Summer of Love

It was the first day of the rest of her life. She had gotten herself a job tree planting for the summer. Chasing after that dreamy aesthetic of the hippy movement, she had applied to this job, despite the naysayers who had been telling her the work was too hard, the days were too long, and the sun was too hot. No, to her this would be the most wonderful summer of her life. She imagined herself, filthy and covered in sweat from a long day’s work, not bothering to wash, because why would you when everyone around you was filthy too? She pictured a group of free-spirits, like herself, living in tents in the bush, sleeping in hammocks with blisters on their hands and freckled sun-kissed cheeks. 

And now, the time had come; this dream of hers that had been growing bigger and bigger was finally a reality. She was leaned against a car in the Walmart parking lot in Prince Geroge, BC. The whole entourage of people she would be living with and working with that summer were starting to gather in that same parking lot, as the fresh spring breeze tickled her cheeks. She had arrived at this quaint city a few days prior to buy the gear she still needed and to meet her own crew and be trained by her foreman, so by the time this fateful first day arrived, she had a couple of people she already knew and could talk to, to spare herself from the agony of standing alone. 

She wasn’t sure if this was what she imagined or not. It was hard to tell. She had butterflies in her stomach but was trying to keep her cool, because after all, this was her first year, she was only a rookie. She didn’t know how to present herself, so she tried her best to be utterly herself. She enjoyed the spectacle of everyone gathered in this Walmart parking lot. People were eating potluck lunches; sharing hummus while sitting on the concrete, there was a frisbee being thrown around and some other people standing around the car she was leaning on, just chatting. She was listening carefully to figure out who had been doing this for a while and who was new, like herself. It was hard to tell. 

When they finally got to camp, it was time to set up. She knew that this had been the right decision, to spend her summer out in the bush. The whole camp consisted of about fifty people, including all the planters, the crew bosses, the cooks, and the supervisor. Collectively, they started to unload the truck that contained all the building blocks for their temporary home. The adrenaline was rushing, as she looked around at the people building the roof for the eating tent, the people digging holes for the Port-a-Potties, and the only screwing together a big walk-in fridge. Before she knew it, the empty gravel pit they had pulled into looked like a small settlement. Everyone scattered and started to set up their own personal tents, scattered in clusters around the main ‘settlement.’ 

Once she had her tent, and all her things set up inside, she laid down. She took a couple deep breaths. She was nervous about making friends, it wasn’t as easy as it was when she was a child. She knew only the scattered bits of information about the people that she had observed during that day, and she knew she had snippets of knowledge about only a few of the many people she would be living alongside. What she didn’t know, was that this mismatched group of people would be her tribe for the next three months. She didn’t realize that these people she had tried her best to observe that day were not simply her coworkers, because at twenty-one years old, she had no concept of the intimacy that can grow when people suffer together. She stayed in her tent until it was time to emerge for dinner. 

As she walked down the small hill from her tent to the kitchen trailer and eating tent, someone caught her eye. She had only seen him once or twice that day, she knew he was loud, seemingly the ‘life of the party,’ and she had overheard him telling someone that it was his first year too. Something struck her about him this time. Maybe it was seeing him up close, maybe it was the lighting from the setting sun, but he had the warmest, most gentle eyes that she had seen in a long time. She smiled at him, then let him walk down the hill ahead of her, staying quiet this time. That evening while everyone was eating dinner, she was aware of where he was the whole time, even though he wasn’t sitting at the same table. 

As the sun started to near the horizon, she brushed her teeth and climbed back up the hill to her tent. She laid there smiling, unable to fall asleep. She had made it her mission to learn more about this handsome man with the welcoming eyes. 

A few weeks went by, and she managed to talk to him many times. He was on a different crew than her, but they would talk every night at dinner time, to see who had planted more trees that day. She had always been competitive because she grew up playing with all her boy cousins; in her mind, she could never be the slowest, or the weakest and had to be the smartest. Each day at dinner time, he asked her how many trees she had planted that day with an impish gleam in his eyes, and she would ask him the same, hoping to have done better than him each day. Each day she anticipated this interaction, and she would try her best to serve her dinner at the exact right moment so that they could be at the same table by ‘chance.’ 

They started to share more and more details about their own stories, and how their lives had ended them up here, in the bush. He told her about his younger sister, and she had never heard a twenty-two-year-old man talk so highly of his own little sister. He talked and talked about Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation, and how they were the revolutionaries that inspired him the most. He talked about the hippy movement, and the Summer of Love, and Woodstock. He knew a lot of American History. He asked her questions about herself and listened intently. He was intellectual, and down to earth, and goofy. He told her that he wishes he had been born so that he could have experienced all those eras at the age he was now. She loved watching the way his face was animated when he talked about all these things that excited him. She liked the way he listened to her. She had been captivated by his warm eyes immediately, but she was growing to know that there was a lot more beauty and depth to him than simply his eyes. She left their every encounter with the feeling of butterflies in her stomach, and wondered if maybe he felt it too? 

One day, her crew had been the first to arrive back at the camp. She showered and when she got out of the shower, covered only by her towel, she saw his crew’s truck pull up. She walked a little bit slower getting back to her tent, hoping he would be able to see her sun-kissed shoulders, and the muscles in her back that were growing stronger each day from the work that they were doing. When she had changed, she went and found him and found out that he had beat her personal best by a mile. He had a cheeky grin on his face, proud of the way he had kicked her butt that day. Despite her frustration that he had beat her, she looked right into his sparkling eyes and saw that there were little salt crystals that decorated his eyelashes. 

“Your salty eyelashes are pretty cute,” she told him with a grin. 

 He smiled and it was right at that moment that she was sure he felt it too. He touched her lower back and there was electricity that rushed through her whole body. He leaned to her ear and asked quietly,

“ Can I kiss you?” 

She leaned in and it was the most magical part of her summer thus far. That night, she invited him into her tent to hang out, and to talk. He told her that she had been the subject of discussion in his journal for weeks, ever since that first day when she smiled at him on the hill. She was ecstatic. They talked for hours that night, and it felt like she had known him far longer than the six weeks that had gone by since she met him. She felt so comfortable there with him. They talked and laughed, and as it got later tried to whisper but would break into giggles. In the early hours of the morning, they fell asleep holding each other. 

When her alarm woke them in the morning, she insisted that he stay for just a couple of extra minutes laying there with her. The morning sun warmed her tent, so it didn’t feel so unbearable to get out of the comfort of her sleeping bag. When it was finally time to get on with the day she kissed him one more time and he smiled.

“You know, this is the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love after all.”  

She knew he was her person, and that this was surely going to last.