Eating Dirt

by Charlotte Gill

  When the time comes, K.T. and I load our baggage into the helicopter’s cargo boot. We climb in. The chopper lifts off. Once we’re in the air we see nothing but the inside of a cloud, gauzy light beaming from all directions. Thin streams of water bead down the plastic dome of the canopy. It’s a short flip. We’re in the air less than five minutes before we begin to descend. The outlines of a cut block coalesce through the mist. We see a light green bowl of land, surrounded by spiky green treetops. An old cut, a plantation started years ago by another crew but never finished.

  The helicopter sets its skids down on an old road. Adam has told me it washed out in a mudslide somewhere down the line. We get out and give our thumbs up, and the helicopter flies away. We breathe in jet fuel fumes. And when those drift off we can still see our breath, as if the machine’s blades thrashed all the warmth from the air.

  Our supply of seedlings came in a netted sling earlier in the shift, the same way babies are delivered by storks. K.T. and I stand with our heads bent together peering at our map, the paper dotted with raindrops blown down from the trees. What appeared to be just a tiny creek on paper is actually a gushing waterfall. Its flow crashes down like a crowd stomping its feet. Low-lying clouds waft and curdle. We can throw a stick farther than we can see.

  We make a plan to penetrate the outermost fingers of the clear-cut and work our way back to the center. First, we cut through a riparian strip, a margin of trees left behind along the creek. We wade through in our caulk boots, soaking ourselves to the knees before we’ve even begun. Our feet find purchase between the stones. The water flows a frothy white, at once heavy and effervescent. If we fall in so early in the day, we’ll have to work in a fury to stay warm.

  On the other side we arrive in a tiny pocket of clear-cut, fringed with tall trees. The fog thickens. I get a feeling, a hunch at once familiar and peculiar. A prickling at the back of my neck. My ears are full with thundering water, and the air is like vaporized milk. We are two senses short. This land is what people like to call big country. So huge I wonder how two living creatures might ever cross paths. Still, a shiver passes over my scalp. I get the feeling we’re not alone.

  So does K.T.

  Let’s stick together, he says.

  We go to work, down a steep neck of the cut. We plant trees in long lines, horizontally with the contours of the land. We work like knitters at the same sweater, bumping up to each other and then turning away. When we meet in the middle, we share flecks of conversation before drifting out of earshot.

  There’s a cougar over there, says K.T. with suspicious nonchalance, nodding toward the trees.

  Really? I gasp.

  Yeah, he tells me, she had frosted hair and acid-wash jeans. She wouldn’t let me go until I gave her what she wanted.

  Funny, I say. Really hilarious.

  He likes to find ways to make people laugh, me especially. If I don’t crack easily, he’ll work relentlessly at splitting my sides. Does it not show mettle? A sense of humor in a place like this? Might it not be the measure of a cut-block companion, a lifelong partner in crime? We inch up the hillside together. We both wear Pioneer raincoats, exactly the same kind, like matching tourists. My radio, in its harness, crackles and burbles with the chatter of distant crewmates.

  Once we’ve finished, we cross back over the creek to refill our bags. The mist blows through in patches, skimming our faces, as we march down the road, like millions of tiny cold bubbles. K.T. walks ahead of me with a purposeful stomp. When his heels lift, I see the caulks flash on his boot soles. They’re worn flat and polished, since he hasn’t gotten around to changing them. It can only mean he’s tired of planting trees.

  We pass through a strange smell, a musky blend of wet dog and old garbage. We slow down. K.T. rounds the hillside. He freezes into a full-body flinch. He holds his hand out to stop me in my tracks.

  Cubs, he says.

  K.T. starts into a crouched, backwards walk. And because he retreats, I do, too, without asking questions. We reverse like two people trying hard not to break into a run. We return to the creek, scanning for signs of motion. K.T. reports what he witnessed. Three cubs, this year’s brood, no bigger than basketball sneakers. They have black-brown fur, so young they wobble more than walk. He admits he didn’t see the mother bear. Without a doubt, she’s close by. A black bear, he guesses, from the look of the cubs.

