Hot Rocks by Bob Ploss

It was a real snotty day on the top of the east side of the Okanagan Valley. We had been planting all day in a late season mix of cold horizontal rain, sleet, and ice pellets. By quitting time it was a full on snow storm.

That was an Evergreen Co-op show, circa 1977. In those days, we did not have hot showers to get the circulation restarted and the mud off. Every camp built a sweat lodge – a big circular pole frame covered with old rugs, tree boxes and canvas. Toward the end of the day the cook would light a big bonfire with a stack of melon sized rocks mixed in. When we got back to camp, someone would shovel the hot rocks into the centre of the lodge. When the rocks were ready, they would sing out: "Hot Rocks!" and we would all have a nice steamy, hot sweat together.

On the way home that day we were waved down by three high school kids. They had taken daddy's shiny new 4x4 out for a ride. We took a quick look and decided it was well and truly stuck. We offered them a ride back to camp. It was a tight squeeze. The kids were a bit uneasy, stuffed in a crew cab with six very muddy, smelly, hairy, hippy treeplanters. Something, I'm sure, right out of their parents' worst nightmare.

When we got back to camp, it was hot soup, fresh baked scones, tea or beer and some good BC bud. The kids clutched their tea mugs and huddled off to one side. Their eyes were as big as saucers – they were surely on the fast track to Hell.

Someone leaned into the cook tent and yelled: "Hot Rocks!" Everyone started tearing their clothes off. As soon as the boobs and the dicks started appearing, the three kids ran straight out the back door into the snow storm and disappeared.

I looked over at my friend, Richard Padmos. He shrugged. "Let's grab a sauna. We can pick them up on the road later." After a good, hot sweat I filled up a thermos, Richard drove, and we found them a few kilometres down the road, almost frozen solid. They couldn't even talk until we got all the way down to Penticton. Even then it was just a few terse directions to their homes. They finally managed a feeble: "Thanks."

For the rest of the contract all anyone had to say was: "Hot Rocks!" and everybody would just crack up. We may have permanently damaged those poor boys.

Bob Ploss, treeplanter/foreman/contract manager 1971 – 1991, +/- 850,000 trees