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| Pretty nice workplace |
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| Someone took this photo of me a few years ago. Top-class planting technique here. |
After
skipping last year, I’m SO glad to be back in the bush for my fourth year of
tree planting. Writing this, however, I’m noticing a slight problem of my own
making: treeplanting is a pretty transient community, but in this particular
camp there are some “regulars” who come back every year. My first year writing
this blog, I created pseudonyms for everyone but stopped doing this somewhere
in the middle of the second. Now there are new planters whose real names are
the same as the pseudonyms of some of the old ones. For example, I decided to
call my uncle “Uncle Jim” but now there is an actual Jim in camp who is also a
crew boss, so I’m just caught in this web of lies.
Anyways, if anyone has actually followed these
blogs and/or knows various people, I linked returning characters up to Treeplanting #10 (I got bored after that). Returning characters this year are: Uncle
Jim (obviously; mentioned in literally every previous blog post), Francois (mentioned
in blogs 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and others afterward), William (mentioned in blogs 7, 8, 10, and others afterward), Braeden (who’s a
CREW BOSS this year what the hell, mentioned somewhere after blog 10), Damian (mentioned in blog 8, 9, 10, and some others afterward), Nina (of COURSE,
mentioned in blogs 2, 4, 6, 8, and others afterward), and Sophia (mentioned in the majority of blogs). A
very important person who is NOT returning this year is Molly (mentioned in pretty much every previous blog), which is
preeetty damn disappointing. I hope she has grassy-ass blocks for leaving this
camp (kidding of course – I wish her nothing but dirt).
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| Home for the next 2 months |
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| Comfy and petite |
The first
day I arrived (Day 2 of the shift; everyone was still at work so camp was
empty), was a pretty sharp reminder of what it’s like living in the bush. My
shovel had recently arrived at Cathy’s house. As it was brand new, it needed to
be shortened quite a lot, unless I felt like doing a huge arm stretch a few
thousand times a day in addition to planting trees. She told me Rainer would
help me with shortening it. Rainer was pretty busy when I asked him, so he
gestured over to the work table. “You just have to take the screws out of the
top, saw the shaft down to where you want it, then put the top back on and
screw it back in place. It’s easy enough.”
Well okay then, let’s see how this goes; it’s
the sawing part I’m not so sure about.
Rustling
around the worktable, I found a screwdriver and a skill saw: Step 1, complete. After
taking the screws out of the top, I fidgeted with it for a bit, unable to
separate the handle from the shaft. Finally, I stepped on the shovel kicker and
pulled upward, and the handle popped right of.
Next the
saw. (Relax, all you saw-wielding
Knowledgeables, we all learn at some point.) I couldn’t see any buttons, so
held it away from me as I plugged it in, wondering if it would start the second
I plugged it in. It didn’t, so I examined it some more. Turns out I was holding
it wrong and the actual handle has a trigger at the bottom, so I started to
push it. It wasn’t working so I looked closer and pushed harder. Eventually, as
my finger pushed all the way down, it started up, so I pulled my face away from
it again pretty quickly. Grabbing the shovel, should I secure this down somehow? I wondered, Meh, that’s just another thing to figure out. Pushing it against
the clamp, I brought the saw down roughly where I thought would be a good size
to cut it down to. It worked fine for the first bit, until the shovel jerked
and it caught. I pulled it up and continued where it had stopped. I didn’t have
my finger down very far though, so it turned off partway through. When I pushed
down again and it started, it caught again. At this point, however, there was
only a small piece of wood left, so I turned it on again and took it off
easily.
As I was
observing the rough, uneven results of my handiwork, Damian comes out of the
shower tent looking quizzical.
“Everything
okay?” he asks.
“Yep,” I
answer, “just eyeballing how to work this thing.”
“Kay… well
it shouldn’t be catching like that…” and walks back into the shower tent. Twisting
the handle back onto the shaft of the shovel, I realize it’s still way too
long. Taking it off again, I walk into the shower tent.
“Hey Damian?”
I ask, “I need to shorten it more. Wanna show me how to actually work the saw?”