  We wait for another few minutes for the mother to show her signs, but no one comes, not even the wandering babies. We decide she must be busy ripping into our packed lunches. We decide to climb down into the cut block, to put the log jumble at the roadside between us and trouble. We pick our way down through the slash and then into the standing timber that borders the stream. The ground is cleaner here, and if need be we’ll have a better chance at running, even though we know we’ll never outpace a bear. They’re old trees, massive trunks moaning and swaying above us in the wind—useless for climbing, since the nearest branches are a hundred feet up.

  Bears can smell rotting meat from miles away. They can sniff a human’s footfalls hours after the trail has been hiked. There’s so much air churning around today, surely the mother bear has picked up our scent. Surely the waft of our lunches attracted her in the first place. We hunker down to wait. K.T. and I stare up at the road for so long I get a crick in my neck. In our idleness we glance around at the clear-cut that surrounds us.

  Wow, says K.T. It’s really creamy down here.

  A conundrum presents itself. We have more trees to plant, more household wage to collect, but we can’t do much with a bear in the way. But that doesn’t stop our daily itch, our possessiveness of the land. There’s opportunity in risk. It’s why fishermen head out into storms for one last turn with the nets. It’s why we’ll overstay our welcome in a bear’s backyard, after it’s warned and huffed and even charged us.

  Do you think she’s gone now? I ask.

  We could check, says K.T.

  In the midst of our discussion, we catch sight of the sow, who has climbed a promontory of slash. A tall brown bear with shoulder humps and an enormous black snout. A grizzly.

  Guess those weren’t black bear cubs, says K.T.

  On regular days, not much of anything happens. But when the plot starts to move, it avalanches. Now my blood zings with adrenaline. A knob of fright pushes up in my throat. The sensation is not entirely unpleasant. In all my time planting trees, I’ve seen only one other grizzly, and it sprinted away as soon I came close. But never a family. I know I’ll be sorry if I don’t get to see the cubs. A part of me, anyhow.

  This bear’s fur is the color of butterscotch. She breathes steam and shakes like a dog from head to rump. The droplets fly in a silvery corona. If it weren’t for the roar of the creek I’m sure we’d hear her sniffing. With her puffy face and low, pinched brow it seems as if she’s wearing a facial expression I can only describe as weary vigilance, the look of single motherhood in the animal kingdom.

  She definitely knows we’re here, says K.T.

  Bear alert, I say into my radio.

  Adam comes on the radio. Can you work around it? he asks.

  It’s a grizzly, I reply. Three little. One very big.

  We’re coming, says Adam.

  Our helicopter pilot drops into the conversation. Tell me what the fog is doing, he wants to know.

  I’m unsure how to answer, because every few seconds it lifts and lowers, like diaphanous stage curtains.

  It’s variable, I say.

  K.T. and I devise a hasty contingency plan. If the helicopter can’t make it in we’ll walk down to the valley along the creek. We’ll hope we don’t run into geographic dead ends, cliffs, or raging river torrents.

  The mother bear climbs down from her perch and disappears. After the radio chatter falls away all we can do is wait for the helicopter to arrive. We listen to the breeze comb what’s left of the trees. Canopy rain spatters down on our cheeks. We feel a little helpless.

  The mother bear reappears at the
edge of the road. This time, she’s closer. Her nose works the air. She’s “looking” for us. The breath falls to the pit of my lungs, and everything around us, all the wet branches and glossy leaves, recede into a grainy middle distance. They look both extra vivid and not quite real, as if we were watching a documentary film.

  I hear the beating of distant helicopter blades and feel a wash of ambivalent relief, because now we have a new problem.

  I hope the pilot sends her running in the right direction, says K.T.

  We are in the trees at nine o’clock, I say into my radio.

  The sound of the helicopter emerges from somewhere deep in the valley, echoing in the trees of the upper forest. The noise grows stronger until it pounds over our heads, whisking the air around. The machine descends through the clouds. I catch sight of the black registration letters on its underbelly. The pilot has removed the cockpit door, as they often do in the fog. He leans out into the open air to get a clearer view and hovers down over the middle of the cut block.

