Treeplanting #12: A DAY IN THE LIFE on a Brinkman Crew

Lol hardhats

My alarm goes off at 6am, but generally, I don't leave my tent until around 6:40. Dropping some things off in the truck on my way to the mess tent, I see Tula already sitting in the truck. She is keeping her seat safe so as to not be left behind. Unfortunately, she probably will be.

Here is the lunch table in the morning: the selection of breads and wraps in the back, various spreads and toppings (meats, greens, sprouts, pesto, hummus, beets, quinoa, etc.), and one container each of candy, chips, and nuts. Fruits are stored underneath the table. Opposite this table is the breakfast table, with an assortment of potatoes, bacon,  and usually something like pancakes or breakfast bagels. Nina also makes eggs to order in the kitchen. The breakfast table also has homebaked squares and energy bars for people to pack in their lunches. Bee, the cook's assistant, likes to experiment so these squares are exciting and different every day.

After making my lunch and loading all my gear into the truck, I generally take my breakfast with me for the drive. Here we've got a cup of coffee and a large mug full of bacon, potatoes, and ketchup. The hour-long drives to the block every morning are more than enough time to enjoy a meal.

Trucks roll at 7!

After arriving, we all climb out of the truck and take a solid look at what we're up against today. Here's one of our lovely frost-covered blocks when we arrive around 8am.

By the light, this is clearly multiple hours later. Let's ignore that. Opening the door to the Fist in the morning, we pull out boxes of trees to bag up according to the daily mix of species.

A small bag-up's worth of trees. Around 300 trees of four different species - spruce, pine, larch, and fir. A typical mix could be something like 45% pine, 30% spruce, 20% larch, and 5% Fir. Each species has different specifications - spruce goes in wet and shady ground, larch goes in sunny and dry ground, Fir goes is shady and dry ground, while pine goes basically anywhere else.

Bags fully loaded, ready to head out into the land, with my shovel leaning against it. So artfully arranged.

Successfully caught a photo of someone wearing cork boots - finally! If you're a track person, they're kind of like extremely heavy duty track spikes. Aside from being practical, these guys are lots of fun for walking up and down logs and through slash like an insect or something.

We are all excited to notice that we have entirely small trees - only pine and spruce and they are all in bundles of twenty. We all have a lovely and light first bag-up feeling almost weightless with our tiny trees. Unfortunately, the reason we have tiny trees is so that we can bag heavy in order to plant all the way to the back of the piece and fill it. The block has a sort of bottleneck and, ideally, we would be able to back heavy enough to plant the back before pinching off the bottleneck.

"You know," Molly says, "If you can bag 360 of the big trees, you can carry 500 of these small trees." 

Bullshit. The next bag-up, I take 500 trees and feel it immediately. No matter how you phrase it, hauling 500 fucking trees up a hill feels like hauling 500 fucking trees up a hill. None of this "oh it's just like 360 big trees" shit. It's not. It's 500 fucking rees.

Disclaimer: Molly is 100% correct here. Trees are measured by weight and 500 of the small trees is literally the exact same as 360 bigger trees. However, for the sake of my own grumpiness, it is the opinion of this blog that she is wrong.

With 500 trees, my bag-ups take around 2 to 2.5 hours. This is much longer that my average bag-up and make the day go by much quicker. 

After bagging heavy, the bottleneck fills out nicely and all finishes well.

The view always becomes more and more lovely as the fog clears.

What a beautiful little freshly planted spruce baby making its way into the world. You can tell it was probably a bitch to plant because it's in the middle of a pile of slash. You can't tell very clearly, but whoever planted this managed to find an actual section of dirt in the middle of this slash pile in order to plant the thing. The plug of each tree must be entirely in dirt.

"Cattle planting" is something nobody likes. At the end of the day, we finish our piece and begin looking for more land before the day's out, usually jumping in with another crew. Sometimes this happens to multiple different crews in the same area, resulting in a "cattle plant". Too many people on one block results in frantic scrambling to get trees in and not fall behind the giant herd of people around you. There are 10 tree planters cattle planting in this photo - can you spot them?

The lovely feeling of dropping your bags on the ground at the end of the day.

Once everyone's piled their things into the back the Fist at the end of the day, we lock it up and climb into the cab, ready for the long drive back to camp.

