabin in C-Camp, the employee housing area, mostly empty. The big influx of seasonals was still a month off. Gabe had been at work a few weeks already, and knew what he wanted to show me first. We walked a gravel trail to the sled-dog kennels and met the ranger patrol dogs, thirty Alaskan huskies chained to posts outside their houses, leaping and circling and yowling in raucous choreography. I envied them their chummy, noisy pack—they were at home in the smell of tundra, the way the wind felt, from which direction it blew. I wanted to learn what they knew.

  Tundra: the vegetation type covering a vast, treeless region in the Arctic where the subsoil is permanently or intermittently frozen. Tundra comes in two main varieties. Alpine tundra is dry with a thin root mat, similar to what’s found high in alpine regions of the Lower 48, though in Interior Alaska it grows below two thousand feet. (The northern latitude compounds elevation, so high alpine characteristics occur closer and closer to sea level, until farthest north, along the coast, “alpine” tundra grows practically out of the sea.) Sphagnum tundra is lower, thick, wetter than alpine tundra, and mossy, with spongy floating muskeg tussocks in flatland black spruce bog or, on b
etter-drained birch and aspen-forested slopes, a lush carpet you can fall to on your back like a child into a pile of leaves.

  Grade school lectures drove home the fragility of tundra plants, how one footprint could cause damage lasting thousands of years. While true, especially of the sensitive alpine variety, this lesson belies the fact that the dwarf plants comprising tundra—reindeer lichen shaped like tiny white antlers; bottle-brush bog rosemary; the spicy intoxicant Labrador tea—are some of the most tenacious living things on the planet. Woody-stemmed and nonvascular plants alike survive six to nine months of frigid winter every year, bear the imprint of the moose’s and caribou’s heavy hoof, withstand bears digging for roots and grubs, and shrug off midsummer frost and midwinter thaw with equal aplomb. Though without a doubt fragile (and losing the battle with ATVs and horse hooves all over the state), tundra plants are the steely architecture of Alaskan landscapes.

  Our first season’s major project was tundra transplanting and site revegetation at Denali’s new visitor center, under construction by a general contractor. In exchange for the GC’s permission to work on-site during construction, park personnel had to abide by all rules and be on our best behavior. We were to think of ourselves as their guests. Obey speed limits and traffic patterns, wear hard hats, avoid closed areas, and always, always give them the right-of-way. Bend over backward, Ralph said. (Dirty jokes ensued.)

  On the job site, things went well for about five hours. A few of us new to Denali were practicing our Bobcat skills in the mulch pile. Alec had driven one often, so he conceded practice time to Amy—a petite, butch toughie with a pale mustache and a ready smile—and me. The tasks were simple: scoop a bucketful, flip the arms back and forth to level the load, reverse, turn around, dump it back in the pile. Pretty elementary stuff, but thrilling if you’d never driven a Bobcat (I barely had). Amy was in the machine when a contractor’s pickup bumped by and a passenger shouted out the window, “Hey, a shovel might be faster!” The GC guys ran D-9s and 950 Cat loaders, and to them “Little Bob,” the smallest skid steer on the market, was a joke. Of course, I was indignant, since it comes so naturally to me. She’s just learning, assholes! So am I! My middle finger flew up, unbidden. Gabe, who was in charge of the project, who assured Ralph we’d follow all the rules, dropped his head in his hands. Impudence within hours of our arrival, by his wife, no less. He beckoned me over.

  “You just flip him off?” Gabe was always fair, never one to accuse.

  I smirked. “I guess.”

  “You have to go apologize.”

  I hate apologizing for anything, especially if I was provoked. Gabe knew this.

  “I was provoked!”

  “If that guy is a dick and reports you to someone, we’ll get kicked off this site. Ralph will throttle me.”

  The chance that said guy was, A) a dick and, B) planning to rat me out seemed highly unlikely. And no one ever throttled Gabe. No one really even got mad at him, except me.

  “Come on. Nothing is going to happen. I won’t do it again.”

  Gabe raised one eyebrow, a move I’d always been envious of. I knew it was futile. He was in charge, and by the letter at least, he was right. I stomped off, head down, toward the spot where the guys had parked.

  “Wear your hard hat?” Gabe called after me.

  Annoyed and muttering with a hard hat tucked under my arm is how I met the truck’s loudmouth and target of my middle finger. I could see at once that he never would have tattled. “Are you kidding?” he guffawed when I told him my boss made me come apologize. “That made my day! I’m usually the one givin’ the bird. It’s nice to get it!”

  Nic and I shook hands and exchanged names. He was in his early fifties, I guessed. A short gray ponytail stuck out from beneath his faded ball cap. About my height with a strong grip, a slight beer gut, and a weather-mapped face, the kind of guy you meet on construction sites all over the state, only jollier than average.

  “Well, see you around,” I said, after a minute or two of bullshitting. Nic got the last word as he yelled at my back, “You gotta admit, though, that’s a dinky-ass Bobcat!”

