Evergreen is the story of Everett West and the T.V crew of his survival show, 'Going West' and their attempt to walk across the Pacific Forest, from California to Russia.
It will be available on Amazon on March 22nd
The Pacific Forest stretched seven thousand Kilometers from California to the Russian border. I rubbed my hands and blew into them. I wished I didn't have to go in there, or could at least wait until tomorrow. It was a cold day for filming. Forty feet in front of where my team stood was a wall of branches and thorns. Once we passed it, we'd be running off of old maps and intuition.
I looked back to the rest of my crew. We were part of a show called Going West starring me, Everett West. The six of us were getting ready to head into the forest this morning. We were already ‘in’ the Pacific, but the manicured park area we were in didn’t count. The network would not call it an adventure if there were a bench in the background. I walked over to my camerawoman, Cheryl. She was leaning against one of the massive pines that lined the edge of the forest and making last-minute checks on her equipment.
She pointed the camera at me for half a second, and I snapped into a better posture and adopted my host smile. The red light in the corner never came on, and she lowered the camera again. She was using a little handheld thing to save weight. I hated losing quality on the shots.
“Almost ready?” I asked once I got close enough to have a conversation. She looked up from the camera for a moment and scoffed at me.
“We aren’t setting off for an hour,” she pointed out. She was right; the plan was to head into the forest at 8:00 a.m. We wanted to be far enough in for a good canopy shot before nightfall.
“We could go early,” I countered. “I would like to go early.”
“You don’t always get what you want.”
“Just most of the time.”
“Just most of the time,” she repeated. She was less happy about that point than I was. Her sandy-blonde hair drooped over her eyes as she looked down into the camera, and she brushed it away in a huff. This morning it had been filled with split ends and small knots, but the makeup department did wonders for her.
“So half an hour?” I asked. She didn’t bother responding. She rolled her eyes and continued to work with the small handheld. She finally shut the viewfinder and handed me the camera. I spent a second looking at it before I grabbed it. “Is this the new confessional?” I asked.
“Well, you broke the last one, so the network wanted me to keep it safe until we were here. We don’t have spares, so try to keep this in good condition for the year.”
“I did last year,” I said. “Nobody told me the camera I had for the falls shot wasn’t waterproof.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a falls shot,” she pointed out. I always had a personal camera for confessionals. I’d broken the rules last season to jump off a waterfall with it. The shot had made it into the episode.
“It worked, though.”
“Yup,” she said. “This one is solar powered—”
“Like everything.”
“Like everything,” she repeated, “and waterproof.” She bent down to her bag and pulled out another camera that looked a touch more professional than mine. “Not a lot of lakes out there for you to fuck it up with, though.”
“Hey, Jesse,” I shouted to one of my other crew members. He was around forty feet away helping Roger tie up the climbing rope. There was a ton of it. “How many lakes are on our way?”
“Something like thirty,” he shouted back without taking his eyes off of his coiling job. “They counted twenty-nine on the last flyover, but that doesn’t count the ones we can’t see from the air.”
“Thanks,” I shouted back. We had maps of our route thanks to research teams. The forest was over 7,000 kilometres wide, so flyovers were the best way to get information. There had been teams as deep as 700 kilometres in, but we were trying to waltz on through the middle. The task wasn’t as impossible as it was tedious. There was no reason to walk for nine months when a plane could get you to Asia in five hours.
Our information meant that the first few hundred kilometres would be smooth sailing. Past that we had historical accounts we couldn’t really trust. According to our assigned reading, Alexander the Great had traversed the Pacific with his army. He had ‘conquered the new world’ 2,000 years before the first Europeans had arrived there. Coincidentally that trip was also how Alexander the Great kicked the bucket.
“Everett,” Cheryl cut in, stopping my internal monologue, “can you walk a little forward and prep for the entry shot?”
“Perfect.” I walked back over to where I had been earlier. I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder. Without it, everyone would think the opening shot was set up. I turned back to Cheryl. “Is this far enough?” She was already looking through the viewfinder of her commercial camera. She gave me a thumbs-up.
I rolled my shoulders and took a few deep breaths; the first shot was always important. It set the mood for the episode and, in this case, the season. All thirteen episodes would be dedicated to our trek through the forest, so we needed to deliver on them. I looked back to Cheryl one last time before taking my first steps.
The chilled air hung on my skin as I got closer to the edge of the forest. The last frost of winter crackled under my feet, and I crushed last year's pine needles. Most trees in the Pacific were species of evergreen. They swallowed up enough light that there were areas inside that the sun hadn’t hit for years. It sucked that it was cloudy today.
I came to the edge of the wall of thorns that stood between me and the forest. Now that I was inches from the branches, I could see through them. It wouldn’t be hard to walk through. I threw my arm in front of me and brushed the closest branch out of the way. I strode forward, and needles raked themselves over me. It was only a second before I was through the thicket and standing in the relative openness of the forest.