Turning off the logging road and back onto the highway, we sometimes find ourselves stuck behind a coal train. We all settle in - coal trains are notoriously long, often pulling several hundred cars at once. From where we are parked on this day, the train curves away from us so there is no way of telling how much of it is left. We entertain ourselves by seeing how many variations of "shit tits pussy dick" we can spot in the so-elegant graffiti on the train.

On the drive back from work, Jasper and Damian often become involved in heated and completely useless arguments. Two of the most recent ones have incuded: Are "fat" and "meat" completely separate things or can fat be considered part of meat? And if a train has a caboose on both ends and goes back and forth rather than having to turn the whole thing around, does it have a front and back?

In this particular scenario with the rain, there was also a caboose being pulled in between two regular cars. This initiated a stream of jokes about how the train is actually moving in a circle (and from our view of the train, it very well could have been).

Eventually the train ends with yet another caboose on the back.

Arriving back at camp around 5:30pm, we pile all of our things into the dry tent where they will hopefully dry out before tomorrow morning. On cold days and rainy days, this is the first real real warmth a planter feels all day. While the fire in the mess tent is much nicer, people are often reluctant to leave this one and make the trip from the dry tent into the mess tent. This stove is where I burnt my nylon tights onto my leg last year. The mark is still there.

In the mess tent every evening, there is always a fresh pot of soup and homemade bread waiting for us that Nina and Bee have made. Sometimes, planters bring ingredients back from the block to give the cooks. While every soup they make is delicious, my favourite is the nettle and morel mushroom soup made from the nettles and mushrooms off the block.

While dinner is "officially" at 6, it generally starts around 6:15 or 6:30. When Nina and Bee have it all laid out on the same table where lunches are made in the morning, Nina opens up one of the crew cabs and honks the horn in multiple long bursts, calling all the planters into the mess tent for dinner. Often, Nina and Bee will come up with some sort of themed meal, like Indian Night or Thai Night. Whatever the meal is, it is plentiful and delicious. Everyone offers a thank you to Nina and Bee for their hard work.

From around 7:30-8:30, people wander around doing their own things. I usually join the group of people reading by the fire. With the exception of Sparky, it is much the same group as last year - Francois, Chad, and sometimes Sophia. This year, Vincent's boyfriend has come planting as well and he often joins us as well.

Somewhere between 8:30 and 9, people clear out of the mess tent and head toward their tents. It's another full day of planting tomorrow and everyone will be climbing out of their tents in 8 hours' time.

PS - don't forget about the Palestine delegation in which I am participating this August! Around $200 has been raised so far - lots more to go! To donate, go to http://cpt.org/donate and follow the steps to donate. Toward the end of the process, there will be a box that says "donation inspired by". Be sure to enter my name in this section to ensure that the donation goes to this delegation.

Treeplanting #11: The Short Story of Sophia and Her Lactate-Snorting Shaman

One day, Sophia and I are planting on the same crew. I have a runny nose and, while bouncing out the back of the block together, I find myself sniffling at the most inopportune times.

“I love snorting spruce needles,” I grunt sarcastically, scrunching my nose and trying to squeeze out the spruce needles, “It’s my favourite thing to do.”

“No, don’t snort spruce needles – no snorting anything this year!” Sophia responds cheerily without looking up, “Fentanyl overdoses galore this year – no snorting! No cocaine, no MDMA, nothing.”

“Who snorts MDMA?” I ask as we approach each other before bouncing back on our lines.

“I think you can snort anything really,” she answers, “I had a friend once who put everything up his nose – was convinced it was the most effective way to do it. He was lactose intolerant and, before eating, he would always open one capsule of lactate and snort it.”

“How does that make sense?” I inquire doubtfully.

“I don’t think it does,” Sophia shrugs, “but it made sense to him and he was one of the smartest, most interesting people I’ve ever met.”

Several days later, while sitting in the mess tent, I ask Sophia more about this lactate-snorting friend of hers.

“I’ll tell you everything except his name, but we can call him ‘The Shaman’,” she laughs, “since he self-identified himself as a shaman.”

The Short Story of Sophia and the Lactate-Snorting Shaman

Several years ago, Sophia met The Shaman while at the Shambhala music festival (naturally) with a friend. She and her friend were about to go on their first ever mushroom trip when The Shaman overheard them.