  I see it, the pilot says through the radio.

  After that, I lose the thin dribble of the pilot’s voice. There is simply too much thrashing, metal and echoes and slices of cutup atmosphere. We hear the engine come down a few notes and know it’s time to move. K.T. and I climb up to the road meet it.

  A helicopter, with its turbo-powered strength and guillotine-sharp rotors can be an intimidating hunk of machinery, even for a human. In an attempt to frighten her away, the pilot buzzes the grizzly, lowering to just a few feet above her head. The cubs scuttle. Their mother rears on her hind legs and gives the air beneath the helicopter a swipe with her claws. Then she drops to the ground and heaves herself away.

  Once she’s left the scene the pilot settles the helicopter onto the road. We jog to meet it. On our way we stop to snatch up our bags. They’ve been gashed open, ransacked, and left to fill up with drizzle. We duck into the helicopter and clip into our seatbelts. As we lift, we see this grizzly family in the midst of their escape. The cubs dart between their mother’s legs and hide beneath her torso. They run like this, sheltered by the bulk of her body. She’s a thin bear, we see from the air, her fat stores whittled down from hibernation, pregnancy, and lactation. She climbs up and away between the stumps, fleeing with her brood between the tender stems of a juvenile plantation.

  The helicopter rises to altitude. It peels away from the mountainside in a stomach-tugging nosedive. K.T. and I huddle in the back seat. With the open door, we’re blasted by the wind, wet, and cold. The pilot makes chatter through the headphones, and I answer his questions in a post-adrenal daze. We pass through veils of rain. When we emerge on the other side I see nappy treetops. The clear-cuts like jigsaw puzzle pieces, the little green lakes in the distance. All of it so repetitiously tiny, so inconsequential from above.

  In a few minutes, we set down on a road I’ve never visited before, a valley bottom with greened stump fields rising on either side. We alight with our tattered luggage, and then the helicopter swoops away to attend to other members of our crew. The air is warmer here. We catch sight of one of our trucks parked in the distance. We see the same old accoutrements of the job, stacked tree boxes, our crewmates working, oblivious to the events of our day. We kick around in the gravel, waiting for Adam to arrive. I feel odd, not quite inside myself, my brain not yet caught up with the sudden safety of this new locale. I’m really hungry.

  We dig through our packs to assess the losses. The outer layers of scrim-reinforced vinyl have been shredded into strips. Each ribbon measures the width between the mother bear’s claws. The contents are rain soaked. From all our belongings, we salvage two dry shirts. Our lunches have been devoured, the containers cracked and crushed, the teeth marks still visible in the plastic. At the bottom of his bag K.T. finds one intact sandwich. He opens the box, and the air between us fills with the yeasty whiff of fresh bread. He ponders the sandwich momentarily and then tears it in half. He sizes up each of the pieces in his hands and takes the smaller one for himself. We push bread into our mouths. We stand like this on an open road, a hundred miles from our home in Vancouver, looking into each other’s face. We chew without talking.

  Last year we read a story in the news about a bear attack on two hikers. They were a married couple. The bear lunged first for the wife, knocking her to the ground with a single blow of its paw. It chomped down on her shoulder and dragged her into the bush. The husband ran away. To find help, he claimed afterward. But we knew the truth of it. He ran in blind terror to save himself. It wasn’t his fault. Life and death and wild animals. You never know what kind of person you’ll be.

  Would you have run? I asked.

  Never, said K.T.

  When else might we ask such strange and illuminating questions were it not for planting trees?

  It’s just cheese and lettuce, says K.T. now.

  It always is, I reply.

  The sandwich. So bland and loathed every other day of the week. But today, because it’s all we have, it tastes like the best thing I have ever eaten. It tastes like the perfect food, comforting and substantial. It reminds me why the loaf is the most ceremonial of human staples, made to be broken and shared.

