I was divorced, had no job, and was living on fumes of my new bank account. One more forestry job awaited me. This one was in Placerville. Scott, my crew leader the summer before, up at Big Bear Lake, would be my crew chief again. I was not really into any of this anymore. But I had to work. I had to do something to get my mind off of what had become my life. Instead of determining what had killed the trees as we had the previous summer, this job was all about finding out why trees do better in some areas than in others. The part of this I never liked was selecting the healthiest tree in the area to cut down for closer study.
The competition to get forestry jobs must have been stiffer than I knew. We had an OK crew. We worked pretty well together, as a rule. But when my Forest Service boss came up to see us in the field, suddenly no one would do what I suggested. Nothing says trouble to your supervisor faster than if the people you are in charge of refuse to do what you request in this sort of fieldwork. They had never had trouble when I was doing this before. And when they had their turn for this part, I never questioned their decisions.
This, I would find out much later, was a calculated attack on me, designed to ensure that they would get a job next year, at my expense. It worked. The next year, I re-applied for this job and was turned down. Scott thought it seemed fishy to him that I wouldn’t be rehired. He spoke to the other crew members, and they admitted to setting me up to look bad in front of my boss. My boss reconsidered after Scott spoke with him about it, and they later called to offer me the job if I still wanted it. I turned him down. My forestry career was done. But it was good to know that Scott, who had left me to almost die on a hillside in San Bernardino, had gone to bat for me.
Part of the reason I gave up on forestry was that I had had it with the lifestyle and job uncertainty. I would spend all “off-season” trying to convince a potential employer that I was done with forestry, so please hire me. Then I would have to dump that and go to a forestry job if they called me. I also disliked the politics of the job, having such an impact on whether you worked or not. Add in the remote areas you would have to work in, where you would have to work near people who seem friendly until they are up against you for the same limited job opportunities. It just stopped being fun, if it ever had been fun.
My last summer forestry job in Placerville was about healing myself. I took a step towards that by telling myself I was not to blame for what happened to my marriage. I took a giant leap backward by agreeing to go on a date with a friend of a friend of a co-worker. I had been told this friend was not involved with anyone. This turned out to be false. I was told she was looking for a nice guy. Evidently, that was not true either.
I asked her out to dinner. She accepted the invitation. We talked. We ate. We laughed. I felt better after my past few months, in which I felt I was slowly dying inside. Back at her place to say goodnight, she moved in to kiss me. And it was not just a friendly kiss on the cheek. Not that it was an all-out passionate lip lock, but I do not kiss like that unless it has the potential to be serious. Putting it with what we had said about spending more time together, I got the idea she wanted to spend more time with me.
Evidently, that was the last thing on her mind. After a week of not returning my calls, the mutual friend filled me in. She was just using me to make her boyfriend pay more attention to her. She had not really wanted to go out with me, but did so in order not disappoint me. That is always a real boost there. Just what I needed to hear after my marriage and how it had died.
Hey, just say no. The rejection upfront can be tough, but not as much as being rejected after you think there is potential for something in the future. And knock off the kissing unless you mean it the way it seems. Was it payback for the dinner? I would rather not be paid back that way. If payback is needed, I take cash or checks with a photo ID. As you can gather, I never had a chance to tell this woman how I felt about our very brief dating adventure. Anyway, what was I thinking? I clearly could not be ready for anything like this yet. I found out a bit later that she had done a similar thing to Scott. But Scott, being more of a player than I, got a bit more involved than I did. He was just what she was looking for to make her boyfriend jealous.
Overall, it was a calmer summer than the previous one. No near-death plane or car trips. No ring-loss or wife-loss experiences. If you don’t include my co-worker stabbing me in the back, or my brief return to dating, it was pretty boring.
Memory is the Key 