‘Oh, you’re doing mushrooms for the first time?!’ he asked energetically, ‘Can I join you? I love watching people on their first time taking mushrooms.’ The three of them then met up a few days after Shambhala and all tripped out on mushrooms. It was a wonderful experience, but this was not the highlight of Sophia’s interactions with The Shaman.

After the festival, The Shaman was house-sitting his sister’s cottage on Vancouver Island and invited Sophia and her friend to join him there. They agreed and the plan actually followed through, which is highly unusually of spur-the-moment friendships at Shambhala or any other music festival really. Sophia volunteered to supply food and drinks for the weekend, The Shaman provided the location and the drugs, and Sophia’s friend provided herself (“Which was really all she could be relied upon to bring,” Sophia chuckles happily). So, as it happened, Sophia kept the three of them fed all weekend while The Shaman kept them high all weekend.

During their weekend together, The Shaman made fascinating concoctions of various drugs, asking the girls’ experience with each of the drugs before doling out specific measurements. Generally, Sophia and her friend were given much smaller portions since they’d had less experience with each of them.

“After snorting one of the lines, it felt like my whole mind exploded into a sort of sensory overdrive,” reminisces Sophia, “it was amazing, really. I could see Octarine:  the colour of magic.”

At one point during the weekend, the three of them were all standing naked together (as sometimes happens when high). They all just admired the beauty of each other’s bodies with no pressure of sex and no fear or vulnerability at all. The three of them just sat in each other’s presence, so open and comfortable.

“It was a really amazing experience, to feel so safe and comfortable in another’s presence,” Sophia continued.

As the weekend came to an end, Sophia went up to The Shaman to see if she should square up the drugs she and her friend had taken.

“He wouldn’t take anything,” she said, “Any drug is expensive and we were taking what felt like every drug. But he just said ‘I had a wonderful time and I hope you did too.’ And that was that.”

Several years after this experience, Sophia was driving through an area of Alberta where he was and went to visit him for a few days. He is now an engineer living with his girlfriend who isn’t strongly into drugs so he’s essentially stopped taking them.

“He’s just one of those people who are extremely skilled at everything,” Sophia continued, “One year, he and a small team of others were going to the Burning Man festival and they constructed a giant heart that actually beats. That was their contribution to Burning Man – a giant beating heart.”

The Shaman and his girlfriend live with a small group of other people who all just live in total harmony and commitment to one another. At one point, a child was born into their community and they are all deeply committed to her. According to the child’s mother, a tiny angel appeared to her as the daughter was being conceived and said ‘My name is Indica. You’ve just conceived me – I’m looking forward to meeting you in nine months’. Sure enough, she was pregnant and, nine months later, their small community had a child. They named the girl “Indica” of course, because that’s what the angel said her name was. Their daughter Indica is surrounded by love, support, and commitment from the whole community.

-->

“It’s a really remarkable and refreshing reminder of the different ways that people can live their lives,” says Sophia, “and they work. They are happy and healthy.”

So what is the point of this story, aside from that lovely last line? If you think it's just for the sake of sharing some drug story, you are partially correct. To borrow a line from Thomas King (or probably Gabor Mate as well), : "There are banned addictive drugs even though they (can) have much the same effects as alcohol and tobacco. Sanctioned Addictive Drugs and Banned Addictive drugs. And the only real difference between them are the stories we tell."

Here's to changing the stories we tell.

Treeplanting #10: Stepping on Newborn Mice and Other Disorganized Stories

Molly and William walking back up the road toward the truck at the end of the day. Our crews had been working together this day.

One evening, I conveniently miss an intense drill of a fentanyl overdose where Molly and William were the actors. At one point, I hear Molly’s voice not far from my tent along with techno music being blasted from the speakers of her truck. What the hell? I think, Molly hated when Caedon used to blare his speakers.

Coming out of my tent a while later, I realize that people are clearly shaken up. Some people are crying while others are hugging each other. According to other planters, they blasted music from the speakers of the dually, sat in the back of the Fist, crushed up some Benadryl, spread it into lines, put some on their noses, and then laid down pretending to be unconscious. Apparently, it was so realistic that several 911 calls were made, people were sobbing, and one girl had fully climbed on top of Molly and William with syringes full of naloxone fully loaded. Sophia, the OH+S planter this year, had to forcefully yank her off of Molly before she injected it because she was so convinced it was real.

