temporary Sobriety 1

I’m a night person, despite always working morning jobs. I like grocery shopping at that weird hour of night when the supermarket is all empty and fluorescent and humming quietly, the electric throb of its refrigeration units faintly audible. In Toronto I’d make my way up Bloor to Christie for three a.m bugolgi. In Guelph I’d go out and roam the streets and by the river, up Grange Hill to a small parkette. There a bench who’s view is the entirety of the Ward and Downtown, the sparse and occasional lit windows of nonsleepers like myself, the hard factory glow, freight trains miles long that come through late and ghostly. Jude and I would sit up there and watch over the city. On our way home other cooks would be smoking in the dark, early hours outside their bakeries and cafés in aprons dusted with galaxies of flour, and we’d exchange dour nods- tomorrow, it would be me, biking to my kitchen in the dark, starting coffee and lighting pilots, accepting produce orders and proofing bread.

I’m a little over two weeks into not drinking, which may, factually, be the longest I have gone without a drink since I was fifteen years old. I don’t think this is permanent, but its been necessary to take a step back. My relationship with alcohol has been complex, at best. At its worst it’s been an actively negative aspect of my life, contributing largely to my erratic behavior and emotional ineptitude. On a rare, sunny day here on Vancouver Island I found myself spending the entirety of it lying miserably shaking in my bed and spitting bile into an overflowing garbage can while Jude looked at me reproachfully. I love gin and tonics. I love them so much that I’ll drink them until I’m low on tonic, then I’ll pour a cup mostly full of gin and drink that. In the bush one year in Manitouwadge on a surprise day off, I mixed Jello powder and water and gin to make an unholy concoction that I drank out of an empty yogurt container, and I can actually still vividly remember every single embarrassing thing I did that night, ranging from maudlin to outrageous to cruel. Recently, I became convinced a hookup was my soulmate after he told me, utterly without shame, that he would often mix gin and powdered juice and call it “punch”.

 We were both cooks, which has its own decided culture around alcohol and drugs but bonding over mutual alcoholism has yet to be the basis of a successful relationship for me. On our first outing I drank an entire bottle of gin and thought it would be a slick and appealing move to piss over the edge of my balcony, and we continued to hook up for the next four years.

The first time I got well and truly drunk was when I was sixteen, not counting a prior incident involving margarita mix, vodka, a canoe and the Speed River. No, well and truly drunk at sixteen was two 40’s of Olde English down by the river with the beautiful punks in animal print and chains and leather on an early spring night by the ruins of the old mill. Head spinning, double vision, gut rotting drunk. I rounded up the herd to go to the burrito place I worked at downtown and had to lay down on a bench on Macdonell until my head stopped spinning. This was pre-heroin, which I missed just by a hair by abruptly departing for England and horseback riding.

England’s national pastime may be the consumption of vast amounts of alcohol, and horse people internationally are known drinkers, so naturally the combination is quite inclined toward weekday visits to the pub, reckless behavior and public intoxication. I declined the first several invitations to the pub after work, still wearing sweaty, shitty breeches and halfchaps, shavings in my hair and Ariats unlaced, thinking it would be inappropriate to drink with my boss and coworkers, until one day Liz said “Come to the pub or else you’re fired.” In my memory we ended up at The Chequers that night, the night of the infamous rosé wine and Youngs Double Chocolate Stout that culminated in my projectile vomiting spaghetti Bolognese across Liz’s living room, but I know that’s not true. In fact it was an uneventful, idyllic afternoon at The Amato, a true English pub with old hunting and racing prints on the wall and a Sunday roast, for pints of Magners over ice in the garden. The spaghetti bolognese incident went over surprisingly well. Apparently I had enough time to utter “Excuse me,” before spewing half chewed spaghetti and acid rosé in an Exorcist inspired arc across the room, and Liz later said to me “You Canadians even vomit politely.”

England, see also;

That time I went to the Black Horse alone and drank eight pints and played the piano until I got kicked out.

That time I went to the Queens Head and drank and played pool topless and left my coat and purse there and had to retrieve them the next morning. Not the last time I had to retrieve an item of clothing from the bar after drinking too much and ending up there topless the night before (see Hearst Topless Dance Party 2017).

That time Theresa snuck me into Chicago’s and I got blackout drunk and made out with a bareknuckle boxing champion on the dance floor.

That time Breila came to London and we drank whisky at a punk bar on Denmark Street then sloppily navigated the tube, whereupon I delivered here to Paddington Station, made my way to Wellington, pissed on the Hayward Gallery because I didn’t have 5p to use the bathroom, narrowly caught the last train back to Epsom and was so evidently poorly to everyone around me that first, a nice woman gave me a lift all the way to Langley Vale, which put me within striking range of home even in my sorry state. A sympathetic cabbie came upon me, staggering to starboard up the bridle path toward the M25 and delivered me safely back to the stables.

England also saw all five of us stable hands nursing a fierce hangover the day after Halloween (and yet another quiz night at The Chequers) right before a jump clinic with a renowned horseman and teacher, John Smart. I can vividly remember James looking me squarely in the face and saying, “I think I’m still drunk,” before putting his toe in the stirrup and swinging up on Dickie’s back, shooting me one final look of despair over his shoulder as the big gelding’s bouncy stride jostled the brewing and bubbling contents of his gut. I knew how he felt, poor fellow. When my turn came and I got on Frankie, the blue eyed wonder pony, I felt I did remarkably well jumping technical lines and combos of 2’6 fences. Every time Frankie landed on the far side of a fence the impact sent burning acid up my esophagus and into my mouth.

Snapshot: four or five of us in the trunk of Liz’s Audi and stuffed like sardines into the backseat, spilling out the windows, toes dangling inches above the pavement as we whizzed up Chalk Lane after a race night, still passing around the last bottle of prosecco.

At least in England it was socially and culturally acceptable to binge drink, and never once did I feel shame or anxiety about the night prior. In fact, I’d call down to the Amato on a Sunday to make a reservation for all of us to take our tea and go out for Sunday Roast and a pint or two once the morning chores were done.

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Of course England and the punks at 99 Elizabeth sucking spilled booze off of the filthy kitchen floor have not been the only exposure to cavalier attitudes around drinking in my life. One time my grandfather, blind drunk, tried to shoot out the tires of a car that my grandmother was driving. She’d taken the keys away from him, ostensibly for being so drunk, and was leaving, which enraged him. Despite being a raccoon trapper and a hunter, he was so entirely drunk that he missed the tires and shot her in the shoulder and narrowly missed my infant cousin who was in the car. This was long before I was born but is something I latch on to when I’m thinking about why my family is so fucking crazy.

Or a Christmas where my uncle ended up drunk and naked in a jacuzzi tub- if I recall correctly, he was trying to wash the vomit off of himself- when my equally inebriated grandfather decided to join him, also in the nude.

Or another Christmas (why it it always Christmas?) when I was still able to consume Jägermeister, previous to an incident involving $2 Jager Bombs in downtown Guelph and a mistily remembered attempt to climb a 10 foot high chain link fence while wearing platform boots- in which Brittany and I consumed an alarming amount of Jager and Pepsis at the kitchen table of the old farm house, engendering a new feeling of bonhomie between us. I did not enjoy spending Christmas morning throwing up into the garbage can in the bathroom next to the living room, listening to everyone opening their presents and enjoying themselves.

My mom, walking home from downtown Guelph one night, stopped to inspect some graffiti on the footbridge. “Me…. Me tall… me not tall!” she exclaimed, before peering closer at the sloppy scrawl. “Ooooooh. Metallica!”

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There was a lot of raving, at one point, when the rapidfire consumption of alcohol was largely obliterated by the equally rapidfire consumption of chemical stimulants. It was possible to quaff vast amounts of warm beer out of plastic cups in a room so hot and full of dancing, fucked up people that our sweat rained back down onto us, and never, ever get drunk. 

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Treeplanting- what else can I say?

Dane and I are on the dance floor at La Companion. Everyone is on the dance floor, to be fair, but he and I are sharing a moment. He is dancing, leaning back, arms flailing, eyes closed, slopping his pitcher of Purple Helmet all over the floor. I have been roaming bright eyed around the throng with a pitcher myself, a handful of straws, proffering it to all those who I come across. I think this is our first night off in town and I want to set the tone for the new planters. Anyone who is receptive gets a smooch, as well. “FIVE!” Dane shouts at me, holding up one hand with the fingers splayed out. “I have had FIVE PITCHERS OF PURPLE HELMET.” So I have I. “I spent a hundred dollars on Purple Helmet last night,” I say over poutine at John’s. My hands are shaking and I’m trying to put in a Sysco Order.

Bass, manuevering the dry bus across the camp at Fushimi, lights on, engine running, illuminating a long row of folding tables. “BOAT RACES,” she shouts. This is a drinking game requiring absolutely no finesse and instead, being entirely about the most rapid consumption of alcohol possible.

Tony, looming out of the darkness near Jay Dee lake, leading Laren and I through the blackness until yet another game of boat races appears out of the black and we are roped into it. Later, I catch a passing glimpse of Nikole doing the longest keg stand I have ever seen, illuminated by the firelight.

“INTERNATIONAL WATERS!” when we veer onto the logging roads, beers being cracked, but eventually even the rule of ‘Only on the logging roads’ goes out the window and becomes “Just hold it under the windows” on the highway. Keg stands on top of the bus at Johnstone Beach.

Squirt guns full of rye. Slap the sack, the old goon sack. Every imagineable kind of bad behaviour endorsed. The constant shotguns. In COVID times,a  town runner who brings back whatever you list on an order form- nobody blinks when I order Negroni ingredients, and Coulson brings me back fancy IPAS he thinks I’d like without me asking. “I thought you’d be getting low,” he says. God bless you, sir.

Beer Olympics.
Flip Cup.



Professional cooking has not only normalized but glorified wildly inappropriate mass consumption of alcohol and drugs- it is not uncommon to bail a dishwasher or a line cook out of the drunk tank to get them in to work. There is a certain nod to those who can stay up all night pounding back pints, tequila and cocaine (sometimes all within the restaurant) and then come in and hold down their station for two full back to back seatings.

My boss’ husband who flipped eggs at a short lived detour into the land of greasy spoon diners, who wordlessly slid a tall, plastic Pepsi cup full of beer toward me over the line, saying, “Iced tea”. 700 cover breakfast and brunch services between seven a.m and noon, with a crew consisting of the owner’s son, who thinks he is a chef, a girl who goes into the bathroom to shoot up heroin ‘for her restless leg’ periodically throughout the day and sits sulkily on a milk crate the rest, the boss’ sexual predator husband, and one fantastically competent, sarcastic, saucy and damn fine line cook helping me hold it all together- THAT will make you want a drink at ten o’clock in the morning, and being drunk by three o’clock and done work and sitting at a pub bitching about every single detail of service is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

There’s a night at the bistro on Kingston Road I can only recall as a warm, glowing orange and perfect blur of joy. I had been back for a while, and we sat talking about cocktails and food, and drinking cocktails, and beers and Bob was free with it all. I loved being drunk like that- joyfully, in the company of good friends, feeling exactly in the center of the right place and the right time.

Sandcherries and Baby Duck

I find myself just not loving the treeplant season in the same way I used to, feeling at the end of the season more like a burnt out, bitter, resentful, bitch than a badass bush babe. I saw the writing on the wall the first season I camp cooked, I think, but at least then I got days off to spend with my friends eating poutine at John’s or going to the beach at Johnson Lake, swimming in beaver ponds on Waxatike and still reaping the social benefits of a season in camp. The past three seasons have been almost entirely devoid of the camaraderie that made it worthwhile for me. I haven’t left with the same sense of fullness and well being and goodness, of knowing my friends are all around and never too far, of capability and excitement. It isn’t to say that they’ve been bad seasons (except the one with Outland. That one was absolute trash) but they have, more or less, just been a job. An extremely draining job that has been damaging to both my physical and mental health and that really, I’ve only been doing for the pay cheque. The company I have worked for for the past two seasons has been really fantastic, but the love is just gone.

The lack of blogging certainly reflects that burn out- it’s been a long time since I’ve posted a dispatch from my mobile phone, sitting in the grass outside the laundromat on a day off, or inside the Pontiac Pocket Party (RIP, Bebe my love). The people are always what have made it worthwhile- traipsing around town in the day after fug with your buds, everyone bathing naked in the river, the accordion ringing out in the blackness of a night on a railbridge above a nameless, inky river. Vodka on top of the kitchen bus and Joni Mitchell and oh, those wonderful overcrowded hotel rooms, brimming with love and drama and friendship and dirt, bottles of OE and Baby Duck, doors open, jumping on the beds, sawdust, bribing the receptionist to let us come back, three a.m calls to Brad to plead, on behalf of us, his unruly bunch of employees, to allow us to remain at the one, solitary hotel in town that will still allow us.

I got one or two of those nights in over the past three seasons. Running naked down the highway north of Manning, Alberta, with a horde of planters, laughing and me, horridly out of shape, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. A moment or two. Dancing in the back of a 5 ton truck, on the gravel road outside after a huge, Manning rainstorm, setting up camp in the torrential downpour. They’re there, but they’re fewer and further between and they don’t nourish me in the same way. It’s quite calm and I live for the chaos. The chaos cancels out the endless three a.m alarms and the constant tug of being needed, needing to stay responsible, providing, nourishing, mothering, caring. It was the chaos I was after all along.

I turn to Neeko one night in Hearst, somewhere out by a gravel pit on Thunder Road. We’re racing a keg to a fire that has only been a rumor until we sit it aglow, far away on the horizon. We link arms and stroll, limp leggedly, through the night, skirting the steep edge of the gravel pit with casual aplomb. “We’ve been here before,” I say. “I have seen this before.” That deja vu sense of belonging and rightness.

What to do, now? For so many summers it’s all been set. No matter how many times we say we aren’t coming back, it’s become a cliche- almost everyone does keep coming back, again and again and again. One year off, then back, missing it already. Veering so close to committing to not coming back until December, January roll around, then remembering only those very, very good nights, not the black flies and the rain and the mud and the exhaustion.

