“Northern Onterrible Summer” by Mark LeBourdais (©2026)

In retrospect, the worst part of my summer job planting trees in Northern Onterrible with my buddy Brett wasn't the 10-hour days of back-breaking work, six days a week. It wasn't the stifling heat in the daytime, followed by freezing nights where we shivered in our tent, afraid we'd die in our sleep. It wasn't even the awkwardness of having to listen to Marty, our crew leader, having noisy sex with his girlfriend in his tent every night. It was the bugs.

I'd been warned about the bugs, but they were much, much worse than I ever imagined. Every now and then, as we were working at the planting site in the wilderness somewhere between Sudbury and Timmins, we would hear someone in the distance scream something like: "AAGH! FUCK THESE FUCKING BUGS!" —_ Or: "I FUCKING HATE NATURE!" — Or: _"NATURE FUCKING SUCKS!" Then that poor soul would drop their shovel, tear off their mosquito net, throw down their shoulder bag full of saplings, run screaming across the rough terrain to the nearest body of water, and dive in fully clothed. And without fail, the very next day, they were gone. Every few days we lost another person this way, and a day or two later they'd be replaced by someone new. I often wondered how long Brett and I could hold out.

I soon discovered that the bugs have a precise schedule. Early morning, when temperatures are cooler, it's mosquito time. Then, as the air warms up, the mosquitoes' shift is over, and they retreat to the shade, replaced immediately by the day shift: the flies — deerflies, horseflies, and worst of all, blackflies. Then, as dusk approaches, the flies punch their timecards and retire for the day, instantly replaced by the well-rested mosquitoes who come roaring back again for their evening shift.

"Un-freaking-believable!", I exclaimed to Brett as I raced back to our tent after peeing in the woods the night we arrived. I zipped up the flaps in a mad rush, trying desperately to shut out the clouds of voracious mosquitoes. "This is insane, Brett! I don't know how we're going to survive up here, man."

"Good thing we've got these for when we're working," Brett said as he pulled two sets of mosquito netting headgear from his backpack.

"Yes!" I exclaimed with joy, grabbing one from him and pulling it over my head. "I'm never taking this off!" We both laughed.

But the next day, as we began to work under the blazing sun, we discovered that, while mosquito hats are quite effective at keeping the bugs at bay, they're also suffocatingly hot and claustrophobic. So some planters discarded them within their first couple of days, choosing death by bug bites over death by heat exhaustion. But both Brett and I were happy to boil in our own juices if it meant some relief from the bugs.

However, a few days later I discovered a fatal flaw in my mosquito net. I'd been planting Black Spruce saplings for about four hours on rough, hilly terrain under the midday sun when I stopped for a break. I leaned against my shovel, exulting in the sight of swarms of bugs bouncing off the netting in front of my face. Then I noticed a tiny blackfly on the outside of the mesh just above my eye. I stood frozen, gazing transfixed at this miniscule bloodthirsty predator as it crawled along the threads. Brett was working nearby, and he must have seen me frozen in place, because he yelled at me: "Hey Mark, you okay?" But I couldn't answer, because at that exact moment, the blackfly pushed through a tiny gap in the mesh and flipped onto the inside. I watched in horrified fascination as it crawled across the mesh. Suddenly it stopped and my heart froze. I could have sworn it was looking up at me, weighing its options. Then it flew directly into my left nostril.

"AAAAAGH!" I screamed as I ripped off the net and shook my head violently, causing what may well be the world's first documented case of self-induced whiplash. I lurched around, loudly snorting air out as I tried to expel the blackfly from my nose. But I could still feel it tickling, so I jammed my finger up my nostril and mashed it around. Grinning maniacally, I pulled my finger out and gazed at the squashed blackfly on my fingertip as if it were a prized truffle I had just dug up from the forest floor.

As if in retribution for my brutal murder of their friend, a large cloud of blackflies suddenly descended on me. I screamed in frustration, stomping and cursing as I waved both my hands around my head in a futile attempt to drive them away.

Then, in a sudden flash of inspiration, I recalled a scene from some movie I'd seen about the Vietnam War. Or maybe it was about aliens. I dropped to my knees and began digging up clods of earth with my hands, just as Brett arrived on the scene.

"Mark, what the hell are you doing, man?" he said, with a nervous laugh. "You've got a shovel right there, you know."

"Just wait, Brett, you'll see, you'll see," I muttered as I continued digging feverishly. When I got to the moist dark mud beneath the topsoil, I smeared it over every inch of my exposed skin and then leaped to my feet. "HAHA!" I cried in triumph. "Bring it on, you buzzing bloodthirsty biting bastards! You can't touch me now! I'll kill you all, just like I squashed your bastard blackfly buddy!"

Brett stared at me with his mouth hanging open. "Uh, Mark, dude, maybe this wasn't such a good idea, coming up here. I think you're losing it."

I dug up another pile of mud and held it up to his face. "No, no, Brett, you gotta try this mud trick, it's freaking genius! Look, the bugs are finally leaving me alone now!"

"Yeah, well, they're not the only ones," he said, shaking his head with a laugh as he walked away. But I realized Brett was right. I was losing it. In the end, though, it wasn't the bugs that made me quit that miserable job. It was the bear.

Two days later, while we were all out planting, a black bear rampaged through our campsite in search of food. When we returned and surveyed the wreckage, everyone was in shock. The bear had torn up everyone's tents and ransacked all of our supplies.

Perhaps because of my already aggravated state, I reacted a little more "emphatically" than the rest of the crew. With a scream of rage, I grabbed an axe from the woodpile and stormed off into the forest, ranting and raving as I crashed through the bush. I swore I would find and kill that bear if it took me all summer. Fortunately for all concerned, I couldn't sustain my demented revenge mission, and an hour later I wandered sheepishly back into camp. But everyone knew that I was done.

The next morning, I began the long drive home with a trunk full of ruined camping equipment, an empty wallet, and a badly bruised ego. It was some consolation, though, that back home in Toronto I was quickly able to find a nice boring office job stuffing envelopes. Not a hint of nature anywhere in sight. And the best part was that not one of those envelopes ever tried to bite or sting me, although I did get a couple of paper cuts on my tongue.

A couple of weeks later, I was driving home from my office job when I noticed a blackfly buzzing around inside my car window. "Tracked me down, eh, you little fucker?" I said out loud, gleefully smushing it against the glass with my thumb.

"Celebrate the small victories," I chuckled to myself as I rolled down the window and turned up the radio.