Safety drills occur around camp a couple times per year. Often, it’s basically just an extra camp meeting during dinner where people ask “so what would we do in this situation?” It’s not often that the drill is fully acted out to such an extent that so many people believe it’s real. I’m actually glad I missed this one – on the chance I had fallen for it, I don’t think I could have handled seeing Molly as an OD victim. That being said, it probably would have been helpful to learn how to react in the case of an overdose.

One day I tried to get a photo of Jasper's cork boots while he was heading out into the block. All I got was this one of him scratching his ass.

Here's a photo of Jasper actually planting, just so him scratching his ass isn't the only photo of him on this blog. If you didn't catch him, he's the orange shirt with the straw hat toward the bottom of the photo. 

Regardless of how slashy or filled with naturals the block is, it’s always easy to tell if you’re approaching Damian. Even if it’s the most miserable day out, chances are that he’ll be whistling or singing some uplifting tune wherever he’s planting. That is, in between his loud wails of frustration when he hits something unpleasant (ie. Rocks, slash, extreme duff, etc.). He’s quite a vocal planter. The “near miss” section of the daily crew report is conveniently filled in with “Damian fell over 6 times and almost fell over 7 times”.

One of the nights off, the planters on the Social Committee organize a glitter and tequila party. Rather than participate in the hype of the party (cuz I’m a killjoy), I come out for the very end when people have mellowed down a bit (in “treeplanter time”, this is only around 10:30. Parties both start and end early). The first thing I notice is that Molly is leaving right as I’m arriving, which mellows my mood a bit. I’m more loose-tongued after alcohol, as everyone is, and I would’ve welcomed an open, honest conversation with Molly. I miss those. (A few days later, I hear that the reason for Molly’s early departure was a mild concussion after being taken out by Cathy, one of the two camp supervisors. Apparently, Molly had been tackling random people to the ground while screaming “I STUDIED KUNG FOO, BITCH!” When she tried tackling Cathy, Cathy grabbed her and flung her hard onto the ground, where she stayed for several minutes. It was something I was sorry to miss. Molly spends the first few days of the next shift moaning about her head).

            Back to the party. By “mellowed down”, I mean that most people are circled around a roaring fire having various conversations rather than throwing each other into the mud pits made by the truck tires. On the other side of the first, I hear Edmund and Damian talking about art school. Damian’s adorable – he’s squeezed himself into a sparkly pink tutu-dress and is discussing things passionately and flamboyantly. He’s currently in art school while Edmund graduated several years ago. He looks so excited to be talking with Edmund, whereas Ethan is still the most morose, bitter soul in camp – with a wonderful heart of gold of course. (I forgot to mention Edmund in the first post this year, but he's one of the returning planters as well. I think he shows up in this post). The two make a fantastic pair.

            Later, I find myself learning up against William as a sort of relief/comfort. We’re having sort of absurdly deep conversations that don’t really fit the environment - the dissolution of concepts and seriousness, the insincerity of confidence, justifications versus reasons, etc. I think people sometimes see me as innocent and naïve and I often unintentionally use that to my advantage (such as in this case). Sometimes he mentions something about going to his tent, to which I’d respond with something like “Wait what??” and he’d just laugh and brush away what he’d just said. I think he sees me as very innocent and, to be honest, I don’t think I care that much. It’s not like I didn’t notice his fingers slowly sliding underneath my shirt or his hand moving over my ass as I moved. I just chose not to acknowledge it, probably because I enjoyed having the acknowledgment or something. Whatever – alcohol brings out our insecurities, right?

            Unsurprisingly, this interaction with William inspires a call to James the next day. It is a depressingly uneventful phone call.

Back to actual planting things, these are my legs. Not bad for halfway through the season already! I'm slightly proud of my ability to avoid serious cuts and bruises this year.

The glove on my left hand started getting holes bad enough to interfere with planting, so I decided to wear my right glove backward on it, leaving my right hand gloveless. This doesn't look too dirty, but I assure you that dirt is thoroughly caked on there. Scrubbing my hands raw with the brushes and soap were not enough and, three days later, the first three knuckles on my right hand are still thoroughly dirty while typing this.