Opportunity knocks, I guess. I’ve bandied with the idea of doing some sort of catering or bakery on Manitoulin for a few years. Being self employed is very appealing, and I miss home. It’s been a long time since I walked the boardwalk at Prov in the summer or went swimming off the sharp drop off of honeycomb rocks at Meldrum Bay. Sandcherries are always gone, by the time I get home, garden season is over, the days are getting short and cool. I could see parking the bus on the lot in Tekhummah for the summer while I did event and wedding catering, spending evenings in my absolute favorite place in the world, roaming the dunes at Carter Bay and finding every cool spruce shaded pool of tadpoles, mapping the way the river has changed its course through the dunes week by week. Still having winters free for travel, and personal, lazy downtime.

And always, always, always missing the towns that lie along the tracks, piled high with pulp trees and smelling in their own peculiar, sawdusty and sulphury way of home.

Lucky number seven

On the verge of heading out for lucky number seven, seasons in the bush. What the hell? How did this happen? How does this keep happening? Upon arriving for my second season in Hearst, I felt like maybe I had misremembered how fucking crazy and ridiculous and wonderful and simultaneously awful and ludicrous the entire thing had been the year before. Ensuing seasons at Blunderhouse and the cherry orchard have matched and surpassed, but to be completely honest I’m a little happy I don’t have to keep up with this nonsense anymore. Coming up on thirty, my kidneys protest when I foist too many glasses of whisky upon them, and the devastating gutrot and anxiety I experience after a night of partying is enough to put me off.

Our cooks, leaning out of the cook bus, crazy eyed, with an Olde English bottle filled with brackish swamp water and the biggest god damn leech I’ve ever seen in my life. “EES NAME IS LEONARD,” G crowed at me. S, wearing nothing but an apron that read “Kiss the Cook” chimed in “LEECHFEST 2016!” They disappeared into the mist on Jay Dee lake with a goonsack and an inflatable boat. Was that the day the acid arrived? It’s hard to remember. The staff trailer, where our camp manager distributed mail from the table with a copious pile of cocaine that occupied it’s center. It was a Treeplant Tuesday night, we know this from the pieces that have been put together over the years following. Remember the old Thunderhouse 5 and 1’s. Or 6 and 1’s. Or 14 and 1’s. Anyway, it was the middle of the shift, and the massive mail order of hallucinogens and party drugs that the cooks had put in had arrived.

I’d like to clarify at this point that this was my first season, and before I was responsible for feeding people. I was not a cook. This was not my doing. Ok, let’s proceed.

Dread Sex Santa, a twinkle in his eye, probably knowing better, says that the staff have to test the drugs before distributing them to the kids (being us, the little baby rookie Northern Ontario planters.) “I think one picture of a clown is a tab,” he says. The perforations would indicate that one picture of a clown is in fact four tabs, but I digress. The entire staff take four tabs of acid each on a Treeplant Tuesday night.

The next morning the cooks stagger into the mess tent with the weight of a steaming stock pot balanced between them. It is filled to the brim with freshly hard boiled eggs. Shell still on. The haggard looking cooks wipe the sweat from their brows and exit the mess tent. We all look each other in the eyes and shrug, and dive into the pot. The eggs keep us warm on the cold drive to the block.

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Nipple 69.
Naked sexy carwash.
Butter butt buddies.
Naked seat races.
Clothing swaps.

The realm of truth or dare. Our first camp out in the boonies on Waxatike Road in Opasatika, over an hour off the highway, then another hour down the highway to Hearst. What to do, to occupy those hours of driving to and from town. At first, the pretense of keeping bottles of alcohol confined to logging roads is maintained. “International waters!” the bus driver, a slender, beardy dude in polarized sunglasses announces when we pull off the highway to Chemin McCowan. “Fuck yeah DD we need a piss break,” and then we’re on the dusty shoulder of a road pissing in a ditch. Back on the bus warm bottles of PBR are cracked open and the returning planters are inducting us into a culture of craziness I didn’t even know was possible. Safety third. Hurry up and wait. I fucking love it.

Truth or dare escalates over the course of the season. Toward the end we are purposefully shopping at L’Independent for props. S returns with a pound of butter. Everyone on the bus is on acid- it must be Canada Day, a true town day off. We sat outside the HoJo scavving their Wifi and somebody is bored at 11am and this thing is gaining momentum and a life of it’s own. A murmur. A cracked beer. A rustle of tinfoil. Giggles. I can hear every ice cube in my cup- we go to a garage sale. EGD wants to buy a scooter. “That’s like… 20,000 trees,” he laughs. “Oh shit,” I say. At McDonald’s my Big Mac disintegrates in my hands. People are staring at us. We depart, languidly, strollin’ back to where we know our people our. Where is our tribe?

Here’s the thing about a day out in Hearst, or a night. It’s small and your people are everywhere. You melt organically into the town without making plans. A group splinters off one way, one the other way. Everyone is either at La Companion or in the vicinity of the HoJo. If they’ve splintered off elsewhere, you'll find them if you’re meant to, when they emerge from the abandoned lot along the railway track and pull you down into the swamp water and the mud with them, or you hear their laughter ringing out from an upper story window on the main street. “What the fuck, is that F?” and you’re knocking on a door and shouting at a silhouette in a window.

Anyway. Butter Butt Buddies- when, in truth or dare, one person is dared to hold a stick of butter between their ass cheeks until it melts into the mouth of a recipient, this locking them into eternal brotherhood of the butt butter.

In another truth or dare, on a camp move from Waxatike to… Thunder Road? Fushimi? Who the fuck knows. F, sassy, french, truly delightful, drawls, “Beeeeex,” and then cackles maniacally. “I dare youuuuu to piss out the bus window.”

Don’t ask me how I did it. Bus rolling down the bumpy logging road, I squeeze my asscheeks out the cracked window and let fly. “I can confirm that happened, I saw the pee!” New planters arrive to help us finish a contract. “Hey, aren’t you the girl who pissed out the bus window?” This infamy is later eclipsed by a planter who pisses in a hard hat and flings it down the aisle of the bus, splattering several unwilling participants with urine in an act of exit revenge before being fired (again, for real this time.)

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Jean Guy, the sexagenarian DJ of La Companion won’t come out to play any more music for us, so we stand arm in arm on the dancefloor chanting “Jean GUY Jean GUY Jean GUY” until we give in and sing every single word of Journey’s “Midnight Train” still linked arm in arm and swaying, before disembarking for the HoJo. Every hotel room door is open, every room a separate and revolving party. In the first season nobody at the hotel calls the cops or Brad, our boss. I remember, second season, J standing swaying, upright by a Herculean feat of willpower, sliding twenty after twenty into the receptionist’s hand, slurring “How much is it gonna take to make this go away?” until she left. We took up a collection for him the next day to pay for his out of pocket expenses and selfless heroism.

Across the road at the Queen’s, the nice hotel with the hot tub and the sauna and the pool and the laundry room, where strictly speaking, planters aren’t allowed to stay, the staff are busy ensuring that rule will be enforced going forward. Q rips a bible in half and misses somebody’s face when he tries to have them slap the sack and instead douses the cream carpet with L’Ambiance brand bagged red wine. “Blood of christ,” he slurs, now pouring it onto the carpet intentionally.

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At the very end of the season, after the wrap party in camp, when Brad came and barbecued burgers and hotdogs and whispered almost tearfully, “I am so proud of how hard you guys party,” we spend another night in town. We’re not ready to let go. La Companion is a neon lit sports bar dream. Just one more pitcher of Purple Helmet. Who knows when we’ll all be here together again. Just one more just one more just one more. E produces some molly from who knows where. My cousin who is supposed to be driving me home leans over to me and Neeko and says “I put molly in the beer,” and we look at our half emptied pitcher of Coors and just laugh. Oh fucking well. Good. Great. We aren’t ready to be done.

We’re dancing everywhere we’re walking, now, getting back in line to get another pint. My camp crush is there, waiting patiently, looking the other way. “YOU don’t drink!” I say, almost accusatorily, butting in line in front of him. “You won’t mind.” He doesn’t. He smiles at me, strikes up a conversation, and orders a very rare for him beer. Sweaty, dancing, the bathroom fug of cigarette smoke which the biker babe bartenders ignore, because we tip very, very, very well. Sitting on the sink counter with a split, bloody lip- moshpit? How? When? This is love. Everything inside is a reeling beat of music and noise and chatter and I want a god damn cigarette. Outside.

He’s out there and he slides me a smoke, lights it for me and we chat. I do the impression of him I’ve been working on all season. To the best of my ability, I make my face super super chill, really relax, put on a genuine grin, and drawl, “Yeahhhh man,” enthusiastically. He absolutely loses it. “YOU did an impression of ME?” and then the patio is a crush of people and he’s pulling a chair up to the railing and helping me climb over it and we’re off walking into the night, smoking. We’re absorbed into a group of the staff on their way to the room at La Companion’s attached motel. Keg stands and cocaine ensues. There’s a rumour of a last night bus party in the parking lot behind the Esso, and we wrap ourselves in blankets from the room and depart. The night has gotten somewhat chilly.

“Look,” T. says, with his infallible logic. “We pay to rent everything in the room, right? So as long as everything is here at check out time, we’re good.” So, with a keycard for my room at the Queen’s in my fannypack and wrapped in a blanket from La Companion I depart. Three am shopping at the Esso- we find ourselves there, but decide to leave our paisley room blanket capes outside. Halfway in the door, we realize we are holding beer bottles filled with tequila. “Oh, this simply won’t do!” I admonish myself. We leave them on top of the ice cooler.

Within we shop for gum, cigarettes and Farmer’s Almanac. Curly haired blond C. is within, holding a universal remote in her hands and staring at it in absolute awe. “You guys,” she says with reverence. “This remote… does… everything.” Gently, we round her up and go to pay for our goods. Oh, scratch cards, too. Lady luck be with me tonight. Outside we collect our shrouds and find the bus, curiously empty of planters and people, so we lie down in the muddy ditch with the hotel room blanket and watch the yellow cranes loading pulp trees onto the slat sided train cars in an endless procession, slow, deliberate, reliable, oddly luminous and lovely.

”So uh, nothing can happen,” he tells me. “But do you want to come back to my hotel room?” I know he has a girlfriend. I respect that. But we fall asleep watching infomercials, and a scratch card glues itself to my sweaty bicep beneath where he’s wrapped around my body, sleeping. In the morning (later in the same morning, much later) I reluctantly disentangle myself and glance at my flushed, fucked up face in the mirror. I tuck the scratch card under the bedside lamp with a quarter and depart. My own friends are at the third hotel in town- many of us are creeping through the incriminating morning light back toward the door at the same time. We’ve missed rides, disregarded schedules and itineraries. But we’re still together and nothing else matters. My bottle of Baby Duck is still sitting on the windowsill from where I left it before departing for the bar a million years ago. I pick it up and drink. C’est la vie.

Much disjointed ramblings about restaurants

These past eight months have been the longest time I have spent without working in a kitchen since I was seventeen or eighteen. When I was sixteen, my first kitchen job was at Gringo’s Burritos in downtown Guelph, working until four a.m on school nights to pay my rent and save up for a plane ticket to the UK to go and work grooming and riding, instead. Macdonell Grill, juggled with my full days at the horse farm. Horse farms and kitchens. Nights at Royal Electric interspersed with days at Tallery, no time to shower in between mucking stalls at changing into whites. Two years in a windowless corner of The Beech Tree, drawn, anxious, and mostly very happy, when Bob was still running the place like a party and we had unfettered access to the taps and all often stayed until three or four in the morning drinking, talking about food and cocktails and borrowing books and still really, totally in love with the industry. Two years a blur of Lucky Peach and pints and gin and services of a magnitude of intensity I actually am not sure if I remember them correctly. Kitchens, and restaurants, have anchored my life for a number of years, now. I feel completely out of synch without them, without the predictable order of the brigade system and order days and pre-service rituals, early morning prep days like meditation.

The Beech Tree was my first real cooking job, sometime around when I started cooking at Saturday Dinette, as well, turning away from serving. Journalism school dropout, finding the commute to Humber North almost impossible, balancing working a full-time job at yet another Burrito joint to pay bills, unable to afford internet at home and generally uninterested, I needed to establish a new career path and kitchens just sort of happened. A new restaurant opened in the neighborhood my ex and I lived in, something other than Irish pubs serving up fried foods and Gabby’s chicken wings. We sat at a warmly lit wooden bar with a rail of curated, high end liquors on the rail, were served warm olives and walnuts with house made flatbread. We drank one expertly made cocktail after another. The bartender slid a dish of the brandied cherries across the bar to us, snacks of candied nuts. In a sleepy area of Kingston Road, we were the only people in this restaurant. The chef would occasionally peek around the swinging kitchen door, peer around the empty dining room and heave a disgusted sigh before retreating into the back. At that point, it was Bob, Chef and the bartender, no servers, no cooks. Just the three of them waiting for customers to come in.

Bob loaned me a copy of Gabrielle Hamilton’s book, Blood, Bones and Butter, and I was hooked. “I could do that,” I thought, reading about the endless grunt work of the young cook, vegetable peeling and oyster shucking and frying and grilling and dishwashing and late nights and booze. The next time I was in to return the book and borrow another (I believe it was Nigel Slater’s “Toast”, and a few editions of Lucky Peach) I casually said to Bob “Maybe I’ll go to culinary school.” By this time we were no longer the only people in the restaurant when we went in. It wasn’t crazy, but we now sat at the bar because we had to, all the tables occupied. “I need to hire a cook,” he said to me. “Come in tomorrow at 3pm.” I had no fucking clue what I was doing, but I adjusted my schedule at my three other jobs, all in restaurants, and went in at 3pm with a few crappy Target knives wrapped in a dish towel.

