By NEIL HORNER

News Reporter

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.

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