            One day we are working on the same block as William’s crew, whose truck is parked a few meters up from ours. While unloading boxes from the truck early in the morning, we suddenly hear screeches coming from the direction of the other crew. Looking over, we see Edmund frantically hopping on one foot shaking his boot in one hand.

            “A mouse ran out of his boot when he took it off!” the rumour travels through our crew and we all laugh. Back in camp in the afternoon, the rumour slowly travels further until Ethan himself clears up the story.

            “My Bama sock was feeling really tight after I’d put my boot on,” Ethan begins, “so I take it off thinking there’s an extra sock or something scrunched up in there.”

            “Keep listening – there’s so much more,” winks another member of his crew.

            “When I take it off, I mouse comes scurrying out,” Ethan shivers, but it’s clear there’s still more to the story. “Then I turn the boot upside down to shake out any mouse pellets or something. Out roll six red, hairless, and dying baby mice!” Ethan squirms uncomfortably while telling the story, clearly upset by it, as are we all. Squashing an entire family of newborn mice with his feet!! Poor Ethan – of all planters to have this happen, it’s the most dramatic, squeamish, and easily traumatized Ethan! For several days afterward, he talks about his “night terrors” of squashing newborn animals with his feet.

A late riser, I often arrive at the mess tent with only a few minutes to pull together a lunch and breakfast before the trucks roll out in the morning. However, I do have this routine timed out to a T and have only been late maybe once in the whole contract. As evidence, I would just like to bring attention to this day when I was the ONLY one sitting in the truck at 7:00.

GWEN'S BACK!! Probably only for a day or so before switching back to Marty's camp for the rest of the contract, but still. Marty's camp and our camp could be considered sort of "sister camps". Our camp is slightly behind schedule for getting all the trees in the ground by June 20 (otherwise there's a fine) while Marty's camp is slightly ahead of schedule. This sometimes results in a planter switching camps for a shift or so to get things back on track, such as Gwen coming to our camp.

Quote of the Week:

(regarding the American "right to bear arms")

Planter #1: You can't change the Second Amendment

Planter #2: Yes, you can - it's literally called an "amendment"!


PS - don't forget about the Palestine delegation in which I am participating this August! Around $200 has been raised so far - lots more to go! To donate, go to http://cpt.org/donate and follow the steps to donate. Toward the end of the process, there will be a box that says "donation inspired by". Be sure to enter my name in this section to ensure that the donation goes to this delegation.

Treeplanting #9: Stuck Trucks and Field Mice as Bedfellows

A bloody muddy crummie

Our first shift from the Line Creek camp is a difficult one. Day 1 – we run out of land. Day 2 – we run out of trees. Day 3 – we are sent to a fill plant.

On Day 1, the day starts with freezing lane for a large chunk of the morning and my fingers and toes go completely numb. Out of slight boredom, I begin cheering them on one-by-one as they come back, until I start to feel the searing pain of blood returning to the last two fingers.

While the environment is generally lovely, let's not forget that planting days regularly look like this, completely surrounded by freezing cold mist, rain, snow, or all three.

I love this job. Both related and unrelated to the last paragraph. You basically get paid to spend every day hiking around the mountains, staying fit, and testing your body against the elements. And you’re never stuck somewhere clueless because there’s always the bottom line of “just keep planting”. Whatever happens, things will turn out fine if you just keep planting. In fact, this is so bottom-line that I’m pretty sure it’s a repeating line in the Treeplanting Song: “So shut your mouth and put a tree in the ground.”

That being said, we run out of land on Day 1 and have to return to camp early.

That night, I think I hear something moving or scampering against my tent, but I convince myself it’s just spruce needles sliding down and off my tarp.

While we run out of land on Day 1, we run out of trees on Day 2. However, it is still a relatively splendid day. It’s overcast – the perfect planting weather. At some point, Damian, the greener on our crew, comes proudly sauntering out of the block with one massive antler in either hand.

“Noooo!” Sophia exclaims, “How come I never find cool shit on the block?!”

This is the day we discover Cloe’s astonishingly accurate portrayal of bird calls. She can open her mouth in just the right way as to sound like a crow, or narrow her mouth slightly and it becomes a turtledove. It is so perfect that it even rivals Uncle Jim’s impersonation of Donald Duck. She just opens her mouth and the bird sounds that come out sound arguably more natural than her actual voice.