My first service in a kitchen other than a fast food joint was a real kick in the ass. It took me a long time to get up to snuff and be able to cope, to time everything just right so I was pulling up baskets of perfect golden, crisp tempura winter veg at the same time as Chef was slicing a chicken supreme, to earn the knife skills to filet fish and trim short ribs, to learn how to knock out a forty item prep list before service, to read body language carefully and quickly and respond to it. Often I’d wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night whispering “Escarole!”, remembering the mystery item I had forgotten to add to my prep list.

This past year is also the first time I haven’t spent every holiday working behind a bar or in a kitchen. A hectic, sold out New Year’s service at Saturday Dinette, hip-hop blaring on the record player, shaking up margaritas and making Old Fashioneds the way Jonnie taught me, squeezing an orange cheek over the glass and catching the juice with a lighter and sending up bright blue sparks with the aromatic citrus juice. Outside the window the Gerrard streetcar rolls by, snow flying, picture perfect. Fridays we used to spend before service learning the essentials of service- a little bit of flair bar tending, how to drop drinks at a table without rubbing our grubby little server fingers around the rim where guests mouths touched, how to efficiently stack plates and cutlery to not drop any and only have to clear one plate of scraps for the beleaguered dishwasher, how to read a table and know which wants the doting, friendly involvement and which one wants you to be an attentive although silent ghost . Good service is an art, and not to be underestimated!

It isn’t just the familiar rhythms and clannishness of kitchens that I find myself missing, it is eating out at restaurants as well. I’ll eat out anywhere, anytime. By myself, on dates, in large raucous groups of friends. Restaurants have something to say about the neighborhoods they inhabit. They reflect and anchor them, change them, embody and uplift them. The Black Hoof was the first cool place on Dundas West, back when I first started coming to Toronto, and that stretch of street was inhabited mostly by winos and addicts roving from Trinity Bellwoods over to Spadina and through Kensington. We used to finish shifts at the Tree and streetcar down to Bar Isabel in our sweaty work clothes to eat grilled octopus and Basque cheesecake, spend our days off bopping around the city into every place that interested us.

When my friends are in Toronto I like to plan where to take everyone. It’s so hard to decide only one or two nights out, to hit everywhere I want to go. I feel like a conductor bringing in all the different strands, braiding them together into one piece, all unique and individual but together composing a wonderful whole. Start off a night at Ronnie’s or Embassy in Kensington, somewhere dim and dirty and intimate, where you know the bartender and they bring you shots of good whisky to bang back on the patio and don’t tell you you can’t smoke. A few beers, a few shots, the glow riding up your cheeks, meandering through alley ways to Detour for some live music, a few more blocks to Sneak’s, the drunk truly rising now. Loud, happy, belonging, right here right now the city is happening around us, the possibilities are endless. It’s early, maybe only eleven, and there’s a line up to get in to Sneak’s for nachos but it’s worth it. Inside in the grubby graffitied booths you see the names of your friends, people you know. There’s a hole in the bathroom drywall from where a friend fell into it one night after the hip-hop show on Wednesday, and on the way out the door you slip a salt shaker into your pocket and the pepper into your bra. Then, 90’s dance party at Clinton’s, followed by karaoke at Bloor and Christie, finally summed up with bugolgi at four thirty in the morning at Owl of Minerva, bleary eyed asking for a pot of ‘cold tea’ and receiving in due course a cast iron tea pot filled with Tsingtao. There’s a great little place in China Town East with three dollar bahn mi, and Starving Artist for hangover waffle eggs benny is never a miss.

When feeling very fancy I like to put on my silky black dress and Oxford kitten heels, burgundy lipstick, and drink cocktails in the bar at the Shangri-La before a meal at DaiLo. I enjoy doing this by myself, watching all the nervous couples out on dates and occasionally being ID’d as an industry person by the burns on my hands and arms, or just by some mutual feeling.

Arriving in Montreal last February, fresh off the bus, my friends and I go out in search of food. The next day while everyone I love is working I walk around on an unusually sunny day and eat at all of my favorite places. Coffee in Hochelaga at Atomic Cafe, where the barista has always been very kind to me and my awful French. When they open in the early afternoon, Dieu du Ciel for (more) charcuterie, and beers. And when everyone is off work and we can be together, we set off in a large group for Saint Houblon, where yet another friend is serving. All together again over food and drink, the night stretches out, promising and inviting. Put your trust into it and it will take you where you want to go- we end up at a rave in a warehouse, and I, eternal acid fairy, produce my gift to my loved ones. Julia, in an act of love, makes us endless pots of strong black coffee the next day while we blob around the house. “I want to do absolutely nothing,” I say. “Me too.” No obligations, we revel in the quiet, no pressure company, until some existential capability regained, I drift away to Darling for more beer and food. I was here yesterday, drinking some very good Nergronis, surrounded by strangers and feeling very much like a part of the city, a part of the world by extension.

There are a lot of things we have all sacrificed and missed out on during this unprecedented time of lockdowns, distancing and mass closures. The restaurant industry has been especially hardly hit. I look most forward to, in better and more normal times, walking into the Cornerstone and sitting at my usual table. It is a wood ledge across the front window, only one seat wide, looking out over Wyndham and Carden Street. I will order a chai latte and the Cornerstone Club, or maybe the antojitos, and I will sit there by myself with my book and my coffee and watch all the people walking by on the street, and wonder where they are going. My phone will buzz in my pocket- a chef friend, needing a shift covered for an out of commission sous, and I’ll review the menu a few times before slipping my clogs and checks on and gathering up my knife roll and going out like a mercenary to work wherever I am needed.

Movin' with a pinch of grace

Althea (name confirmed) is at the garage today getting a few new tires and an oil change, leaving me with an amount of spare time I’m not sure how to fill. Most of the past few months have been devoted to the conversion. Reading, researching, countless trips to and from the hardware store, stressing, jubilation, stress again, to the dump, back to the hardware store… Thanks to my friends at Reroot Farm for not only giving me a place to park for the winter, but also for loaning tools, knowledge and expertise. As the conversion nears completion, with the exception of some small, fiddly details and building a bed frame, I turn my stress over to mechanical aspects.

My family is rife with mechanics, but they are all in Northern Ontario and between COVID restrictions, bad weather and lack of time, I’ve been unable to make it up. My poor uncle Tyler periodically gets his inbox flooded with questions from me about maintaining a diesel engine, what I should be doing to keep a (very old…) bus roadworthy, battery questions, fuel filter questions… When I was pulling Althea out of her spot at Reroot, I had to hook up the batteries that I had unhooked for the winter to maintain them. After a student in a grade 10 science class badly electrocuted themselves during a unit on batteries, I’ve been scared of electricity. I also once unplugged a freezer that was plugged into a power bar that had been soaked in a recent rainstorm and saw stars for a few days, but I digress…. After much anxious struggling and frequent check ins with Google, I got the batteries reconnected and the bus fired up no problem, but for a few fraught hours I was sure I needed new batteries, and with bus maintenance, nothing comes cheap. Alas, I had just missed one of SEVERAL ring terminals in a seemingly endless maze of parallel wiring.

Today, taking her out of my mom’s driveway to go into Cooks Garage for her last service pre-voyage, an unholy plume of white smoke erupted on start up, so now I find myself anxiety scrolling diesel mechanic forums about what white smoke could mean. Fuel filter clogged? Needs new injectors? Coolant leak? Unholy god of gods, a cracked head gasket? Bad fan clutch? Or just as simple as an elderly engine and a cold night causing condensation in the tail pipe? Any old farmer will tell you that all but the newest and most modern diesel engines will have some white smoke on start up. I’m just scared of ignoring an issue that could be simple and small now, but end up being a huge issue down the line. The investment I’ve made into this bus is not insignificant- she’s my house!

(Props, as well, to the wonderful team at Cooks Garage for taking care of my weird bus camper., being kind, patient and above all honest.)

Many years ago after our very first season of tree planting in Hearst, Ontario, myself and another planter bought a 1996 Toyota Corolla for $300 to drive back to southern Ontario with. One of the cooks took us into town to see it, and despite the rust hole in the driver’s side floor board covered with cardboard and the otherwise dubious qualities of the car, we purchased it. “It stops, it starts- what more do you want out of a car?” I asked.

The Corolla did make it back to southern Ontario, albeit guzzling both gas and oil, and then promptly died and was scrapped. But in the after-season survival glow, the defiant bush mantra of “I don’t give a fuck” rang loudly in my head. Zen, zen, zen. Absolutely unflappable, dirty, elated, we toured south, stopping at beaches, waterfalls and sunflower fields and generally enjoying the journey. I find myself looking for that confidence and indefatigability, once possessed as storm water sprayed through the floorboard holes and soaked my bare feet, or as my van stalled out in the middle of Victoria intersections with a bad timing belt (HILARIOUS, I know).

One morning out at Kennedy Lake, time for me to depart back to the Okanagan for apple picking, I spent well over half an hour trying to start the van up. Ol’Wanda. Manhandling the manual choke and cajolingly turning the key in the ignition, pleading, the fan belt squealed and the engine sputtered and she steadfastly refused to start. All of the tricks I had learned over the months prior failed me, and eventually a crowd gathered to watch me, shamefaced, trying to leave. Finally, when I was ready to pack it in, call a scrapyard and just start hitchhiking, she acquiesced, only for the fan belt to completely fall out of the underside during a stop at Little Qualicum falls.

Wanda survived all of her misadventures, as did her occupants, and eventually made it all the way across the country and back to Ontario. Althea has been much better maintained, and I am more capable than ever of diving under the hood and having a look at what’s going on, so I’m not sure what I’m so worried about. As long as I have coolant, a pair of panty hose and a whole lot of Gorilla Tape, everything should be just fine…

My Bus

One night in the Hearst Forest I stumble off the kitchen bus, topless and smeared in chocolate pudding and completely disoriented. We’d just had Stuff in a Bowl for dessert, a bastardized version of a trifle on a Thunderhouse budget, leftover cake bits smashed into chocolate pudding and Cool Whip, and it had merged into a game on the bus, passing around the bottle of Baby Duck and adding clothing items to the pudding bowl. Logan marches up and down the aisle balancing a broom in the bowl, my bra hangs from the exhaust fan covered in pudding and at some point, a giant luna moth flies through the center of the entire scene. Two planters march by duct taped to one another, wearing the other like a backpack and parading around all silver and bugeyed in their rockstar sunglasses. Jake emerges wearing a familiar tie-dye dress (Nikole’s?) The night is a mess of light and color and wonderful, sublime confusion.

Outside, I just point sadly and say “My bus.” I have lost control. It is full of people. I don’t have to cook tomorrow, but the feeling of unprofessionalism is rising within me. I am losing the plot. Tony looks at me, tranquilly. Ol’ Party Dad. “Do you want them off your bus?” he asks, and I nod feebly, fiddling with the contents of my fanny pack. “Oooook! OFFFFF THE BUS!” and he is herding everybody off my bus and now the night can resume. Don’t take off your fannypack. That is the only rule of party night. Within it are all the necessities that can not be misplaced. Jude has been secured in the staff trailer by Nikole, who periodically goes to check on him, feeding peanut butter sandwiches through the window slot to keep him happy and occupied.

—-
The present week has been a pretty wild rollercoaster. I bought a bus. It is a 27 foot retired schoolbus, converted into a camper. It has a full kitchen, a propane fridge, stove, burners, sink, furnace, outdoor hot water shower, queen bed, dinette, fold out bed. There’s a lot I want to do with it aesthetically, and some minor inside upgrades. It needs to be insulated, the furnace needs to be installed by a professional, and unfortunately, there is a reasonable amount of mechanical work that needs to be done for her to pass her safety. I’ve also been running around signing affidavits about ownership and ordering registration records from her previous home, Saskatchewan. Our very first trip together I stopped to fuel up and the gas cap wouldn’t come off, but G, my constant enabler, had her tire iron in the trunk and a few good whacks loosened it up. G also gave me a significant loan for the purchase of said bus, for which I am eternally grateful.

This summer in the Alberta bush, I discussed what I intended to do this fall with a few new friends. Sweet, bad-ass Mariah, the helicopter pilot, asks, and I idly say I think I’d like to buy a bus. Treeplant money comes and goes. I bought a much needed car, paid off my student loan, paid off my credit card, indulged in a pair of very expensive but very nice boots, finished my half sleeve. I read subreddits about investment and retirement and realize I have no gameplan. I can’t even afford rent in my province anymore. Or rather, I don’t want to. I don’t want to spend a thousand dollars a month to share a shoebox with a stranger and not even be able to walk around naked.

As scary as it is, I want to be back in Tofino surfing, making my coffee over a butane camp stove in the morning. I want to sleep beside a grain elevator in Brandon, Manitoba and play The Tragically Hip on my guitar with the freight train hobos, I want to stay on the hippie commune again growing magic mushrooms in exchange for rent. I want to feel my life as a series of diverging and converging concentric circles that overlap with the vast range of friends I have made over the years of plant and fruit picking, the elastic band feeling of stretching out and then hurtling back together, always attached by something tenuous and indescribable. I remember the last year spent in my apartment in Guelph, re-reading old journals and laughing out loud and knowing “This is your real life, this wild one,” and waiting out the dull and lonely city days.

—-
It seems the closer I get to something I want, badly, the more concerned I am about it falling through. Depression is a funny thing. You learn to not want anything too badly, and when it comes to you, you are suspicious. At least I am. This hope, this joy, when will it evaporate, too? Will this thing be enough? Do I place too much stock in it? Am I crazy? What if this isn’t good enough. But the bus draws me in, even driving it the hour back from Erin to Clifford, I remember myself. Hurtling down logging roads at 90km an hour in the kitchen bus, racing after Max, nobody has given me directions. The most beautiful day I have ever seen in my life, a blue, clear northern Ontario day, warm and endless. The forest spreads out around us indefinite and indescribable, the sky bigger and bluer than you could ever dream. I lay on the horn at a pair of adolescent moose that gallop awkwardly off into the swamp and I feel centered in my own life. Here I am, right where I belong. Empty highways of frost buckled pavement, the deep clay logging roads lined with swaying jackpine, the swamp, the lakes, the french named rivers, the sleepy small towns of miners and suspicious gas station attendants. The laundromat in Manitouwadge has been blown up by Brinkman, the rumor spreads. It isn’t entirely true- they just blew up one of their propane tanks, so only a cold wash is available.