  K.T. and I watch three of our crewmates toil away in the distance. They work abreast, tumbling over a rise, cascading down toward the road. They’re running out of land, shouting at each other while they battle it out for the narrowing remains. A diesel truck rumbles toward us. It’s the battered red truck, whose coils we’ve got to heat three times before it will start in the mornings. Soon we’ll be back out in the field.

  The sun beams humidly behind a gruel of clouds. Blood beats in our ears. Our salivary glands gush. We hear our breath whistle through our inner passageways. My heart still gallops in my chest, pulsing blood up through my neck. I seldom pay attention to this tireless organ. But still, it will thump away without pause or fail—if I am lucky—for the better part of a century. Life rushes up in its mortal constituent parts. A he. A she. A sandwich torn in two.

  {

  8 }

  EXTREMOPHILES

  IN JUNE THE vegetation is drunk on long days of warmth and sunshine. Herbs grow leggy and insistent; fireweed and horsetails push up past our waists and sometimes even our heads. What a northern summer lacks in length, the plants make up for in gusto, turning out their green finery all at once. The alders and cottonwoods have popped their leaves like millions of tiny solar sails. The conifers bolt out bright new growth. All is rustling. The very air feels crowded. Soon it will be solstice, the day eighteen hours long. The globe will tip on its hinges, and then we’ll begin the slow tilt back to winter’s somber lull.

  Spring eases into summer, but it’s not all glory. June is also a showery month. The sort of jaunty drizzles Pierre likes to call English rain. With this combination of heat and water, the bugs emerge, not in a rising wave but in a sudden blitzkrieg. No one aboard the Daughters is prepared except Brian. He totes a bottle of full-proof DEET like a sheik with the world’s last barrel of oil.

  We steam north up the coast, tracing the mainland until we’ve reached the latitude of Port McNeill once again, nearly looped back to where we started. One last tour remains, at the site of an old logging camp deep in Seymour Inlet, yet another of those aquatic inroads into the mainland. This one, we know from experience, is even less traveled than Jervis.

  We arrive at Woods Lagoon, where everything has changed and yet remains exactly the same. Beyond the rise of the shore lies a bald, sandy patch the size of a hockey rink where the camp used to sit. All that’s left are a few behemoth hemlock logs bordering the creek. They serve the same function as concrete medians in parking garages—to stop people from reversing, in this case down into the stream. A few pickup trucks linger here, left behind for contractors with ends to tie up at distant fringes of the claim. The camp has been dismantled, piece by piece, and shipped away. Roland says it’s because of mold problems in the camp’s walls, and perhaps that’s even true. But as f
ar as we can tell, most logging operations pull out in the end for the same reason people push away from tables once they’ve had their way with the food.

  The Lasqueti Daughters moors at a partially submerged dock. To disembark, first we must step down onto a loose scrap of waterlogged plywood that gives us just a couple of dry footsteps before it sinks underwater. Up the hill we see the cavernous hangar where mechanics used to perform surgery on motors and drive shafts. Rusty pulley blocks and wire rope spools lie around, nibbled at by encroaching grass. At the highest point we find an old hunk of unidentifiable machinery with a masonry brick positioned on top. If we brave the camp bear, who still patrols these parts, if we climb up the hill and then atop this old contraption, and if we stand still on the brick facing the right direction, our cell phones bleep to life with a single wobbly bar of reception.

  Now that the camp has been abandoned the only other vessel in the water is a barge, harnessed to the shore with lines of the heft and seriousness used to tether tankers to docks. A Rubik’s Cube of Atco trailers stacked upon trailers, interconnected with steel catwalks. Flights of steps, reminiscent of cheese graters, that ring out when you climb them. Long banks of fluorescent lights. Black rubber runners in the hallways hide perforations in the linoleum where working men have walked illicitly in their caulk boots. Oily tunnels down to the generator, which bangs away into the clear, tangy air. This echoing vessel is occupied in a lonely way by the barge owners plus a half-dozen forestry engineers who are here for just one last phase, to pull out modular bridges and culverts.

  And even they will be gone next week. We’ll have our way with this place, and then, officially anyway, all of this will be returned to the wild.