Precarity

I don’t even remember who it was that told me that the black spruce trees we were pounding into the ground by the thousand would be hacked down, dragged out of the forest, and processed into toilet paper Americans everywhere would wipe their asses with. 

At our block of clearcut land, I strapped my bags to my hips and apologized to each tiny sapling as I piled them into the pockets. I pondered all the ways we would eventually stop the mass destruction of forests so that the very trees I held in my hands had hope for life longer and more fulfilling than becoming literal ass wipes. I vowed to each tree, putting them into the ground slower and more carefully than before, that I would do everything in my power to ensure that future for them. 

“I found something,” my crew boss said when he spotted me. 

“Oh yeah?” I asked, wiping sweat off my face and straightening my back completely for what felt like the first time that day.

“Come check it out,” he smiled with an edge I was unfamiliar with. 

We planted together back to the meeting place by the road. Once we’d dropped our bags at the cache, he led me down the logging road towards the back of our clearcut area. I stared at my feet and the bright yellow duct tape that wrapped around my ankles, keeping my laces from catching on debris.

“Look,” he said, lifting a few pieces of the leftover tree cuttings in the slash pile to reveal a rusted oil drum, “They’re all empty.”

We pulled back pieces of wood, tossing branches and dried moss away until all the scraps of metal were revealed. Each was rusted at varying stages, the ones at the bottom clearly more protected than those placed right on top. The smell was long gone, but the ground around them was sunken from a weight that was no longer there.

“We have to report this,” I choked. 

“Definitely,” he replied. 

“What’ll happen?” I asked, removing my shirt and using it to push one of the barrels aside. 

“They’ll fine the company that logged here,” he said, helping me lift the part I held onto.

“Probably cheaper to take the chance of a fine than dispose properly.”

“Which is why they do it,” he ran a gloved hand through his long hair and pulled his phone from its waterproof pouch.

We dragged the pieces of slash away until all the barrels were visible. We counted them, a total of seventeen, some in complete shambles. He took photos from every angle, making sure the scale of the pile was evident. Scattered around were pop cans, beer cans, and other miscellaneous wrappers, in full colour in the shade of the barrels. I took a can of Blue Ribbon beer, and an empty bag of regular cheese Doritos. He picked up a glass bottle that must have held Coke and a crumpled wrapper from a Joe Louis. We carried as much of the evidence of the loggers as we could back to the cache. I stopped for a moment to stare into the ditch and the water that pooled there. 

“How long ago was this block cleared?” I asked.

“Probably at least ten years by the size of the poplar bushes,” he replied, stopping to see what I was looking at.

“Ten years,” I repeated, unable to tear my eyes from the rainbows that danced across the top of the puddle, rippling back and forth when the breeze ran its fingers along the surface. 

We walked back to collect more of the trash and I stared at my hands, fists clenching and unclenching as I attempted to put words to my anger. It was only his feet that I saw stop, sudden enough to make small dents in the packed down dirt. His hand grappled blindly for my arm. 

“What,” I demanded, snapping my eyes to his face, but the expression there silenced any further question on my lips. 

I whipped my head around to stare at the pile of leftover tree cuttings stacked half as high as that of the barrels in front of me. Mirroring his face, my jaw went slack and my eyes wide as they met the clear blues ones belonging to the grey wolf standing atop our handiwork. Leaner than a German Shepard but with the same long nose, it watched us coldly while we waited for it to make the next move. I latched onto its eyes with desperation, unable to let go of the cool gaze that held us accountable. All rational thought dissipated from my mind while it stared back at me.

Slowly, and with extreme care, I sat on the dirt, pulling him with me. We sat crosslegged and in complete silence, staying like that until the wolf hopped off the pile of trees, onto the barrels, then the ground, and loped into the forest.