—-

Can you drive the bus? Danny asks me, finding me working on menus in the staff trailer at the shop. Everybody else is driving vehicles out to camp, setting up blocks, delivering trees and digging grey water pits. “Uhm, legally, yes, technically. Have I ever? No.” Good, good, he says. Come with me! And just like that I am perched in the captains seat of a giant orange bus, easing her into drive and bouncing along the pitted and cracked highway through Hearst. It isn’t far from the shop to the Esso parking lot, where we are dropping the buses off for the incoming planters. I remember my first season, the stark vehicles along the ditch, the railway behind them lined with pulp trees and the slow, incessant yellow cranes loading the slatted side cars. The smell of cedar and sawdust shavings and diesel fill the air. Al meditates on top of a bus, lays in savasana and “Om”s contentedly.

I back the bus up to the ditch and Danny and I stand outside, smoking a cigarette, when the bus starts rolling timorously toward the ditch. I swear I have engaged the parking brake, in my deep anxiety about performing a new task successfully. I reach out futilely with my hands, grasping at the rubber door lining, and Danny, cigarette clamped between his teeth, boosts me through the door with his hands on my hips, crying, “Go, go, go!” and I jam my foot on the brake just in the nick of time. I sit there while he scrounges sticks of firewood from the parking lot and throws them behind the tires as makeshift chocks. Shakily we finish our cigarettes and repeat the process again and again, shuffling buses around, him following me in his white crew-boss truck while I rattle and jounce around in buses of questionable legality and road worthiness.

It emerges sometime later that Tony, in his first year of crew bossing, had burnt out the parking brake on that particular bus driving it with little to no instruction from the yard to camp, the brake engaged the entire time.

—-

So many nights, seated on top of the bus. We listen to Joni Mitchell and drink vodka. I try to jump off the bus for a piggyback from Keegan and, drunk, tear a ligament in my knee and am locked in the staff trailer for the rest of the night to prevent myself from further injury. One night on Waxatike we are all up there. Our end of year crew photo my first year of planting, all washed out and overexposed, obliterating our nudity.

I am scared that I will never feel this happy again, but I am excited, too.

An open invitation to come on a roadtrip in My Bus- maybe we can sit on top of her in Alaska, drinking a fifth of whiskey and playing guitar and looking at the stars. Or Mexico, or Alberta. It isn’t where we are, so much as who we are with. I miss you, friends. The door will always be open.

Day in the Life

At precisely three thirty a.m every morning my alarm goes off, followed by an alarm every five minutes until four. Just in case. The first week of the season I often don’t get much sleep, writing mental prep lists over and over again, worrying about water lines and pumps freezing, calculating serving sizes and generally being a little bit disoriented by the return to the bush and waking up separated from the frozen ground by a few meager inches of Thermarest and blankets.

Jude and I disembark from my tent together in the morning and go our separate ways, settling into a familiar schedule. The stars at four a.m are still vivid, numerous pinpoints, and a full-moon light is enough to navigate by. The giant diesel generator lurks behind the kitchen bus and the dry storage trailer and I always feel bad turning it on so early and hearing it roar to life, unnaturally mechanical in the sprawling silences of camps that are often many dozens of kilometers into the forest, away from highways and cities and cell service. Animals are still up and about at this time and Jude has had unpleasant early morning skunk encounters

This is the time where I’ll find out if there are any issues, if the water has frozen, or, worse, if the propane lines have frozen. “Hold up, propane doesn’t freeze,” you say, and you’re right, but the regulator valve can get damp and condensation inside and that can freeze, blocking the flow of fuel to the range and water heater. I’ve learned enough to have the second cook fill up every single giant stock pot and leave them on the range over night so that we have water in the morning, worse come to worse, but it takes me a while to figure out the regulator valve issue. A rapid and vigorous flipping of the tank selector from side to side will usually clear any blockage, although that may necessitate lighting all the tricky pilots of the ovens, range, flattop and water heater… again. Sometimes nothing works, and this is how I find myself working furiously over a standard home sized electric griddle to produce enough pancakes to feed a camp of sixty (rightfully) unhappy treeplanters. When the second cook rolls in around five thirty there’s no time to waste on pleasantries, I just point at the six large cans of ‘Tropical Fruit Salad’ that comprises the majority of the fruit we get delivered and direct him to the can opener graveyard with tidings of good luck.

First things first, turn the burners to boil the gigantic stock pots of water for coffee and tea. We feed the planters Mother Parkers on our inadequate camp budget, but I reserve a tin of ‘good’ coffee for the cooks and staff. ‘Good’ in this case being Folgers or something else I’d usually sneer at. Second order of business, turn on our personal 12 cup drip coffee machine, always, always, always set up and ready to go the night before. Small cook efficiencies like this make me happy. I’m not a tyrant but the expectations I do have are non-negotiable.

This season those small efficiencies were expanded to include task delegation like traying cases of bacon, although with just a few home sized refrigerators to work with, the ‘trays’ are sheets of parchment paper, neatly rolled one on top of another with the shingled bacon and then tightly saran wrapped, labelled and tucked into the ‘meat’ corner of the overloaded deep freeze. Anyway, it makes it much easier, with the million and one logistics challenges of lack of space, lack of refrigeration, maintaining temps, order frequency, volume, lack of time, etc, to simply peel off a few of these sheets, throw them on a sheet pan and into the oven and listen to them sizzle, rather than having to pull a box of bacon the day before, wait for it to thaw, not have room in the fridge for trays, be stuck traying it all the morning of, covered in gross, cheap, shit Sysco bacon fat and silently weeping over it all as you wonder if it will even have time to crisp. Efficiency is key.

This season marked the debut of ‘breakfast buffet’, which while initially a prep nightmare proved a time and resource saving bit of genius within just a few days. Pre-planter arrival we worked feverishly to prepare huge hotel pans of vegetarian baked beans, diced and cooked entire bags of potatoes for hashbrowns, prepared vast amounts of onions, caramelized with sherry vinegar, paprika and salt to season them, kept a solitary waffle iron sizzling in the background for the entirety of the day, producing one inexpensive waffle at a time (fuck you and your Belgian waffles that eat up an entire day’s budget, Sysco, I don’t need you anymore!) The idea was to always have several rotating breakfast options so that everyone could have something to their liking, and have enough. Leftovers could be folded into the next day’s offerings and we could always be a day ahead of prep, only having to throw hotel pans into the oven in the morning to warm up and maybe wrangle some scrambled eggs around the tilted flat top, or nail out some fresh pancakes, and never having to do a full rota of breakfast prep on any given day.

One day a week: bagel day (sliced the night before by the second cook and neatly arranged in a few deep hotel pans to throw in the oven to toast in the morning) served with some vast trays of cheese slices, tomato slices, red onion, bacon, cream cheese and fried/scrambled/baked/whatever eggs, along with the other ubiquitous breakfast buffet offerings, which shall go without saying from here on out.

One day a week: grilled cheese, a perennial favorite and a great way to use up the inexplicably detested bologna, left untouched on lunch meat platters by planters everywhere. I like to always keep a reserve of grilled cheese prepped in the freezer, ready to deploy at a moments notice, and a large part of the second cook’s life has been methodically layering cheese, bread and meat, applying a light layer of margarine and persuading hundreds of these premade sandwiches to fit into the deep freeze nicely, ready to hop right into the oven one early morning as needed.

One day a week: pancakes/waffles, with sides of fruit, dubious syrup, margarine and on very special occasion, whipped topping. Margarine and whipped topping must be labelled, so as not to be confused with one another, lest a very disappointed planter take a bite of a waffle laden with hydrogenated soybean oil and feel the last of his soul leave his body, between the rain, the bugs, the Christmas toe, the tendonitis, the five kilometer walk in and now the fucking margarine filling his mouth like bitter disappointment.

Once breakfast is working away in the background, it’s time to open up dry storage. This is when Jude usually reappears from his nocturnal ventures around the perimeter of camp, in search of breakfast and lunch meat scraps. Its time to re-up the mess tent supplies, mentally inventorying the supply of 5kg tubs of peanut butter and strawberry jam, cases of loaves of white and brown sliced sandwich bread, 50 pound cases of apples and oranges, powdered juice crystals Take out spatulas for the peanut butter and jam (more than one for each container so the line up can move along more quickly). Take out the pre-prepped tray of cold breakfast items (a hotel pan of bags of cereal, a Tupperware of quick oats, spoons, brown sugar, white sugar, honey if we’re feeling extra bougie, containers of raisins, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, various tea bags and instant powdered ginger drink) mental inventory the Rice Krispies, Cornflakes and Cheerios and juice crystals. On that note, drag the giant Gatorade water dispensers over to the sink and start filling them and mixing up Peach Iced Tea and Raspberry Lemonade. Hopefully the second cook read the prep list yesterday and mixed up the powdered milk that you started using this season- its been a lifesaver both for the budget and for the fridge space it saves, and nobody seems to notice the difference. Start bringing out the trays of lunch arrangements- platters of deli meats arranged like disgusting meat flowers in bloom, the unloved bologna arranged prominently front and center. Keep these all stacked in the same place in the fridge, FIFO, labelled and wrapped. The same with platters of leaves of romaine and sliced tomato and red onion and cheese slices, and a neatly arranged tray of liter Tupperware containers of various condiments- pickles, mustard, ketchup, mayo, hot sauce. Set out a tray of some kind of square or baked good that, hopefully, you haven’t fucked the dog on and have prepared and portioned the night before. Don’t forgot the very strict sign indicating portion amounts. You can soften the instructions of “ONLY ONE EACH” with a smiley face. Lay out the hummus and the tuna salad and the egg salad and the large containers of neatly chopped carrot and celery sticks, and watch all your hard work be devoured in mere seconds by the hordes of increasingly hungry planters. I like to have all of this out by five thirty at the latest so that any early risers have access to it.

These are good tasks to share between first and second cook depending on the day, but I’ve been disappointed after delegating this duty before, to have somebody nod assent and say “Yeah, they're good out there,” and then find a line of planters clamoring at the back door of the bus for fruit or bread or whatever it is they don’t have, or find an old box of apples mouldering away in the back corner of the dry storage trailer while the one that came in from Sysco yesterday is being snatched up in handfuls in the mess tent. One of the many advantages of basically having breakfast prepped the night before is that it frees up hands to lay out all the lunch items and mess tent crap in the morning and reduces the, arguably, most hectic, time sensitive part of the day. If the second cook shows up and all of this is out already and breakfast is chugging along in the background, they can get started right away on dinner prep or dishes or baked goods, whatever. Somewhere in between running back and forth to the mess tent with arms loaded with platters, I like to stop to notice the sunrise, which is always stunning in Northern Ontario. Unreal pinks and oranges streak the sky and illuminate the shitty old Cool Bus. Coffee, smoke, jot down illegible notes on my par level/order sheets.

The start time of the second cook becomes pretty negotiable after the first shift, dependent on how efficiently the system is set up and how efficient you have both become at prep. If it’s going to make somebody significantly happier to roll in at six instead of five, that’s fine by me. As soon as they roll in, they start filling MORE POTS WITH WATER to fill the planters dish sinks so that after breakfast, in theory, they can wash their dirty breakfast dishes instead of leaving them crusted in food in the mess tent to attract bears and other unwanted critters to the camp where we, the cooks, spend the day alone, surrounded by food. At ten to six, its time to pour the water that you started boiling at four a.m into the giant coffee carafe and hot water carafe (because they’ve been around for so long that, unfortunately, the plug -in for them doesn’t work anymore and they no longer work as percolators, simply as vessels to keep the hot beverages warm). These have been prepared the night prior with the appropriate amounts of coffee. Stagger them out to the mess tent.

At six a.m its time to find the vehicle with the loudest horn and lean in the window and absolutely haul on it, preferably in the most irritating combination of length and volume possible, to wake up the camp. Occasionally a crew boss who’s tent suffered in the most recent rain/wind/snow storm may pop up from the back seat, heart jackhammering and ears ringing. This six a.m horn means that coffee and tea is out and the lunch table is ready and to get the fuck up, because if you miss breakfast or the best lunch stuff gets creamed out , I don’t really give a god damn. Now its time to plug in to the auxiliary cord of the cobbled together sound system that rests under a protective layer of tarps and bungee cords on folding table in front of the bus and blast some sort of motivational wake up tunes. I’ve been fond of everything from Lords of Acid to Buffy Saint Marie. From now until seven, when the planters depart for the block, the second cook makes attentive rounds of the mess tent, replacing empty platters with full ones, replenishing sugar and milk.

At promptly six twenty five a.m, its time to bring out the first trays of breakfast. Planters figure this out pretty quick, and vets are always in line around twenty after six, heading off those less wise. Hold your cards close and never, ever, ever fucking put out all of what you have at the same time. Half of the portion game is mind-fucking planters and making them think there isn’t anymore. Between budget constraints and other limiting factors, you have to be strict with your portion sizes. Always have enough and more than enough, but don’t let them approach a tray of bacon and load the entire thing into their groddy lunch Tupperware container and leave. Hold some of everything in reserve, particularly for those who fail to heed the next horn- the six thirty a.m horn which means “Breakfast is served!” and that those who have been standing impatiently in line, straining at the scent and steam, can descend upon the food in hungry droves. Don’t forget appropriate cardboard portion signs here, too, and the ‘vegetarian ONLY’ section. The first hard push of the day is almost done, now- its just you and the second cook circling around the mess tent on a regular basis to replenish items as necessary and to enforce the portion sizes, and finally, sitting on the stairs behind the bus with steaming mugs of coffee and cigarettes and hair tied up in bandanas like every hot lesbian vegan working at a trendy café in your hipster hometown.