The forest was far from sparse. The only reason that the ground was open was that the trees were too massive to need branches this far down. I looked up one of the massive trunks. The fog of my breath blocked my view for half a second before I could see the top of the nearest tree. It must have been at least two hundred feet up. Every tree around me seemed to be larger than the last.
Something skittered in the distance; then it fell silent. I took a step forward, and the skittering returned. I lost track of the sound as it disappeared somewhere into the forest. We weren’t going into the forest just yet, we’d chase it down in an hour.
“Everett,” Cheryl called from the other side of the wall of branches. She sounded far away. “We got the shot,” she continued. “Come back!”
I took one last glance out into the woods. A smile crept over my face. The forest was going to look great on camera. The size of the trees made us look like miniatures. Episodes where it seemed as if we were in danger were the highest rated of the series.
I walked back through the branches. The trees did their best to stop me from leaving. I pushed the last one out of the way and almost walked right into Cheryl. “Stop fucking around in there,” she chided. She pulled up her camera and showed me the video screen before I had even reached her.
On the video, I strode forward into the forest as if I were walking into a coffee shop. It looked casual. Cheryl read my thoughts and cast me a glance. “You look too confident.”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said as I grabbed the camera away, “and my pack is a little too low.”
“It is?”
“I have to show off my ass, Cheryl.” She didn’t focus on getting it in shots, but the studio always added a lot of shots of me in compromising positions. According to them, it helped our rerun ratings.
“Whatever, we’re redoing it.” She pulled away the camera. “This time act like you’re nervous.”
“Everett West is never nervous,” I countered. “He takes on any challenge.”
“Okay,” she said, “can you at least act like you’re about to go into a forest for nine months?”
“I’ll do what I can,” I sighed. “An actor’s work is never done.”
“You’re not an actor,” she said as she set up the shot again.
“I’m trained to be one,” I shouted back before returning to my starting spot. This time, I needed to be nervous about a bunch of stupid trees. I checked that the bag was high enough by patting my ass. I turned back to Cheryl and waited for the thumbs-up.
She gave me the go-ahead, and I began to walk forward. This time it wasn’t a stride; it was the same walk I’d made to confessional when I’d known I’d done something wrong as a child. The forest wasn’t just a group of trees; it was a threat to the Everett that was on camera. He needed every step to be calculated to avoid something horrible happening to him and his crew. He was the only thing between his crew and certain death.
I didn’t bring my hand up to push the branches out of the way this time. The trees slowly licked me as I slipped into the thicket. It was only a moment before I was on the other side and once again staring out into the most open part of the forest. Whatever had been skittering earlier hadn’t come back. I turned around and counted to ten before walking out.
“That better?” I asked as I shoved the last branches out of the way. Cheryl was leaning against her tree, her nose buried in the video screen. I reached her as the shot ended on her camera. I wasn’t walking into the forest this time; the forest swallowed me.
“Good job,” she said after a second of pause. “I think that’s what it needs to look like.” Without waiting for my opinion, Cheryl leaned down and grabbed a small case from her bag. She unzipped it and pulled a black hard drive out of it. She slotted her camera’s card into it. We had a couple dozen of those things spread out between us. We needed to hold all the raw footage that would make thirteen episodes.
Cheryl started to tap her fingers over the hard drive as she waited for the video to upload. I heard the crackle of leaves as Jesse joined us. He had a good three inches on me; we never appeared beside each other in a shot. “So,” he began, “Syd hit a snag with the lights, and she needs another hour. Nothing big; she needs to reset the cycles or whatever.” He shrugged as he finished talking.
“So we’re going to be late setting out?” I asked, joining Cheryl against the tree.
“Yeah,” he said, “by fifteen or so. Nothing big. I already spoke to the other guys on the team.”
“Everyone else already knows?” I asked. I couldn’t be mad at Jesse; he was just the messenger.
“Yep, and I think everyone else is done with their stuff.” After a second, he turned to Cheryl. “You need help with anything?”
“I’m good,” she said as she kept the same rhythm on her hard drive. I joined Jesse in the sport of judging her for a second.
“You excited, Everett?” he asked, giving up on holding a decent conversation with Cheryl.
“Eh,” I started and finished. There wasn’t much to say. It was just another day at work.
An hour later we stood together at the edge of the forest. I’d already done the shot of me going in alone, and now we needed to start the adventure as a team. I tapped my foot as I waited for Cheryl to finish fiddling with her equipment. Alex started to say something about keeping our eyes peeled, but I barely listened.
I started to walk forward before the rest of the crew did. Syd jogged a few steps to keep up as the rest of them lagged behind. There was nine months of walking ahead, and I didn’t plan to spend too much of it standing still. I shoved the twigs and needles out of my way as I hit the wall of thorns.
A sharp branch raked along my cheek as I pushed into the Pacific. A red line was left where it drew on me. I hissed and pulled out my phone too look it over once I was past the branches. I tsked myself, so much for a perfect run.