While switching blocks, we reach another mud pit. While we may have seen our fair share of jolting up and down in our seats, bouncing and sliding our way through several mud pits already, this one is far deeper and muddier than any of the others. Molly fiddles with the four-wheel-drive before revving up and bolting headlong into the mud pit.

A typical logging road (although an incredibly flat block). When there's an exceptional amount of rain, these guys get muddy uber fast.

Some say that Molly’s truck is exceptionally difficult to get stuck because it’s a dually – it has a double set of wheels in the rear. Nevertheless, this particular mud pit proves otherwise. Mud flying everywhere, Molly madly fiddling with the controls, and the rest of us grinning and hollering in amusement, we are thoroughly stuck. While most planting trucks get coated with mud on the outside, we also manage to spray a fair amount of mud on the inside as well. It is a truly impressive feat. While Molly is visibly disgruntled by the debacle, the rest of us are in high spirits. We all climb out on the driver’s side because the wheels of the passenger side are about three quarters under the mud.

It certainly didn't help that the truck was loaded with around 2500 lbs of trees in the back.

While the rest of us bag up and walk the rest of the way to the block, Molly stays with the truck waiting for Rainer to drive over and tow us out. When Molly joins us, she informs us that Rainer looked annoyed at having to tow out the truck and, when Molly asked about going to get more trees, he’d said that we didn’t need anymore. Since we’d already pissed him of about the truck, Molly had decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to question him about the trees. We run out of trees at around 4:15 and head back to camp early again.

            That night, I definitely hear something brushing against my tent, but it almost sounds like it’s coming from underneath my tent?

On Day 3, we get sent to a fill plant. All fill plants are shitty, since you have to space around all the naturals and the trees are generally twice the size = twice the weight. However, as far as fill plants go, it really wasn’t too bad. And for 23 cents, it definitely wasn’t too bad.

After planting on Day 3, I go right into my tent and read, waiting for whatever critter is making the noise. Suddenly, my tent just slightly rises up in one corner as something small makes its way underneath. I slap the ground beside it and watch as the tiny, mysterious figure under the tent squeaks and scurries away in the other direction. Probably a field mouse. And that is why I have some lovely field mice as bedfellows.

On the day off, Sam is leading a session of yoga. Sam is a smiling, joy-giving, hugging, yoga instructor who also comes tree planting on the off-season. It’s pretty difficult not to love Sam. While heading out to town with Uncle Jim, we pass Sam’s group in the middle of their yoga session. They are all sitting in a near-squat position with their hands out in front of them.

“I don’t need to do that,” Uncle Jim mutters under his breath, “I do that every morning when I take a shit.”

When we finish all we need to do in town and are driving back into camp, we pass the now-empty area where Sam had been leading the yoga class. “I wonder how many of those yoga people are covered in tics now,” Uncle Jim scowls good-naturedly. I smile, silently adoring Uncle Jim for his old man-ish grumpiness.

One of my favourite stories about Uncle Jim was told to me by Molly. In the shower tent, the younger generation of planters tends to be slightly more modest, wrapping a towel around them before walking in, out, and around the shower tent. The older generation, such as Uncle Jim, bears all for all to see. Now, my uncle's sense of humour tends to be fairly clean and innocent, indicative of his sweet and innocent nature. One day, he comes out of the showers and stands next to the wood stove to warm up, red and steaming from the shower. Buck naked, he smiles and toots, "Hmm, I'm clean as a whistle - somebody should blow me!" When the remark was followed by a few moments of silence followed by everyone bursting out laughing, my uncle turned beet red, grabbed his clothes, and scuttled quickly out of the tent.

Inside of the shower tent, aka the scene of my favourite Uncle Jim story.

--> Quote of the shift: “I think everyone fantasizes about injuring themselves during their first, second, and third years of planting. Just to make it stop.” - Molly

PS - don't forget about the Palestine delegation in which I am participating this August! Around $200 has been raised so far - lots more to go! To donate, go to http://cpt.org/donate and follow the steps to donate. Toward the end of the process, there will be a box that says "donation inspired by". Be sure to enter my name in this section to ensure that the donation goes to this delegation.


Peace and love, friends!