As the planters depart at seven, wearily shuffling onto the bus and tying their boots, hacking darts and consuming water out of emptied beer bottles, its time to bring in all of the depleted trays from the mess tent and replenish them. My favored approach is to have the second cook jump on dish duty and summit Dish Mountain, then jump in on bringing everything in from the mess tent. It makes more sense to me to replenish the trays right away as you bring them in, keep them at the par level and craft new ones. A good second will be done dishes pretty quick and the two of you will slam out the mess tent clean up and tomorrow’s lunch prep in no time. With a completely clean bus, dishes dried and away and platters neatly replaced in their homes for the circus of the next morning, its time for a civilized tea break and the writing of the day’s prep list.

You have to be prepared when you’re working remotely. Meal plans for the week need to be accurate and your portions sizes are better to be too much than too little. Meeting budget goals while providing variety, utilizing your limited refrigeration and storage space, providing adequate portions sizes and meeting nutritional needs while accommodating for allergies and preferences is at best, complex. A week should have a ‘big ticket’ meal and be rounded out with less expensive ones. Ideally once every other shift there’ll be a big leftover bonanza. Sometimes hotdog night with pasta salad, potato salad and Caesar salad is a fucking awesome option. If Treeplant Friday’s an in camp, you don’t want to be slaving away until nine p.m so you want to throw out something easy so you can join in the festivities. Over more coffee and more darts, a prep list comes together with initials beside each item, delegating it to one of the two cooks.

From seven thirty or eight onward, we bake and we prep. I am a pastry pro and fan, and baking in large quantities can be tricky, so depending on who I’m working with I’ll do the majority of the baking, getting the second cook to weigh out all of the ingredients into Cambros and deli containers. This is the time to measure out pasta, measure out rice, chop vegetables, cook off huge amounts of meat, do any necessary breakfast prep for the next day, and generally make a hard push until all that has to happen when the planters come home is warming up an almost completely prepared meal. With confidence and success, some of this prep can be held off until after the mid day break. I hear stories of companies with huge trailers converted into walk in refrigeration space, but I haven’t worked for them (yet) making prep a logistical challenge unrivalled by any other kitchen I’ve worked in. You can’t get ahead because there’s nowhere to store anything thawed or cooked, nowhere to keep vats of salad dressing and mayo and dressings or prepped veg- just a dark, cool (ish) trailer that you keep the animals out of with a 2x4 jammed in the door. Before break there’s a thorough clean and scrub down of the bus, including a mopping that seems futile in the face of the rain and mud, and after finalizing a Sysco order list, I climb on top of the bus with the sat phone to phone it in.

Yet another logistics challenge- Sysco only delivers to Hearst two days a week and with limited storage opportunities, one has to be creative with rotating fresh produce and meats in and out quickly. Frozen vegetable medleys are a lifesaver both budgetary and logistically, as are any tinned, preserved or cured items. Beets, peppers, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, zucchini and eggplant are popular items that don’t go bad quickly or require refrigeration. As eggs arrive, most are cracked into Cambros for storage, leaving just a few flats for baking. A giant order pre-season stocks up all flours, sugars, spices, cereals, canned goods and other non-perishables, to be topped up only as necessary throughout the season, although this huge order means careful budget balancing throughout the remainder of the season to make sure it all ends up kosher. The top of the bus ranges from slippery as hell in blinding rain to covered in wasps to scalding hot in the heatwave Boreal sun, but its the only place the sat phone gets service, most of the time, so its up there I stand with my arm extended toward the heavens, clutching my notepad in one hand and shouting pleasantries into the sat phone. Calls typically get dropped after six minutes or so and it can take several phone calls to complete an order. Shout out to Sean, my amazing North Western Ontario Sysco rep, who had my back and always double checked my orders for items we usually got and helped me get the best prices on all possible items. Alternately, Sysco orders are placed from town on the day off, shaking and hungover and addled, sometimes completely unsure of the order of things and more concerned with the meaning of life and imminent death than the current price of the veg medley you usually like to get. Shit, you’ve forgotten eggs and it’s too late to add them to the order- a quick run to the Independent to browse around for specials like watermelon, off-brand Nutella, on sale chicken thighs and mini multi colored marshmallows will solve that problem, anyway. Ta! Off to a hangover breakfast at the local diner with the bottomless coffee.

The mid day break is the holy grail of treeplant cooking, a stretch of hours in the middle of the day to sleep. The four a.m. rise for the duration of the season is exhausting, especially when days often don’t end until eight or nine p.m. If there’s a river of a beach nearby, swimming and suntanning are a popular option, swatting at deerflies and skinnydipping with your second cook who’d better be your best friend in the entire world. It might be time for a beer, too, as you’re the only one in camp with access to the magical ice box that keeps them warmer than piss and drinkable, even the shit brands prevalent in the small towns. PBR, king of beers, I’ll fucking take it if it’s ice cold. Or even warm, really. This is a weird, unreal time of day, of unholy exhaustion on the verge of hallucination paired with the absolutely weird isolation of a camp in which the two cooks are the sole living humans. This is the time of day where strange ideas begin to percolate, especially as the season drags on and the bush crazy sets in. This is when we plan proms and parties and make customizable banners for Boozemas Eve or Tartinable Prom. We transform the mess tent into a dancehall with our camp boss, draping it with flagger tape and pushing the tables to the side. We make hundreds of liters of Jello to fill a kiddie pool for wrestling, make flagger tape corsages with friends at home in camp nursing tendonitis, read. Naps are necessary but never satisfying, filled with strange and vivid fever dreams and the soothing, unyielding hum of the diesel genny. The bugs can be intolerable, from the time you rise until the time you sleep. Mosquitoes in lunatic droves in the early morning turn into blackflies in the heat and deerflies in the afternoon glare.

We’ll usually return around two or three, although this is widely varied. Some mornings are so exhausting and energy sucking that as soon as the lunch trays are brought in and replenished we go on early break and return around noon instead. But as a rule, the afternoons are easier, having slugged away at the majority of the hard prep in the morning, fueled by coffee and sheer willpower. This is when the buckets of chopped veg and cooked meat and TVP/seitan/tofu turn into simmering curries, when the proofing dough is transformed into fresh, hot dinner rolls (served with margarine, of course- butter ain’t in the budget, baby), when pasta salads are created and all sorts of sides spring forth. The meal prep for the next day might begin, or we might get ahead on baking and freeze it, or we might do something special and call the crew bosses on the radio to come and gather up the Freezies bought in town in anticipation of the heatwave and distribute them amongst the planters. If it’s raining or cold we’ll put on a soup and a hot bevvie, a morale boost of hot chocolate or hot stock to warm up frozen, rain drenched innards. This is tying up loose ends and being ready, to, as soon as the planters roll in from the block, get dinner hot and ready to go within fifteen minutes of their return. I’ve had fuck ups, but I’ve heard horror stories of planters waiting hours after their return from the block for dinner, of elaborate ethnic cuisine themed nights, of beautifully designed chalkboard menus and meals utterly lacking in substance, of vegans and vegetarians forgotten and of cooks who didn’t know how to cook meat (vegans…) who simply chopped up cooked hotdogs and threw them into every carnivore meal.

Sometimes food deliveries are late. Sometimes they forget to send something. Sometimes people don’t follow the portion sizes and you run out of na’an bread. Sometimes people complain no matter what you do. Sometimes there are issues, and there will be, that you will never be able to foresee, like the water pump you and a crew boss so diligently spent your hungover morning off scouring town for three hundred feet of 1”PVC tubing for going AWOL and having to carry stock pots of water up from the river, one at a time, to boil for use. Sometimes people don’t get up, or have breakdowns, sometimes there’s personal drama and the entire camp will be waiting to leave to go to the block while you’re lying on the floor getting screamed at by a friend you did something shitty to. Sometimes you only get to sleep for forty five minutes between party night off, serving breakfast and then packing up the entire camp for a camp move. Sometimes the bus won’t start, sometimes you’ll forget to take cases of eggs out of the fridge before driving down the bouncing, pot holed logging roads. Sometimes you won’t get accurate directions and you’ll have to three point turn the bus, towing the water trailer, on the Trans Canada highway to go back to the logging road you were supposed to take. Sometimes a rogue dog will eat the entire lunch meat platters and blow a large part of your budget, sometimes you’ll be so tired and so sore and so grumpy that you’re just not going to want to do it anymore. But sometimes you’ll make homemade pizza on the last night of a shift and planters will actually cry tears of joy, and sometimes you’ll serve fresh made donuts and get hugs and sometimes, it’ll be fun.

Office views

Hearst Forest, 2018

GREAT SUCCESS

Maple Nutella/Bacon Glazed Donuts

Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Bush Style

A long time coming.

The Great Migrations of Animals

Winter begins to close in on the Okanagan and the seasonal claustrophobia is compounded by the high mountain passes that comprise every means of egress. I’ve recently driven the Coquihalla and the Pacific Rim with Wanda, coaxing her up the inclines so steep and so gradual that I start to wonder if the van is breaking down until I arrive at the summit, to careen wildly down the narrow, winding highway lanes with grades of up to eighteen percent. One day after driving the Coq back to Kelowna my brakes give out completely and I can't allow myself to think about if the catastrophic failure had occurred between Kamloops and Merritt. Snow tires become mandatory as of October first, and on October third, the weather changes and snow flies in Rogers Pass, leaving behind thirty centimeters of treacherous snow. The weather changes at the drop of a hat. I don’t like the idea of not being able to leave if I wanted to, knowing that I could be landlocked by mountains, work is less than thrilling and rental prices in Kelowna are nearly as bad as the GTA, let alone availability. Just as we left Northern Ontario in mid July, I spend a nearly sleepless night before departing in the morning. Fuck ‘em, I think. I owe nobody anything and leave without goodbyes.

What is there to say about driving solo across three quarters of the country, one of the largest on Earth, other than it is long and tiring and contemplative. The days bleed into one another and every truck stop is a welcome respite. Coffee snobbery is shelved in favor of whatever caffeinated beverages are readily available and I dub the Husky House, especially those with showers and twenty four hour restaurants and a dark corner to park between silent eighteen wheeler behemoths the sacred alter of tired drivers everywhere. Since Hearst and a wise Francophone waitress (or maybe that was just the acid) the Formica tabletops and showers, available in exchange for rewards points redeemed from gasoline purchases, have been a bastion of comfort and civilization and comfort.

Kelowna BC-Brooks AB

Jude co-pilots through the Rockies, settling in to the passenger seat with resigned stoicism. This is a brisk drive without the leisurely enjoyment of touring around Vancouver Island and stopping at everything that piqued my interest. I almost leave immediately once I decide but refrain in a rare exhibit of pragmatism and organize and pack and prepare, charging batteries and checking oil and tire pressure and sleeping, a bit. Before departing the Okanagan, I check the BC highway webcams to make sure the roads are clear. The grade combined with snow and the size of the van could be catastrophic. Wanda sails to Golden no problem where we fuel up one last time before hitting the mountain passes. Check the oil, check the fluids, suspiciously eye the tires, and carry on. The sun breaks through the clouds as we start the ascent, but I’m hesitant to take it as a good omen. Taking the good means taking the bad, too, means the menacing clouds on the horizon or a black cat could become foreboding.

Rogers Pass, after the Coq and Pacific Rim, is a breeze. We make a brief stop in Banff for gas and to let Jude go for a run at the off leash dog park and to take in the mountains for the last time for awhile. It’s smooth sailing to Calgary, except for construction through the pass and the evidence of the snow a few days ago- there are still several vehicles in the ditch all the way into the city center. I miss the turn off for the bypass and we’re stuck driving through a downtown Calgary rush hour. A few years ago before setting out on a short roadtrip from Toronto to Manitoulin, having borrowed my ex’s parents car, I had such bad anxiety I didn’t sleep all night, dreaming about merging onto the DVP and 401 catastrophes. Funny, in retrospect, given I’ve now driven across the country four times and all over B.C, Northern Ontario and Quebec, as well as back into and all around Toronto and the GTA. Winter has descended swiftly and mercilessly upon the prairies on the east side of the Rockies and we settle for the night in Brooks, Alberta, completing the last leg from Calgary in herky-jerky little steps, stopping in Chestermere for dog walks and hot coffee and to kick at the foot of snow on the ground distastefully.

Driving while exhausted is one of the worst feelings in the human condition. The road rolls out for miles and miles and miles before you, kilometer markings taunting with their impossible slow passage. Its a weirdly dreamlike feeling, and one of acute danger- “Do not sleep,” your brain commands. “Do not sleep or we die.” But even that isn’t enough to stave off the involuntary eyeblinks and head nods that presage the necessity of finding a place to park for the night. The great thing about having the van is simply having to park, and having the bed, the kitchen and all the amenities right there in the back. It’s been home for months and it’s comfortable. Parking can be iffy, but residential streets are usually a good bet, as are the vast majority of Walmart parking lots and Husky lots. We sleep a few hours on a side street in Brooks before waking up to frost on the inside of the van from our breaths. As I’m chipping away at the layer of ice on the inside of the windshield, I hit the rearview mirror and the ancient and frozen glue crumbles and it topples, to rest sadly on the floor beside the passenger seat. No Canadian Tire is open (it’s ten to four in the morning) and I’m not fucking waiting. I can see with the side mirrors and the rear door windows so we carry the fuck on.

Brooks AB-Austin MB

Early in the morning in the still darkness of Medicine Hat, deer roam the streets, comfortably ambling the median of the Trans Canada and foraging for grass. They’re on the lawn of the Tim Hortons I descend upon, ravenous, and they’re looming in the residential areas with all the stealth of suicide commandos who may or may not choose to destroy my van. I feel significantly better about my odds in a van vs. deer collision than I do in a BeBe vs. deer collision.

