Tales from the Forest

A mostly true tale from a life that doesn't feel real anymore

The sun had yet to even crest over the eastern ridge of the North Cascades. The smell of exhaust from the Ford was tainting the otherwise pleasant morning air—a crisp 42 degrees with that distinctive cold bite that meant summer wasn't fully committed yet. The crew was slowly collecting tools at their typical morning pace, as though moving slowly would prevent the inevitable taxing manual labor instead of just delaying it. You held your coffee cup, steam rising between your chilled fingers, contemplating the day's mission. It was a "light" day by your crew's standards. Drive 2 hours to Eagle Ridge Campground, then sand and refinish picnic tables. These days felt like rewards for the other days of back-breaking labor, or hiking through rain and snow to remove a small tree that had collapsed on a trail somewhere, your clothes soaked through and boots squelching with every step. Having done this for a while, you savored these days. They may feel slower, but they didn't hurt as much.

The crew bustled back and forth, working diligently to appear busy and avoid any scrutiny. You remembered how you used to be a tyrant. You would bully them and yell at them for the slightest indiscretion—a misplaced shovel, three minutes late, a forgotten safety glove. You had calmed down now and taken on the role of coach, letting them make decisions and, even more importantly, attempting to make the job the slightest bit enjoyable. If they only knew what it was like before, you chuckled. "HEY, everyone, let's wrap it up and get going," your voice projected a sense of authoritative calm you had rehearsed in your mirror after too many fiascos where panic had made everything worse.

"Trevor," a voice squeaked from behind you.

"Yo?"

"I was wondering, would it be okay if I took 10 minutes to rearrange the truck box? It, uh..."

"Looks like shit? Yeah, if you have a good idea, own it."

Casey, the owner of the voice, excitedly leapt into the bed of the truck and began shuffling equipment and tools around. She had an aptitude for organization, and you assumed anything she came up with was better than your haphazard chuck-it-in-and-deal-with-it-later style. This was the fifth time this season she'd asked to reorganize something. Last week it was the equipment shed, before that the crew cab. Each time, things actually improved—at least temporarily. You walked over to the smaller truck. "Jeff, Tess, Jane, hop in the Colorado and head up there. Set up the generator by site 1 and start mixing the linseed oil. WEAR YOUR PPE, all of it. We're in a high-traffic area so no lapsing, not one rolled sleeve. Last thing we need is a report about lazy unsafe government employees."

"Got it. Can we gas up before?" Jeff said, already fiddling with the radio dial.

"Yeah, be quick, and remember, do not start the generator until we hit 8 am. There are probably some campers around," you responded, knowing full well the importance of maintaining peace with the recreational public. Last month's complaint about noise had earned everyone a two-hour lecture from Bill on "public relations."

Gas up was code for grabbing breakfast at the local gas station. When you worked a job like this, it had very few perks, and this was one of them. A greasy hashbrown sitting in a heat lamp or a sausage that had dried out beyond recognition. These were the true joys of your 6 am gas procurement. The three hopped in the Colorado and quickly began fighting over whose iPod would be connected for entertainment purposes. Their banter faded as they pulled away, gravel crunching beneath tires, leaving little clouds of dust hanging in the still morning air.

Casey had completed her organization. She was the crew's version of Marie Kondo. You inspected the toolbox and took slight pleasure in wondering how long it would last before chaos reclaimed it. Two weeks was the record so far. "Case, you hungry, or you just want to get to sloggin'?"

"I'm okay if you want to stop to grab something," she said. This was her slang for she was hungry but too ashamed to admit it. You'd noticed this a month into working with her—the way she'd never directly ask for what she needed, just create openings for offers.

"Cool, we'll roll in and grab a bite."

You hopped in the truck and drove toward the gas station. The sun had just begun to glimmer the hope of a nice day, casting long golden rays through the ponderosa pines and turning morning dew into tiny prisms across the meadow grasses. The clouds were few and mostly wisps on the skyline, painted pink and orange against the lightening blue. It was always a good day when you realized you wouldn't come back soaked, in danger of swamp foot or some other nonsense. Your knees still hadn't forgiven you for last week's twelve hours in the rain.

