ILLICIT CROP ON HIGH

Don't bother looking for Eucalyptus Bay on a map. You won't find it.

But that's where we are, high up on a hill on an island somewhere in
the Strait of Georgia, crouched down in the salal and broom.
Somewhere overhead, an airplane drones.

"When there are planes around it drowns out the sound of the cars and
the joggers," explains my companion, I'll call him Steve - although,
like Eucalyptus Bay, it's not his real name. "This next part's kind
of exposed to the road, so we need to know if someone's coming."

Steve does a lot of listening when he's working in the woods, and for
good reason. It just takes one set of eyes to make his spring and
summer of hard work all for nothing. Police, thieves or just the idly
curious would start nosing around, and they might find the objects of
Steve's affections, nestled in the trees.

His girls.

He's fond of his girls, proud even, each marijuana plant representing
hours and hours of preparation, nurture and hope.

Growing marijuana in the B.C. bush is no job for the lazy, the weak
or for quitters. As Steve points out, water weighs 10 pounds a gallon
and he has packed a lot of it over the summer.

Before that, he mixed and packed soil, built small platforms in the
trees and hauled the dirt onto them. He packed moss and branches
around the whole works and climbed surrounding trees to trim branches
and make sure his girls get the light they need.

"The sun only comes so high, even in summer," he says, pointing to
the horizon. "I had to figure out which branches to cut out so they
would get the sun, while leaving some directly overhead, so they
can't be seen from the air."

The plane's drone fades at last and Steve cups his hands to his ears. Nothing.

"Radio silence from here on in," he whispers. "Follow me and try not
to make a trail. Carry the water in your left hand, away from the
road. Do what I do and if you hear anyone coming, just drop and don't
move. They can't see you from there if you're still."

Steve sets out, moving quickly but carefully, stepping on stones,
preferably with no moss, ducking under branches rather than breaking
them, leaving as dim a trail as he can. I do my best to follow, but
twice he glares back when I snap a twig.

As we scurry quickly across the side of the hill, I can see the cause
of his concern. The road below is visible, as might we be to someone
driving or walking on it - if we aren't careful.

Steve however, is very careful. He drops to the ground and I'm an eye
blink behind, flat on the ground, still and quiet.

"Joggers," he hisses.

From below I hear the chatter of the two joggers as they pass, a man
and a woman. We lay quiet as they pass by and then fade.

Steve crouches, listening still, and then straightens.

"Come on."

I follow and then suddenly we're there. There's just five plants at
this site, he says. All the rest in this patch had shown themselves
to be males just a week ago, and he'd killed them immediately.

"Sixty per cent of my pants were boys this time overall," he said as
he reached up into a tree to water the wide-leafed plant. "This patch
had more than its share."

Male marijuana plants, he explained, a spread their pollen through
the patch, causing the female plants to produce seeds and stop
flowering. It's these flowers which are sought by those who smoke
marijuana. Males are killed on sight.

The nests in the trees are designed to discourage deer from eating
the valuable plants, as well as make them more difficult to find.
While impractical for the mass grow operations run by criminal gangs,
very small operations such as his can do well.

Deer are just one of many dangers to an outdoor marijuana grow operation.

As Steve points out, mice can eat the seeds in the ground and slugs
are not shy about chewing through the bottom of a stem - killing the
entire plant. There's bad seed that never germinates or turns male,
drought that can whither a plant in just days, bears that threaten
the grower rather than the seedlings, mould that can wipe out the
entire crop after it has been harvested. Worst of all, there's people.

While Steve prides himself on the thought someone could walk right
through the middle of his pot patch and not even know it, people are
by far the biggest danger to any pot grower.

The watering done, Steve again leads the way. As we get to the
exposed area of the trail I hear a vehicle approaching on the road
below just as I'm climbing over a log and I drop straight down maybe
three, four feet.

Ahead, Steve is crouched motionless behind some broom. He's in what
he calls his drabs, a dull green shirt and brown trousers, designed
to blend into the woods. He never wears bright colours, but he never
wears camouflage either.

"That's too obvious," he says. "If someone does see you, you're
obviously hiding."

The car passes, then another, and then Steve pokes his head up and
looks incredulously at me.

"You OK man?" he whispers. "That was quite the jump."

We scurry across the exposed area until we're back in the relative
safety of the deep, dark, welcoming woods.

Soon, in two weeks, maybe three, the flowering will be complete. The
girls will be full-grown mommas and it will be time for each of them
to leave the nest.