This day of driving, to be honest, is a complete blur and my recollection of it is grossly inaccurate. Somewhere outside of Brooks, the Rockies out of view behind us and the real stretch of Prairies beginning, we descend into a bank of dense fog that billows on and on for hundreds of kilometers. It’s a long and staggering day in which we stop and start for naps all over the place. There’s another stop after Medicine Hat when I realize I’ve cheated myself of enough sleep, and we’ve gone as far as we can for now. I park between rows of trucks at a truck stop in, I believe, Indian Head, although there were two similar stops that day and I couldn’t say for sure where the other one was. In the early morning light, we continue. We stagger all the way across Saskatchewan, stopping at any roadside distractions and points of interest. Some people have never done this in their lives- this is my fourth drive across the country. At Reed Lake in Saskatchewan I scream with joy, pointing at the lake and frantically looking for a place to pull over. Thousands upon thousands of birds of all types are upon the lake, honking and squawking and flapping. We’ve gotten here at just the right time of year to witness the great migration of animals from all across the north to their winter homes in the south. Jude runs across the Prairie, free and unencumbered for the first time in days and I could weep. It’s a Farley Mowat moment in a few different ways, the prairie slough, the animals, my mutt dog.

We stagger along in this fashion until Austin, Manitoba, just short of my trajectory of Winnipeg. A night beside a grain silo in the comfortable darkness and silence.

Austin, MB- Thunder Bay ON/Thunder Bay ON-Manitoulin Island ON

Winnipeg is a comfort to reach the next day. A hot Husky shower and breakfast almost makes me believe there is a god. I feel nearly human, though surreal, travelling the vast distances between myself and my family and my home, wondering the entire time about the meaning of the word and what I want out of my life. I love this vast and aimless wandering and the pure joy of the freedom of the highway. I can be wrapped up in all sorts of dilemmas and sadness and confusion and as soon as I start driving, it goes away. Its an absurd sort of joy and one I can’t quite seem to find any other way. Jude’s a wonderful co-pilot and passenger but I can’t help but think how amazing it would be to have somebody in the passenger seat to bear witness to some of the utterly mad and wonderful things you see when you’re on the road. Weird and wonderous and beautiful. My friends are dotted across the country and throughout my travels they’ve been there again and again at all different stops. The flocks of migrating birds and roadside coyotes pouncing on mice in the cut grain fields, roadside oddities and giant papier mache geese and animals, lakes and mountains and rivers and the sad, almost bleak and intimidating expanse of the land- you don’t know until you’ve seen it.

Getting to Ontario is not the end of the journey. In fact, it is the start of the worst part. Kenora to Sault Sainte Marie is the worst part of the drive. The highway goes down to two lanes, narrow and twisting after the fourlane stretch of fast driving through all three prairie provinces. It seems to become further between towns, a theory I inadvertently test when I fail to buy a coffee before leaving Thunder Bay. “Next town,” I think, but there, an eighteen wheeler cuts me off and I can’t find a good place to turn around so we carry on. “Wawa,” I’m hopeful. I pull of the Trans Canada in Wawa hours later to go to Tims and enjoy, finally, a hot tea and maybe some sort of awful prefabricated snack. Their debit machine is down so I leave to go and find cash. I lost one of my debit cards somewhere between Winnipeg and here, I’m suspecting in Amaranth when I pulled down my pants to pee in the parking lot of an abandoned gas station, so I’m trying to e-transfer myself money to my other account so I can take out cash to buy a god damn coffee and the e-transfer is refusing to go through and I am on the verge of meltdown because the Soo is still hours away. “You god damn whore,” I swear in ways I haven’t sworn since a harried service in a tiny kitchen with the missing tip of an index finger. We peel out of Wawa, and my bad mood and surly tempter tantrum continue until we get into the stunning fall colors all along the shores of Superior and the Agawa Canyon.

Much like the migrating birds, this is one of those things where the timing was just right. Every tree from Tamarack to Poplar is bright with autumn color and the weather is clear and fresh. Four hours of driving in absolute unbroken beauty. This is around where I get into the landmarks of home and become sentimental, passing turnoffs to White River and Manitouwadge and knowing that there is no return to Northern Ontario imminent the upcoming spring. Not so far from here somebody once played the accordion in the darkness of a North Ontario night to a small crowd invisible in the pure inky blackness of the bridge over the Pic River. These are the names of home I know, on my map of Algoma Manitoulin. The familiar names are an incantation, they hold power, they’re attached to memories deep in my psyche and soul. Pancake Bay elicits a cheerful smile, remembering a summer weekend spent there with the Italians and the frigid, clear waters of Superior. In the Soo I stop to visit a family friend. I’ve missed Thanksgiving dinner, now, a few hours away on Manitoulin. It’s less than five hours to my final destination there, but it’s three in the afternoon and my memory is garbled and my logic is skewed and I’m riding an emotional rollercoaster centered around the availability of coffee and the distance between gas stations. The last leg from the Soo to Espanola, and then, to Manitoulin, is familiar and easy. The Espanola Hills, once daunting, now seem tame in comparison to the highways of the mountains of B.C. I run into family at the Tim’s in Espo, which only seems right, and Manitoulin is a welcome respite from four days on the road- a journey completed solo in the same amount of time it took three or four of us to do the drive cross country earlier in the year. And we sleep and wait for the next adventure, anxiety building and cabin fever mounting as winter draws in.

Prairie Copilot

Jude, Saskatchewan, 2018

Carter Bay

Manitoulin Island 2018

On Cooking

Chef, Jeremy and I all make eye contact at the same time. Jeremy stands at the top of the trap door staircase leading down to the walk-in and the Dungeon ( a less than affectionate name for the damp, low ceiling office), shrugs apologetically, and beats it out the backdoor. "Have fun!" he says, and I hear relief over the apologetic air broadcast by his body. A fractious and contentious front of house manager still terrorizes the restaurant and he is relieved to be leaving before his anger boils over and his usual calm demeanor is replaced by the bitingly witty and insightfully mean spirit that it conceals.

His stand-in for the next two weeks has just spilled a liter of beet juice all over the inside of the garde fridge. It is everywhere, seeping into a creamy white puree of Jerusalem artichoke, spilling over a carefully wrapped platter of cheeses (Blue Benedictine, a sharp Monforte cheddar, a rind washed Gouda). It is encroaching upon carefully cut, washed and stored sprouts of sunflower, pea and coriander and the living mixed greens in their damp, black soil, delivered fresh from 100 Kilometre Foods.

"I'm sorry, Chef, I'm cleaning it up, Chef!" The twenty year veteran of the line is on his knees in his checkered pants, beet juice soaking into his tidy white apron, scrambling in hasty panic to soak up the beet juice with our dwindling supply of clean side towels.

I can't look Chef in the face any longer. I am no twenty year veteran of the line, but these sorts of mistakes, and those much lesser, raise the ire of the large man who looms, a threatening, First Testament sort of God like presence, over my world at least twelve hours a day. I think the reason he and I have come to an understanding and an ability to work together is because I am sensitive to moods and emotions, and although he is unpredictable and inconsistent in his moods, I can feel his rage rising a degree at a time. I know if it is a day to say "Yes, Chef," regardless of whether it was I or The Boy who fucked up a River Cafe inspired chocolate torte, I intuit whether or not to stay late, helping bone out poultry and scrubbing rolling racks with degreaser, or beat it. This new guy has none of that intuition. I turn on the grill and the fryer and start setting up my mise-en-place for 5:30 service. It is 4:45.

A year ago, I would have been consumed with a deep, internal panic at this time, having no knowledge of the ebb and flow of the service to come, no strategies to arrange my mise or what prep could be left to do leisurely during the lulls of a Wednesday night service. A year ago, I was blindly throwing together salads on garde and trying not to cry as it became more and more apparent that I was in over my head. A year ago, I was moving with such blinding speed and desperation, I once threw out my shoulder rifling through the garde fridge during a particularly busy service when Chef, a line cook from Cambridge moonlighting as a white-boy English rapper and myself fired out a 100 cover service after a glowing review from a notoriously harsh critic. Now I am calm. I am zen. Service will come, the curtain will rise, we will make the food, we will feed the people, it will end, and tomorrow, we will do it all again.

The signs have been there all week, since we started training Jeremy's temporary replacement. Chickens I need butchered early in the day to soak in buttermilk before breading and frying it remain entire, almost taunting Chef and I from their leisurely posture in the hotel pan where they lie in the walk in. When the dry goods order arrives and I leave my prep to begin squirreling it away in the basement and the back room, he remains at his station, leisurely chopping up a mirepoix that should have been done hours before. When asked to wrap beets in tinfoil and roast them, he wraps each one in an individual snuggy of foil, tenderly. Now, the climax, the culmination, the moment of truth, is coming.

Kasun is still bent over the spilled beet juice while gnocchi dough, a time and heat sensitive, messy, project, sits on his station, rapidly cooling and turning into a gluey mess. The potatoes take an hour to roast, to push through the ricer, gently but firmly, to roll out the long, even strands and cut and shape and blanch them another half hour. I spend two years tentatively approaching this project on-and-off, returning again and again to the scene of my failure, until finally, I get a grunted "Ok," from Chef instead of the usual criticisms. I fly that day. Better cooks than I have tried, and failed, and I am sensing an imminent opportunity to see the failure of somebody with more experience than myself.

Kasun returns, finally, hands stained with beet juice and trembling. I am enjoying an ice cold Log Cabin (Diet Coke- D.C- Washington D.C- Presidents- Abraham Lincoln- Log Cabin- the mind games you start to play when trapped in a windowless room upwards of ten hours a day are complex, meaningless and convoluted.) His entire station rapidly becomes a paste of too-sticky gnocchi dough that sticks to the stainless steel work top and is dragged across it by his rough handling. The snakes of dough, which must muster inspection by chef, are uneven squiggles ranging from 1/3rd of an inch thick in some areas to more than 2" in others. They are going to fall apart in the blanching pot. Their edges are uneven and undefined. The grated Parmesan isn't melted into the potato, the dough is so ill-mixed that egg yolk still colors parts of it a dark hue of yellow.

I am toasting perfect hashtags on the tops of the brioche burger buns I made earlier that day when it happens. "What the fuck is this?" By know I know the tone isn't anger. It is bewilderment and confusion and frustration. Why doesn't anybody care about the food as much as he does? Why can't anyone just see what is wrong with it, why can't they see the angle he wants the artichokes cut on or the way he wants the shiso to curl under the octopus like a piece of floating seaweed? Why can't we all be possessed of the same training and discipline and toughness, lightning fast and accurate knife skills and dogged dedication? What. The. Fuck. Why are people so disappointing? Why are we so content to linger in our mediocrity?

The lackluster gnocchi is swimming in oil on a parchment covered sheet tray. Chef has just popped one into his mouth, although the taste test isn't even necessary. The food is fucking ugly, and he will not have ugly food, particularly with something as simple as gnocchi. "People eat with their eyes first," I've heard him say a million times. "They are paying for pretty as much as tasty." The gnocchi is undeniably ugly, and insultingly rubbery and underseasoned in addition. Chef is verging on something, I can't tell, even with the study I have made of his moods, if it is tears or a screaming bout. "What... the fuck... is this?" he repeats again. He is dumbfounded. How could he be let down so badly by somebody with so much experience? How can Kasun be satisfied having spent twenty years of his life working on the line without even being able to accomplish a task like gnocchi without failing?

This comparatively gentle question, asked without anger or ire, only bewilderment, is what breaks Kasun's spirit. I see it happen. Chef sees it happen. Kasun takes off his ballcap and wipes his hands on it, starts untying his apron. "I'm sorry, Chef. I just can't do this." Chef's imposing frame stands between him and the trapdoor.

"The gnocchi?" Chef asks, leadingly, although all three of us know that is not what Kasun is talking about. "Of course you can!"

"No, Chef, the job," he blurts out, sneaking with surprising speed and agility between Chef and the stacks of Cambros perilously balanced on a shelf at the top of the stairs. He moves with such speed that some of them clatter down the stairs behind him as he sprints to gather up his clothing. He doesn't even change out of his clogs and checks, just reemerges a moment later carrying a hastily bundled bindle of his personal effects in his arms, wraps his knives in a tea towel and bolts out the door with a final apology of "I'm sorry, Chef, I just can't do this!" as he slams the back door behind him and disappears out of our lives and into legend.

Chef and I make eye contact through the pass. I am utterly frozen. A two person service in this kitchen can be messy. I am still new to the kitchen, although I am more organized now and more confident. Our first reservations will be sitting in half an hour. My hand snakes out to turn on the heat lamp, hoping I am not electrocuted in the process (it is hit and miss with sockets and electronics in our kitchen at this time.) And suddenly, we are both laughing, the kind of laughter that hurts your belly and makes tears come to your eyes and makes your knees weak.

He cries out "Eighty six gnocchi!" to the terrified server who comes through the swinging doors into the domain they all find terse and foreboding- the kitchen. "Chef is laughing!" we hear her relay to the front of house staff. And we clean up the station and stock the line and slog into a service where there is a 45 minute wait time for an appetizer that normally takes seven, where the tickets from the chit-machine droop toward the floor, where I am constantly squeezing between his bulk and the range to run around to garde to plate a dessert, a service where we run out of swears and laugh until we are plating blinded by our tears and out of breath.

Some names have been changed or committed to protect the idiots. Er, innocent. This is a story from my time at The Beech Tree, a small, intimate bistro in Toronto's East End where I am pleased to have gotten my start cooking and often return to, the prodigal cook, to my Chef Daddy (yet another inside joke.) More stories from The Beech Tree can be found at the blog of its founder, Robert Maxwell, Thrice Cooked.

River Cafe inspired flourless chocolate cake

The Beech Tree, Toronto

Goodbye northern ontario

Four of us pack our lives into a car much too small and drive across the country.

Last night and the night before we live at the Howard Johnson, sleeping four to a bed and turning side to side to the warm bodies of our friends, unwilling to part. At Hornepayne we turn off the highway. Five year old trees Tony planted straggle through the clearcut corridors that are turning back into forest. Hearst is fresh on the horizon, one of the places we call home, and Winnipeg looms large ahead. We sleep two nights on a hardwood floor of an auntie's house and tourist our way through markets and restaurants and bars. We’ve found our friends here, too, people we know from the forest alien in the city.