At the gas station, you put the nozzle in the tank and told Casey to stand there and pretend to put gas in the tank while you grabbed breakfast. She nodded and spouted her request for a breakfast sandwich and a coffee with an odd collection of flavored creamers—hazelnut, vanilla, and Irish cream, a combination that made you wince internally. You were wearing your "pickle suit" (the official uniform you had to adorn, complete with a badge and nameplate) which always drew a ton of scrutiny in this town of 900 where everyone knew everyone's business and resented any whiff of authority.

Government employees in a small town were hated on all fronts. Typically, you were paid better than 90% of the town, though this did not mean you were paid well—just that most people here were struggling even more than you were. Beyond that, there was a paradox that you as a government employee had all of the power to change laws but also had to listen to every citizen who had ever paid a dime in taxes. The truth was you were pretty much powerless on all fronts, a mummy wrapped in bureaucratic red tape and set about the earth in search of getting home in the evening. The implications of all this were things like hiding in the bushes for your lunch break or pretending to fill a gas tank so you could pick up something to eat before a 10-14 hour shift of manual labor.

As you reached the counter of the gas station food mart, there was a man in front of you also making his morning purchase. He had two cans of Steel Reserve, a family-size bag of chips, and a collection of individually wrapped jerky. As he was waiting for the cashier to collect the pack of cigarettes he had politely requested, he turned back to eye you, taking in your uniform with a sneer that seemed practiced. "Didn't know you folks actually got up this early to pretend to work. What's on the agenda today?" He snorted a laugh at the end of his question.

You attempted to swallow your rolling eyes and desire to make a joke; the pickle suit forbade such behavior. "Hey, yeah, early start today. Have to go and get the campground ready for Memorial Day weekend. Want it to look nice for everyone who gets an opportunity to go camping."

"You guys ever tried really working for a living?" he said, still snorting at his clever observational humor. The irony of him buying beer at 7 AM while questioning your work ethic wasn't lost on you.

"Sir, I'm really sorry you have that opinion of our work. As a government employee, we take pride in serving the community around us. If you would like to see a change in our priorities, I strongly encourage you to write to your representative." You had said some version of this over 1,000 times, and the season had just started. Fortunately, before the man's mouth opened again, the clerk returned with the cigarettes he had requested. He set a wad of crumpled bills on the counter and muttered something about how he needed to get to work.

At this point, you had switched to an autopilot feature your brain had. It would spit government-sounding gibberish that promised understanding and encouraged people to take an active part in their democracy. This feature had been honed in your system and allowed you to separate any emotional ties from the criticisms that were so frequently lobbed your way. It was like a shield you'd developed after your first season, when every comment cut deep and you'd spend evenings wondering if you would ever get a job that didn’t involve people hurling insults occasionally spitting on you.

The routine drive to the campground faded past your eyes as you made your way from highway to rural road to gravel and washboard. The landscape transformed from the fenced ranch lands near town to thicker forests as you gained elevation, aspens giving way to darker stands of fir and spruce. A herd of deer, still in their winter coats, watched you pass from a hillside meadow, their breath visible in the cool morning air.

Casey chuckled to herself in the passenger seat at the eclectic nature of your music. It would jump from a French ballad to screaming hard rock, rap, and classical. It flowed through just about every genre of music you could find. Your brand of upbringing only taught you that the world offered more than you knew, and it was your sole duty to experience it. The good, the bad, the anything really.

As you pulled into the campground, the sun was causing the place to almost feel magical with the shimmering dew on all of the pine and fir needles. Mist rose from the lake in graceful tendrils, and somewhere in the distance, a loon called—that haunting, lonely sound that always reminded you why you put up with everything else about this job. To anyone else, this would be the view and trip of a lifetime. A remote campground on a lake, the loons howling. Potential for sightings of a bear, deer, even occasional moose. People long for this kind of thing. Everyone you would show pictures to later would proclaim how lucky you were for this.

You didn't feel lucky. You felt a tinge of anxiety. Soon your air would be thick with linseed oil and sawdust. Your back would ache from bending over tables, and some camper would inevitably complain that your work was disturbing their communion with nature—as though the picnic tables and fire rings materialized by themselves overnight like fairy circles. It's here you reminded yourself, this is a light day, have fun. At least you weren't decommishing new pit toilets like last month—two days of hell that still gave you phantom smells sometimes.

