Working in the hot sweaty sun was not something she aspired to. She would rather lie under an umbrella and tan her legs. But she understood the importance of giving service. She had been raised with it.
Throughout her years in a traditional youth group, she had earned badges and beads for various projects. Now she was set to help replant a forest that had burned down the previous summer. Luckily the camp itself had not burned down and all the girls were evacuated safely. Now they were helping to repair the damaged area.
She hated the process, but she was in strong favor of the outcome – reforestation. Even though it was Fall, the sun was still too hot to be planting as far as she was concerned. The Rangers in charge issued flats of old school milk cartons each filled with a little green fringed seedling of pine or fir. They knew that some of the plants would not survive and still others would have to be thinned out once they began growing.
Forest management is what they called it, and they had a lot of work to do. The mountains and the lakes were primary recreation areas. The trees were needed to maintain the ecosystem. All these terms were just beginning to make sense to Kristie, but she wouldn’t fully understand them until she reached adulthood.
She had not thought to wear a hat. She should have been cool enough in the blue Bermuda shorts and white cotton blouse she wore with tennis shoes and no socks, but she was burning up. The sun tan lotion she had applied earlier did not truly protect her from getting sunburned. She would be ill for at least two days from the exposure and her nose and shoulders were sure to peel.
A big water truck followed them in the fields and stopped to offer drinks to both the workers and the small plants themselves. Paper cups were used for the workers – no plastic. People drank from the cups, crumpled them up, and simply discarded them where they stood. “Somebody is going to have to pick those up,” Kristie thought to herself.
A couple of big guys carried buckets of water down each row to initiate the little trees into the earth. The planters were supposed to put a small cup of water in each hole before transferring the seedlings from their milk cartons into the dry ground. Kristie hoped the first rains would come soon so the little trees would live.
Feeling so hot in the middle of the day she worried that the trees wouldn’t make it. If she only had a bottle of cold Coca Cola, she felt that she could work for the rest of the afternoon. She was exhausted. She remembered the day they were evacuated from the fire and how scared they had all been.
All the girls were worried about their horses. The bus was usually filled with happy chatter and singing, but it was silent with weeping. Unless you have been a teenage girl who loved a horse, you might not understand. Those horses held all the love that lived in their teenage hearts. They had only really loved their animals so far as they were still too young to have known the love of a man.
They were evacuated to a new men’s prison, a large concrete building with dormitories filled with new bunk beds and a cafeteria that gleamed with stainless steel fixtures. The cooks were oohing and ahhing over the state of the art kitchen as they began to prepare the evening meal: baked chicken thighs, mashed potatoes, and succotash.
As soon as they got off the bus, they all had to use the bathroom. All the stalls were filled, so Kristie pulled down her pants and sat right down in a stainless steal urinal. She didn’t understand how this was humorous to the counselors and to the older girls as well. What the Hell! How was she supposed to know what a urinal was? She had never been in a men’s restroom before.
She realized her mistake when there was no toilet paper and one of the girls snuck up and flushed her while she was still finishing up. Now her butt was all wet and there were no paper towels either. Gawd! Sometimes she just hated people… The forest was on fire, they had to leave their horses, they were in a men’s prison, but at least they were going to have a good dinner. They all got a free week at a new camp the next year.
She knew for a fact that the forest they planted grew up only to burn down again four decades later. After thinking about her adventure she only just realized that for all these years she should have been checking the box that asks, “Have you ever been arrested or incarcerated?”
Well, she did spend a couple of nights at a men’s prison…
(First Published 3/28/13)