Strange to see treeplanters in other contexts- our friends, our family, intimate strangers. Acid dropping, forest dwelling freaks, who are literature majors and antique aficionados carpenters and painters and everything. Who knew. Two seasons ago I rolled into Hearst scared sick and heartbroken and yearning and now I drive across the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border with a dry bag ratchet strapped to the roof and the seats occupied by planters. Lifers. People I've danced naked with in the middle of Waxatike Road, driven buses with, cried to, exchanged letters with, confessed to. Mythical creatures. My heart full of love, the car full of sleeping bags that reek of sweat and sex and booze.

You, my carload of friends, sleep through Saskatchewan and wake to the dawn in a new province. In Banff we drive up into the mountains, an abrupt departure from the flat rolling prairies and their optical illusions. Even in the midnight darkness and our time zone skipping car stupor the mountains loom impressive and giant. One a.m, quiet night free of traffic, we roll our sleeping bags out on the grass verge of the highschool parking lot and sleep. "Do not be mistaken- we are, indeed, vagrants." We are a strange looking bunch still clad in longjohns and shorts, Buffs and pajama pants and true thrift store gems from small towns where the attendants have been waiting all quiet winter for the life of spring and treeplanters to return. They pull out wool sweaters and ponchos with flourishes; we buy wedding dresses for two dollars and spill red wine on them, cherish Hudson's Bay blankets bought for fifty cents My lip is still split from the Companion mosh pit.

We drift into British Columbia without remark. The highway is winding and treacherous switchbacks. Smoke from the forest fires throws a haze over the sun. The mountains are ablaze. We are giddy with confinement and possibility. We have done it. We are free and wild. We are in love, with each other, with life, with the world. We make things happen.

Our scars from plant heal and the blood stains turn to cherry juice as our lives amongst trees continue.  Seas of trees and fruit around us and our friends, as familiar and as strange as a dream.

Sometimes I pick apples

It’s always when thing are just veering into dangerous territory when the phone rings and a solution presents itself. “Something will come up,” I reassure myself about my job prospects as Wanda sits in the mechanic’s garage in Nanaimo, becoming a bit of a money pit mechanically. I knew this would be somewhat problematic when I bought her but the former owner seems not to have bothered to do any work whatsoever to the poor old van mechanically, or even to have bothered with routine maintenance outside of an oil change. Sure enough as I’m brooding another day away at a library or Tim Horton’s the phone rings with a friend on the other end asking me if I want a job picking apples in Kelowna and giving me a number to call. “He might only have four or five days of work for you,” she says, but that’s ok. In seasonal work and short contracts you take what you can get while you can get it and look for something better while you’re at least making a little bit of cash. Sometimes I plant trees, cook, ride horses and write, and now, sometimes I pick apples. Wanda is revived and we scurry down to the ferry dock hoping to make the next sailing.

In line for the ferry, I run into a friend of a friend from Quebec and in ‘not the strangest’ small world scenario this summer, he too, is heading to the same orchard in Kelowna for work. In March we cycled down Sainte Catherine in the frigid drizzle of a Montreal winter, now, we weather the temperate deluge of the coastal rainstorm. After a drive through the mountains at night in the rain that can only be described as ‘butt puckering’ I sleep a fitful night in my van with the ‘day before new things’ anxiety. We meet the owner of the orchard the next morning and strap on the familiar fruit harnesses paired with the new- large canvas bags that open at the bottom and close by folding over and knotting into a slotted holder so that it can be adjusted at different levels and emptied carefully into a large bin so that the fruit isn’t bruised and ruined. Settling into the rhythm of apple picking is fairly easy after a few seasons of cherries. The trees are smaller and easier to pick, and color picking based on ripeness of fruit is no problem after the hellish blocks of Rainier cherries laid out on tarps and treacherous ground.

On Scenic Road the view is, indeed, Scenic, and I settle into a kind of quiet, giddy joy, looking out at the panoramic view of the valley. It is good to be ‘home’, to have a quiet place to park for a few nights, a shower, electricity, low-key, quiet work. The ubiquitous Mexican orchard worker is present here, too, even in the tiny family farm with two full time employees and very few pickers. He points at me the day we work together after the rain and says “You very good worker!” and I blush fiercely and return “Feliz cumpleaños!” in my bad Spanish, knowing it is his birthday, although he has kept it quiet. We work in amicable silence, moving down the rows in well-paced tandem. When the work comes to a temporary standstill at the one orchard we are referred to another just down the road and are allowed to continue camping out at the first with the great valley views and the nice dog and the horses across the street. “Buenas noches,” I call out softly in the evening rain, and R returns a “Good night!”, not correcting me that “Buenas tardes” would be more correct. We plunder the free cantaloupes set out in a wheelbarrow by the farmer across the street and feast on the warm orange flesh.

It rains more, a torrential down pouring overnight. I have not seen this much rain in the Okanagan before. At desert like Cholla Hills when it rains the helicopters come out full force, turning the early morning into a scene from Apocalypse Now. The valuable cherries can’t be wet and then dry in the sun or the skin will split and the fruit will be ruined, so a fleet of helicopters is deployed to hover over the trees and shake off the water that threatens the fruit. In the haze of party madness the over stimulation of rain storm and hail and whirlwind helicopters is confusing at best. We huddle in the washrooms at Cholla, making our sandwiches on top of the dryers and camping out in the stalls with bongs and beers and dry clothes fresh from the dryer. No helicopters, here, just cool mornings where the fog obscures the valley view and our fingers cramp in the cold.

Wanda broke down again today- the brakes, today. I’m not even stressed out anymore. Zen has taken over, as life proves, over and over again, things always seem to work out. I’m immensely privileged in the way I am able to live. The mechanics are very understanding of my need to come in and get my tent and sleeping bag and supplies, since Wanda is my vehicle, but also my house. They see a lot of fruit pickers and transient workers come through and are kind and curious. While I only grabbed cheddar rice cakes and bread and Kraft Singles for grilled cheese, I’m indulging- I have access to power to charge my laptop and Wi-Fi signal so I’m listening to the Elon Musk episode of the Joe Rogan Experience and pretending I don’t live in a tent/van/orchard/campground/residential neighborhood after dark.

From a rainy tent in a Kelowna apple orchard
xoxo Bex

Harvest time

Kelowna 2018

Ladder fear

I’m scared of heights, why do I keep doing this?

Better days with Wanda

Kelowna 2018

Valley views

Kelowna 2018

Welcome to the Forest Primeval

I'm currently seated at a McDonald's in Nanaimo, my third accidental visit to the town, regretting the Big Mac I bought to comfort myself after having to get Wanda towed to the mechanic. She had been having more trouble than usual starting during my stay in Tofino, and I should not be surprised that the alternator belt finally gave up today. She went from Kennedy Lake to Port Alberni to Little Qualicum Falls, where I noticed a strap dangling under the front of the van. I plucked at it reluctantly and it came out right into my hand, a mangled looking rubber thing with teeth and a section entirely frayed through. My tired, sick brain didn't put two and two together and I hopped back in and started her up. She drove all the way to the rest stop at Nanoose Bay, where I stopped to take a picture of a double rainbow, and then right into town and into the WalMart parking lot, where she then died as soon as I parked her. Two and two came together- the dangling item I pulled out eighty kilometers before was the fucking fan belt and the fact that she made it the rest of the way before crapping out was a minor miracle. I had her towed to the BCAA center across the road and am looking forward to an uncomfortable floodlit night in the back before getting her fixed (hopefully) in the morning.

I am no stranger to the bush and large bodies of water. Growing up on Manitoulin Island most of my childhood memories are of being in the bush with my dad and granddad, tramping around crown land and climbing split rail fences to hike around the woods behind the back forty. Even the urban parts of Manitoulin are sparsely peopled and wild. I've never blinked an eye at driving the forty minutes back the unmaintained dirt road to Carters Bay to spend a week there by myself.  The rainforest, however, is unnervingly foreign. I'm driving back to Kennedy Lake in the falling dusk to meet up with friends and have vague directions given to me in dubious English by my Quebecer treeplant wife. Wanda's temperamental although reasonably reliable, and the logging roads don't bother me at all- I've careened down Waxatike going 90kph in the kitchen bus, veering around corners and feeling the deep clay mud suck at the tires.  I three (ok, five) point turn a couple of times, unnerved, and walk a few kilometers down a gravel path trying to figure out if I'm in the right place.

The trees tower above me in cathedral silence, great, ancient behemoths covered in wispy green moss. The forest is layers upon layers of soft green, everything damp and breathing and blurry, ill defined edges and oil-painting surreal. The sun's setting and it smells of funghi and wet moss and the good sort of decay, and there is not a sound except for my footsteps on the gravel. I would not be surprised to turn and see a dinosaur emerge between the leafy ferns and primeval trees. Suppressing the panic that comes as a surprise, I run back to Wanda and jet back to the highway where I ask a group of mushroom pickers for directions to Kennedy Lake. This time the drive is less eventful and I meet our group of vans along the way, following them to the bridge and the poorly defined path down to the beach. 

Even in the very last pale light the scenery is outstanding. The outlines of hulking fallen trees defy my attempts to make sense of the size, things the size of twenty story apartment buildings that tower into the night. The stars are a billion ice white diamonds scattered densely across the sky, the visible Milky Way interrupted by the silhouettes of the mountains across the lake. The Kennedy Lake rec site is well hidden, as most of the B.C rec sites are. Unserviced and user maintained, it is found fifteen kilometers down and unmarked logging road on the highway between Port Alberni and Ucluelet. Down the logging road it is a straight shot and during the on season, you may find several vans and trucks parked at the entrance to the path that leads down to it. 

 I set up my tent in the dark and make camp and for a few nights its like treeplant all over again, us in the woods down a logging road, lazing around a campfire and being content. We spend two days surfing in Tofino. I have a healthy fear of the ocean, the salt brine strange on my lips and the tides a mystery, undertow and riptides and marine life abundant dangers. Ten of us in the Pacific in wetsuits laughing and licking our lips and falling, thrashing against the sea. We've all gone our separate ways again for now, heading off to various jobs and contracts and vacation destinations. Until we meet again! 

Wanda is ready to go and pick up from the BCAA center so I'll call it a day.
Time to head 'er back toward the Okanagan and start looking for work.

 

Little Qualicum Falls

Before the van broke down

Wanda goes to the ocean
 

Tofino, 2018

Ocean hair

Rainforest vibes

Double rainow

Nanoose Bay 2018

The Family's Getting Bigger

One day this season of treeplant, stuck in the bush off Jackpine road, the cooks beg our camp boss to pick up a two liter bottle of tonic on his trip into town. "Come on," I plead. "Do it for the family. If I'm happy, the family's happy!" He relents and returns with the tonic, and other than the bugs and the rain and the shitty block and whatever various camp drama is currently unfolding, the family is indeed happy. 

The world feels as if it is drawing in around me sometimes. L & K, whom I've done multiple tree and cherry seasons with, get stranded in Ukee with a broken down van and K's university roomie. Fortuitously, I've just rolled into town with Wanda the van and turn tail to go and pick them up from Long Beach where they've been surfing. Upon arrival, K goes to introduce me to his roomie... but we've known each other since 2011 in Toronto-his brother is my ex's best friend. The odds of meeting up across the country on a beach outside of Tofino... "The world's not getting smaller," somebody says one afternoon at Cholla. "The family's getting bigger." 

The next day, arriving at the hippie commune outside of Tofino where I plan to work on the van for a few days, I don't anticipate seeing anybody I know. But after a few hours there three of the Quebec girls I picked with this past season at Cholla roll up. I'm sitting in the van reading and think I hear J's voice, but brush it off until I see her car roll by with the Quebec plates and the frantic waving of the two cousins out the back window in my general direction.

Where I am right now is pretty much every parent's worst nightmare although I'm drawing in on thirty and farther away from twenty or my teens. Poole's Land, subject of numerous documentaries, Vice articles, complaints from townspeople, whispered rumours, elated exclamations and the subject of the statement "It's a weird place, man," from the Hitch Hiking Accordion Player. The first person I meet upon arrival, other than the check in clerk who tells me where I can find the weed and mushrooms, is Sailor Steve, who does, indeed, look rather piratey with his gold tooth and dreadlock topknot and tattoos. He very kindly backs the van into a parking space for me, as I am evidently struggling with the rabbits warren of narrow, winding roads littered with vans, trucks, cars, campers that haven't moved in decades, vehicles in various states of disrepair, roadside tents, the Magic Bus, surfboards and bicycles.

Everywhere there is some project going on. Hammering, sawing, drilling; an eager if undisciplined group is building a small, off grid house. Singing, strumming, flutes, boardwalk repairs, cooking in the communal kitchen, cleaning up trash, sewing, reading, writing. There is access to all the tools I will need to complete my van project as well as the knowledge and assistance of those who actually know how to use them and the space to work. GiGi finds me in the kitchen and asks if I'm a cook. "Yes," I venture. "Are you staying?" she asks. I'm here for two days for now, but she thinks it will be longer and asks me to get involved in the community dinners they do a few times a week with a pay what you can mandate. I'm eager to be involved but also hesitant to set roots down and become sentimental and attached to the revolving door of people who come and go and the seaspray coast and the town and the community garden of pot and tomatoes and lettuce and the vehicles and the sailors and the everything. I think I will have to return to the Okanagan to find work for the fall, of some seasonal variety, and to pick up Jude in Vernon. 

On my way to bed, winding along the decaying boardwalk through the rainforest, I pass by a group sitting around a campfire outside one of the semi-permanent structures littered throughout the land. The Comfortably Sauvage. They are setting up an open mic night and a legit microphone has appeared, the extension cord snaking off through the ferns and redwoods toward some unknown power source. Fairy lights glitter in the trees and as I pass by they are all applauding a duet who grasp their guitars and blush, feral red cheeks in the rainforest evening.