You saw the main crew already hard at work prepping the generator and tools to get going once the clock tipped 0800. Good. That meant maybe, just maybe, you'd finish early today. The Colorado was parked by site 1, and you could see Jeff testing the sandpaper on a scrap piece of wood while Jane unloaded the linseed oil containers. You and Casey walked over to the group. "Hey folks, before we get going, just going to do a quick safety brief. The sander... well, it is for sanding the table, not anything else, so let's keep our fleshy bits away from it. The generator can catch on fire; let's not do that. Don't trip, watch for wildlife, and if you see something dangerous, call it out. Today is a light-work day, but that doesn't mean easy. Let's remember we are always in sight of the public. Okay, now for operations. Jeff and Tess, you are sanding for the first half of the day. Sand the tables down till they are nice and smooth. Then Casey, you and Jane get to apply the linseed oil. Once we are done with all 25 tables, we've got some fire pits to rebuild, outhouses to clean, and trash to remove. All in all, it's a busy day, but we should be back at the truck by 1400 and in the office by 1530. Any questions?"

"Nope," they all mumbled almost in unison. Tess looked particularly bored—she'd done this at least thirty times last season and could probably do it in her sleep. Jeff seemed anxious to get started, already fidgeting with his work gloves.

You had to go do rounds now. Inspect the campground, talk to campers, look generally official. It was an obnoxious aspect of the job, one you really hated. The other folks doing law enforcement seemed to get off on the power, but you found it hurtful. Most of the people you had to go and investigate were destitute. They couldn't afford the ticket you were giving them, and better yet, they didn't have an address to send a summons. It was just a demonstration of power, and you really didn't care for it. That being said, it paid you overtime, and you needed the money, so here you were—caught between empathy and necessity, the story of most of your adult life.

You walked down the road, happy to see the campground relatively empty as it would allow you to get most of the tables finished, and you were less likely to annoy people sleeping. The few occupied sites mostly had retirees in expensive RVs who were probably already on their third cup of coffee.

It was then you heard distant shouting from the end of the row of camping spots, breaking the morning tranquility. "You... Mother fucker... I will... DON'T CALL ME THAT... Lazy..." two voices tangled in distance called out. Shit, you thought, you had to go deal with this. Coffee cup in hand, you sped the pace of your walk toward the continued shouting, gravel crunching under your boots.

On your way, you noticed another agency vehicle. It was John... your heart dropped like it just went over a rollercoaster. That was John's truck; one of those voices was John. You'd been half-expecting something like this since Bill mentioned John would be working this sector today. John was a creature not made for this world. Something formed out of neurodivergences that had been molded by continued and ongoing trauma. John felt like he was nearing 70; you weren't really sure, and he never mentioned it. He only dressed in army pants matched with shirts that only a train conductor would love. At his core, John was a decent person who truly would go above and beyond to help those he deemed worthy of help. If someone couldn't afford nice hiking boots, John would get their size and hand them the boots days later. In your years with John, he would show you countless amounts of kindness, but he liked you. If John didn't like you, well, he was a complete piece of shit. John didn't like the man he was yelling at.

As they came into view, you could see John standing in a campsite holding a claw hammer in one hand and shouting menacingly at the man occupying the camping spot. John was in his usual army fatigue pants, a torn old button-up shirt, yellow rubber gloves, and a hat that had seen so much it could barely hold form anymore. The other man was old enough to make John look young. He was wearing long underwear and gave off the vibes of a prospector in an old western movie, complete with a scraggly white beard and skin leathered by decades of sun exposure. The scene was comical enough that you almost chuckled as you walked up—like a bizarre nature documentary where two territorial animals face off.

"Hey, HEY, what's going on here?" you shouted with a booming authority, the vocal training you had done in theatre finally paying off.

"Trev, this son of a bitch thinks he can just hammer nails into any tree he wants," John shouted, almost apologetically, gesturing wildly at a pine where, sure enough, several nails protruded from the trunk with a clothesline hanging from them. This was exactly the kind of thing that set John off—casual destruction of nature by people who claimed to love the outdoors.

"Fuck you! I paid for this goddamn site," the man yelled while raising his hand in the air, a cigarette pinched between yellowed fingers. "It's just a few nails for my clothes. Trees got nails in 'em all the time!"