  On the drive home from work that evening, Gabe told me what happened post-apology. I had gone up to the shop to get more fuel. Minutes later, Nic arrived at the mulch pile and introduced himself to Gabe, who apologized, again, about the finger. Nic waved him off.

  “That Christine, piece a work,” he said. Gabe nodded.

  “Man, she’s feisty.” A short pause. “She seein’ anybody?” Gabe looked blank, Alec later told me. (He was watching the scene from behind the pile.)

  “Um, yeah, she sure is,” said Gabe.

  “Really,” said Nic. “Serious?”

  “Um, pretty serious.”

  “How serious?”

  “Uh, she’s married.”

  “Ah. Serious. Local guy? Live around here?” Nic was angling for a loophole, an absentee husband, perhaps, some guy who worked on the Slope for weeks at a time. No such luck.

  Gabe said, “She’s married to me, actually.”

  Nic went crimson. “Is she, now? Sorry, man. Well, you got a good one!” He shook Gabe’s hand, spun on his sneakers, and fled. Alec came rolling out from behind the pile: “Holy shit, dude! How’d you keep a straight face that long? I was dying back there!”

  A month later, I walked into the break room for our morning meeting and who was sitting in one of the chairs, the FNG (fucking new guy), our just-hired trail crew heavy-equipment operator? Nic. I gave him the finger and he grinned. After I ribbed him for asking me out via my husband and he defended himself lamely, Nic and I came to a teasing peace. That year we discovered we had more in common than our impudent streaks. We dissed the uniform together, bet on the definitions of obscure words, and tried our best to offend with dirty jokes. Nic’s favorite: “What’s the difference between a blow job and a salad?” I walked right into it, shaking my head: No idea. Him: “You wanna go out for lunch sometime?”

  For my thirty-first birthday that summer, Nic used a chainsaw and pocketknife to carve a six-inch wooden hand with the middle finger stuck up. It sits on the windowsill above my writing desk. When I look up from the page, there’s the muse, giving me the finger. It’s a piece of work, to be sure.

  The development plan for the visitor center mandated landscaping of the two-acre site in time for opening the following summer and the construction of a bike trail connecting the park entrance with the new facilities. Ralph liked to take on challenges; a sucker for logistics, he could see possibilities where others saw obstacles, and he bet that our crew could kill two birds. A construction-reveg double whammy: remove all the tundra in the bike trail alignment and replant it on the VC site. Two tasks, one stone. Tundra revegetation on that scale had no precedent and plenty of skeptics, Ralph’s favorite combination. Onward.

  He leased a 950 Cat loader for the season, hired Nic as the equipment operator, required commercial drivers’ licenses for three leaders, and turned us loose. Gabe and I took notes on the work expectations, tasks inconceivable to backcountry traildogs whose Glacier repertoire consisted of maintenance more than construction and rarely required a Skil saw, let alone a backhoe. The shovel-pulaski era seemed long gone, leaving us, after all these years, beginners again. The first weeks of work blended novelty and nostalgia and we thrived on the fast pace of large-scale construction while longing for those quiet, long-mile, backcountry days. Lunch breaks at alpine lakes? No way. Instead we lounged on the loader’s giant tires and slumped atop the Knaack box, more like a construction crew with minicoolers and Cokes than a trail crew with CamelBaks and trail mix. The Denali gang was union equipment operators and recent local high school grads, a potent blend of handy and clueless. Alec was the only other classic “traildog,” a seven-year veteran of Rocky, a hiking park with rockwork and alpine vistas, like Glacier. We bonded, of course.

  Th
e construction-reveg may have been different, but it wasn’t boring. On the ground, we began with a rough trail alignment survey, then cleared the swath with chainsaws, and hauled the brush to the burn pile. We spray-painted parallel lines on the tundra to mark the sixteen-foot width of the trail, and to enable removal, we chopped lines through the root mass of the tundra mat with pulaskis and mattocks, grateful for handwork.

  The timing of tundra transplantation is critical—once trees are cleared, the direct sun on tundra begins to warm the permafrost layer beneath. After the loader removed the tundra mats, the exposed icy ground fast melted into mud pits requiring chains on tires and logs laid corduroy-style under them just to keep the machines afloat. Flatbed trucks waited at the side of the road for the loader to deposit the sixteen-by-sixteen squares of tundra onto their beds, whereupon drivers transported the mats to predetermined sites on the VC complex, backing up mounded dirt hills and contours, lifting beds and draping the mats on the ground. Don’t worry if you can’t picture it. The whole thing took weeks to sink in, even while we were doing it.

  The operation required people power: a loader operator, two or three on the ground cutting line and directing the bucket, three truck drivers, two shovelers to guide mats into place and mulch the edges. Miscellany ate up hands, too: haul brush, guy small trees, direct traffic as equipment crossed the road, and make constant runs to the shop for diesel can, shackles, tow strap, dunnage, chains, cell phone, hard hat, mattock handle, Griphoist, zerk grease. To keep things interesting, something was always getting stuck: truck, loader, puncheon, tools. Occasionally even a human went down big, by an inadvertent step too close to the edge of a mud pit or a calculated belly flop performed for lunchtime laughs.