The Magic Bus

Poole's Land 2018

The Van Plan

I spent the past few days loafing around Victoria, no plan, just seeing the city and being back in the relative comfort of civilization for a few days. And being overwhelmed by it. It's hard to find a place to park the van for the entire day, so a lot of the day is just moving the van from one parking spot to another, especially since it is so long that it is more difficult to park, although for some reason, I can parallel park it and back it into a parking spot fairly easily. Sleeping in the van in nice neighborhoods like Fernwood feels furtive and uncomfortable and my ocean side pad had specific "No overnight parking or sleeping" signs plastered everywhere. It's hard to find a good place to set up and pull out the camp stove and boil water for coffee or heat up my food, and the foot traffic outside the van and the flood lights and the constant lowkey worry of a knock on the window and a 'Move along," don't allow for a wonderful sleep. The carburetor is temperamental a and starting the van for the first time in the morning is an adventure, especially if you're in busy downtown Victoria and have to stop almost immediately at an intersection where you stall out in front of a line of right turning traffic and frantically have to pull the choke out and feather the gas pedal with your foot while saying "There, there!" to either yourself, or the van. I scavved a shower at Crystal Pool and had a swim at the same time, as there's no Husky with showers available anywhere nearby.

I went out for beers with a dear friend from first year of treeplant at the Fernwood Inn. God bless those of us living our lives on our own terms. She's off to India next month for an indeterminate period of time, and if I didn't have the dog, I probably wouldn't be living the van life and would likely be bopping around somewhere abroad as well. These friendships are such a wonderful thing. They fill me with awe and the kind of joy that's so sharp it verges on sorrow. My treeplant family and I have shared some of the most intense, crazy experiences together, I'm closer to many of them than friends I've known for years, and the way we disperse and come back together in the most random corners of the world is exciting and sad all at once. I've been inspired by those who have traveled and lived in caravans and who taught me to sleep on the grass soccer fields in the dead quiet nights of summer, those with gold teeth that glitter in the Pacific sunshine and the vagabonds I love and miss who point me toward island beaches and hippie havens and the elusive dream of a place where we'll be happy and full until the next season of planting begins.

I have no intentions of this turning into a 'van life' blog, but it's all still so new and there's so much happening that its at the forefront of my thoughts these days for sure. I'm writing this from a rest stop outside of Nanaimo where I slept my first night in the van, my laptop is fully charged from my morning at the Greater Victoria Public Library, where I was publicly shamed for trying to take a photo of a Monty Python quote on the balustrade, and my phone is plugged into the laptop to charge. I spent the day bopping around Habitat for Humanity Restores, thrift stores downtown, Canadian Tire and Home Depot, gathering supplies. There's a lot of work to be done on the van and it can be difficult to prioritize where to start. It's easy to freeze. I'd like a mattress, I'd like to decorate, I'd like storage solutions and power and I must insulate for the winter and get body work done and get a leaky antifreeze line looked at, as well as a fanbelt replaced and the carburetor checked out. Today, I scored some storage solutions and started the list of prioritizing, biting the bullet and buying everything I need to get 'er insulated. I'll likely need to borrow some tools from either a tool library or a nice neighbor but I'm on my way to Poole's Land, an anarchist hippy commune outside of Tofino, and I think I'll find it a good place to work. I left Vic for the time being out of a combination of being overwhelmed by the city and the need to have space to work on the van. When you're drifting about the city streets and various parking lots, it is nearly impossible to find a workspace to cut templates and glue and paint and scrape and spray foam and remove all the van fixtures to lay down new laminate flooring. So the plan for the immediate future is to hit Tofino and get the insulating done. 

As a few small comforts, I got clean sheets, pillow cases and material to make curtains today from the VV Boutique. My lantern is equipped with fresh batteries and I treated myself, with my dwindling cash supply, to a string of unicorn lights from Dollarama. I'd like to get a new camp stove, a two burner guy, to be able to make more intensive meals, so that's added to the wishlist along with an entire solar system to power a mini-fridge and to be able to charge laptop, phone, etc, as well as maybe a fan/electric heater as necessary, or a nice lamp. As a short term measure to be able to keep my phone charged without having to spend multiple hours at libraries and Tim Hortons (which frustratingly, sometimes don't have outlets, an unpleasant surprise as I stand there poking around with the tea I didn't really want), I replaced a bunch of old fuses in the van, but it seems to be a bigger problem to fix. The BCM may be blown and a relatively expensive fix at this point in the game, with a quick online estimate of $350 for the part and the labor. I'm unsure if it makes more sense to sink the money into that fix or to start building an auxiliary power system that can eventually be hooked up to the solar when I can afford to install that. For the time being, it's Tim's and libraries, and surviving without data, Spotify and aimless Instagram browsing. Probably for the best for my productivity...

My goals for the winter include learning the tin flute, fucking finally, working on my conversational French and assembling a collection of poetry for publication, as well as completing the rough draft of The Treeplant Cookbook. 

Jude will be here with me in seventeen days, requiring a trip back to the Okanagan to snag the cranky old dog man, so I'm hoping to hustle through the basics of the van renos and start scoping out the work situation for the next few months.

Now, to enjoy the first television I've watched since April! An episode of RuPaul's Drag Race on the spotty Wi-Fi coming from an undetermined point near the rest stop, and a night's sleep under the bright lights with the soothing roar of steady traffic on the Trans Canada as a lullaby. I'm hoping to get up (and get the van started) early enough tomorrow to head to Pipers Lagoon, a large oceanfront park in Nanaimo, for the end of low tide and the sunrise. Swimming in the ocean may not be for me- too many sea creatures- but looking at the jellyfish like discarded condoms and the starfish and the scuttling crabs and bickering seagulls gives me great joy.

With love from some cozy afghans and floral print pillowcases that are making the van feel like home,
Xoxo Bex

Mill bay views

vancouver island 2018

Eulogy for a Beloved Car

Appropriately, it is raining in Nanaimo when I'm taking my Ontario plates off of Bebe, the little white Sunfire convertible that has been my whip for the past year. This is good, because I don't want the tow truck driver to see me crying about a car. "Just a car." Bebe is not just a car; she's the Portable Pontiac Pocket Party, the only convertible to have ever driven down Thunder Road (I mean, probably, the stats don't exist for that, I'm just assuming), my safe haven from the madness of the world. Bebe has driven all around Manitoulin Island, to and from Montreal multiple times, up to Hearst and all around Mattice, Sudbury, Timmins, and then across the country for cherries, where she almost met her untimely demise on a shitty gravel road and my own close call with bailing on the nomad life and going home. She made it all the way to yet another island, with new tires (god bless uncle Andy), the driver's side mirror precariously tied back on and the rearview mirror reattached with a DIY adhesive kit from Crappy Tire.

One night off in Hearst this most recent season, I leave Jude in the car with his food and water while we go to the Companion. He's pleased with this arrangement, the car is home and he's happy in there for stretches of 10-12 hours, and the HoJo is really cracking down on the presence of dogs after last year's PoPo the Party Dog and Jude Jude the Party Dude debacle. Absolutely soaked to the bone after yet another year of hiking to the Esso for cigarettes and catching up with my friend who works in the other camp, I crawl gratefully into the backseat and pass out, plastered to the white leather. The next day D & M borrow the car to run errands around town, and I find them later, fully reclined, feet out the windows, napping in front of the HoJo. We once cram six people and the dog into the car with the top down to go and spend an afternoon at Johnson Beach. The cigarette lighter car charger and the stereo are my saving grace on hangover days in town, when I can retreat from the rain or heat, charge my phone and sit scrolling absently through the internet I've been deprived of in the bush.

Bebe crosses Canada with ease. I've brought her out into the bush on Thunder Road, gaining a whole new appreciation for a freshly graded road. Camp is only twenty minutes from town and this way I can go on cigarette runs or drop off departing staff at the bus station. I have an idea that shit's going to go down, soon, as well, and the car is the escape vehicle if the coup d'etat unfolds. It eventually does, and after breakfast one day, I hustle my friends into the car. We ruthlessly dispose of extra baggage and then three of us and all of our gear are somehow Tetrised in, departing the Hearst Forest with a mix of sorrow and elation. Northern Ontario, home of my heart, seems to go on for days- it takes us two days to get out of Ontario, spending a night in comfort in a Thunder Bay hotel and then booting it all the way to Regina the next day. We park behind the Royal Saskatchewan Museum and roll out our sleeping bags in the blackness of the manicured lawn, taking refuge for the night behind a hedge. We make it all the way into the Rockies the next day. My car companions haven't seen the mountains before, and as we roll out of Calgary and the striking hulk of rock becomes apparent, suddenly, I say, "Look!" They wake up, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, to stare. We sleep another night in Golden (behind the visitor center, this time) and we're so bone weary that the light and mosquitoes and brief rain shower don't interrupt our sleep.

Pocket Party survives a season in Vernon and takes a ferry ride over to Vancouver Island. Our relationship starts and ends on an island, which seems oddly appropriate. In a Walmart parking lot in Nanaimo, I spend hours pulling my life out of the car and transferring it into the as yet unnamed van. The transition into van life is nearly seamless, although I blew the fuse of the cigarette lighter with my car charger and haven't figured out how to fix it yet, and I'm not quite used to having to start an engine with a manual choke, and I have to fill my water and charge my phone whenever I have a chance. Van life means never passing up the opportunity to use a public washroom, libraries are mana from heaven, and Husky showers rein supreme. I'm better at parking the long, boxy van than I am at parking the tiny car- it doesn't make sense. I can parallel park the van and back it neatly into a parking space. My two seasons of driving shitty Blunderhouse buses and being responsible for the kitchen bus has instilled me with a completely unwarranted sense of confidence.

A ridiculous amount of things have happened over the past few days and I've covered a lot of ground and distance. I'm currently parked in Victoria, enjoying the ocean views and generally bumming around. For a few days I've been filled with an overwhelming sense of "Being alive is god damn glorious," which is something I haven't been able to find in a while. I've got a long laundry list of things I have to do to the van to winterize it and make it more comfortable and livable, and a list of things to do to the van to make it pretty, and a list of things to do to the van mechanically. I've got a list of practical shit to do in my real life, including updating my license to a B.C license, beginning legal proceedings against a former employer who owes me money, start looking for a job and continue to tweak the new site for optimal performance and visibility. But until Monday it's me, the van and the ocean, maybe a good book or two, and all the tacos I can eat (tacos seem to be a thing in Victoria, and I miss Taco/Tequila Tuesday.) 

From the seaside with love
xoxo Bex.

Goodbye, Bebe!
Nanaimo, 2018.

Jude enjoying a top down ride with Bebe.
Thunder Road, 2018.

Packing up N'Kwala.
Merritt, 2018.

THE VAN

Seaside views almost make up for the loss of the Pocket Party.

West is Best

I wake up early this morning, which isn't hard. The comfort level of sleeping in the half reclined driver's seat of a Sunfire is fairly low, and I'm used to waking up at 3:45 a.m in a half panic of what to make for camp breakfast, weeks after plant has ended. I live lifetimes while the world sleeps, me and the fisherwoman on the seawall who casts her line out into the oncoming tide again and again and again.  After a few days outside of Merritt, camped in a silent campground in the lower Nicola, a night spent parked in Stanley Park is foreign. The largest city I've been in since April is Vernon, a pretty benign Guelph sized city of sports bars and fast food strips where we go from the orchard to devour chicken wings and splurge on cider at Monashees.

I go to Motion Notion a few days prior with some plant/picking friends, having forgotten how sleazy and grimy music festivals/raves are. We're partied out and head back to bed in the shared tent shortly after midnight and lie there together one last time playing 'Fuck, marry, kill' and listening to a baby wailing somewhere in the vicinity, audible even over the bass that reverberates through our bones and hearts and the piercing airhorn stylings of Neon Steve. "I wonder if that's what he wears, like, all the time," I say. "To the grocery store even." Ravers I knew back in the day possessed a certain level of commitment to the aesthetic and fun fur leg warmers, platform boots, huge pink hair and excessive kandi bracelets were not unusual everyday fashion. Now, alone for the first time in months, it's a pleasant surprise to be able to find a friend in the city and go out for a few beers. A treeplanter, of course. "The world's not getting smaller, the family's getting bigger."

I spend some time walking around Stanley Park and it's so early its just me and some seagulls that skulk around conspiratorially, holding their black eyes on me as they scuttle away. There's the odd cyclist, a single ambitious runner, and the fisherwoman. The tide's coming in rapidly and I'm startled by Carnival Splendor, a cruise ship that rolls silently in with the rising waters, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the highrises on the city shore. In the reeking Pacific waters, a seal peers up at me with its sad sea-dog face before bobbing under, not to reappear. My startled cry of "Seal!" may have scared it off, or maybe the oncoming boat traffic that has materialized out of nowhere. I miss the cathedral silence of N'kwala, where even the river is quiet. City quiet, in the small hours of the morning, is different- there's a constant electric hum, a dull background white noise that I'm no longer accustomed to, the metallic rattle of cars on Lion's Gate bridge. 

I wish I had some photos to share with you, but my car charger isn't working and I need to find a Tim Horton's to indulge in a steeped tea (and more importantly charge said phone) before heading to Nanaimo to look at a van. While currently technically homeless and unemployed, the potential van has a bed in the back and ample storage space and is roughly the size of my first shitty bachelor apartment in downtown Toronto. I'm not totally concerned about job prospects yet as something always materializes and my cost of living is extremely low, particularly if I snag this old Econoline and make it home. Horse farms, kitchens, WWOOFing, apple picking, barista, bakery; these are all viable and ample options. 

Another fisherman has joined the woman on the seawall and she's annoyed that he has almost instantly pulled up a catch and delivered it into his bucket. She glares at him as she reels her line in without the same methodical zen she possessed earlier. He's packing up his folding chair and reel and I think it's time for me to go, too. I've got a ferry schedule to figure out and some more downtown Vancouver driving to tackle and a Tim Horton's location to track down.

xo
Bex