At this point, John had begun to raise the hammer above his head, poising to strike the man. "JOHN, GO SIT DOWN OVER THERE NOW!" you yelled with a booming voice that even surprised you. A chipmunk that had been watching the proceedings from a nearby stump scurried away. John, confused by it, adopted the posture of a child whose parents had just come home to find the aftermath of a party. He slunk slowly over to the table, muttering quietly about "tree killers" and "city idiots."

The man, noticeably looking shaken up, began to speak, but you cut him off before even the first word could slip fully past his lips. "Okay sir, first I want to apologize for this. This incident should have never escalated to this point, and I will be sure to note and submit this to our superiors. If you would like to contact them yourself and provide any context, you can reach Bill Stevenson at 555-509-5999 ext 3. He can assist you with any actions you may want to take. I do have to inform you that hammering nails in trees is a fineable offense, but I will just give you a written warning as part of the documentation process. This warning lets you know that you have been informed about the specific law, which I will include with your copy of the warning. There is no financial or record maintained of this warning; it is for official use only. I'm going to go and speak to John now and have him leave this location so that you can try and enjoy what is left of your stay here, however long that may be. Is there anything else I can help you with before I do that, sir?"

"Uh... what? I'm pretty angry still. I uh..." the man, noticeably confused by the situation, attempted to collect his thoughts. He looked back and forth between you and John, as if trying to determine if this was some kind of elaborate prank.

"Your anger is understandable given the situation. I really do apologize for that. My crew and I will be in the area all day. I suggest you take some time to collect yourself, and then if you feel the need or desire to chat, please come find me, and I will be happy to assist you." With the cold clinical words falling out of your mouth—words that seemed to belong to someone else, someone in a suit behind a desk who'd never set foot in these woods—you gave a slight nod and made your way to John, who was sitting at a table roughly 60 meters down the way, kicking at the dirt with his worn boots.

As you approached, John picked up his head to meet your gaze. His eyes were bloodshot—whether from lack of sleep or something else, you couldn't tell. "Trev, I... he... I'm just so sick of these campers thinking they own the place. They..." he said in a menacing tone, his hands still gripping the hammer tightly enough that his knuckles showed white.

"John, dude, with all due respect, can you just shut the fuck up? I get it, nails in trees are a pain in our ass. Graffiti, vandalism, trash, dumping, random furniture set on fire... it all sucks, man. This job is thankless. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been thanked for anything. I damn near come to tears when it happens." A small bird landed on the table near John, inspected him briefly, then flew off in apparent disappointment. "The thing is, John... we can't hit people with hammers, or even act like we might. You see, hitting people with hammers is how we go to jail. It's also how I end up drowning in paperwork. Now, I know you really want to tell me about what an asshole that guy was and how he is morally in the wrong; trust me, I get the impulse. The thing is, John... you can't threaten him with a hammer. It really is that simple. That's the line. So what I need you to do is hop in your truck and go work somewhere else for the day. I don't really care what you do, but do it somewhere else. I'll try and diffuse what I can, but this might come back and bite you, so be prepared for the wrath of Bill."

"Fine, I'll go." John did well with orders. He had issues with a lack of structure. Once you knew this about John, getting him to fall in line was pretty easy. He marched off to his truck and pulled away, the engine sputtering and coughing before catching properly, leaving behind the faint smell of oil burning.

You watched his truck disappear down the gravel road, dust billowing behind it. Another crisis averted, at least for now. You took a deep breath of the pine-scented air and turned back toward your crew, already hearing the distant whine of the sanders starting up. The day was just beginning, and there would be plenty more fires to put out—both literal and figurative—before you could head back to the office.

In the distance, a woodpecker drummed against a tree, the sound echoing across the lake. A gentle breeze stirred the surface of the water into tiny ripples that caught the sunlight like scattered diamonds. Out here, between the bureaucracy and the wilderness, each day brought its own unexpected challenges. The relentless paperwork, the entitled public, the elements themselves all conspired to grind you down. And yet, as you looked around at this slice of preserved wildness, the same feeling stirred in your chest that had brought you here in the first place. And somehow, despite everything, you wouldn't trade it for anything else.