Damian
shows me how to clamp the shovel in place, measure out right where I want to
cut it down to using the shovel handle, and hold the saw steady as I bring it
down. With one cut, it goes right through.
“Thanks,” I
say.
“No
problem,” he responds, and heads back into the shower tent. I twist the handle
back onto the shaft, try it out a few times to make sure it’s the right height,
and screw it back into place. Voila:
shovel successfully shortened.
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| Doggos of camp (there's like 8 of them this year. It's one well-guarded camp) |
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| Feeling welcome |
For the
last full shift, I’ve been on Braeden’s crew. It’s strange having him as a crew
boss; he seems like a completely different person than when I knew him 2 years
ago. He’s still freaking hilarious, but now he’s responsible and (sort of) calm.
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| If anyone forgot who Braeden is, here is the dude |
Until he
gets stressed, his whole attitude is sooomewhat relaxed, super salty, and he
has a pretty damn dry sense of humour. When Damian commented on how exhausting
it is going into town on days off because there’s so many people, Braeden
started howling, “Oh noooo, I can’t even walk on the damn sidewalk without someone else walking on it too” in a
way that cracked everyone up.
On another
day, people were having a conversation about roundabouts while on the truck
ride back to camp at the end of the day. Someone mentioned a few recent
roundabouts built in Vancouver: they just placed a pile of rocks in the
intersection and called it a roundabout.
“A fucking rock?!” Braeden exclaims, “That really
shows you the difference between Ontario and BC. In Ontario, fucking 20 soccer
moms would have called in within the first ten minutes demanding ‘why is there a
fucking rock in the middle of the intersection?!’ In BC, everyone sees the rock
and is like ‘yo
cool rock, man’ *tokes up* ‘uhh are you sure it wasn’t there last
week?’ *puffs* ‘hey what should we name it?’ That’s the difference
between BC and Ontario, man.”
Another day found
everyone listening to Braeden’s angry rant about how marriage is entirely about
social status and economics, shutting down anyone who disagreed with him (which
was everyone). Finally,
Damian just announced, “I feel like you know you’re wrong and just don’t want
to be.” This didn’t really change the situation.
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| Legs are starting to assume their anticipated beat-up look |
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| Well-dirtified and caked hand |
Being an “upper
year” planter is an odd feeling. There were two days where I was the only
non-greener on the block and both times the line started getting a bit wonky,
and I found myself recommending the other planters to either bounce here, or
leave a line for someone in a pocket there, or jump on the line here instead of
bouncing because the access is getting cut off, etc. It’s not so much in a
commanding way (I’m no crew boss so nobody has to listen to me at all), but
more in a way that I notice certain things happening on a block that a first-
or second-year planter might not. One day, Braeden sent me into one section of
the block with Jasmine, a first year planter, under the expectation that I’d
navigate the block so she and I could fill it out ourselves. Normally I’m just
following the line but now I’m the one creating
the line and keeping it moving smoothly. People ask me questions and I’m
actually able to answer sufficiently. Braeden doesn’t check my line nearly as
much as he checks the greeners’. The responsibility is pretty darn weird (I’m
no natural leader), but I think both three years of planting and all the
responsibility I had in Shanghai certainly help.
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| This boot LOOKS tough |
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| It lasted 2 days |
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| "ROOTS TUFF" is not so tough |
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| One of the firsts days, we were planting in snow |
One
morning, after leaving camp, we had to stop the truck as a mountain goat made
its way across the road toward a rock face.
“I love how
when there’s a sign for mountain goats, there’s always mountain goats,” Braeden says, “like, when there’s a deer
sign, there may or may not be a deer but probably not. Mountain goats don’t
give a fuck, though, they love the road and are always there.”
Once we
near the turn onto the logging road, a herd of elk is grazing beside the road.
“Don’t do
it; don’t do it!” Braeden screams as the elk begin to look up at the
approaching truck. Heedless of Braeden’s commands, one of the elk begins to
trot across the road… then the next… then the next. We stop the truck and wait
for at least 10 elk to slowly make their way across the road.
Once on the
logging road, a grouse is hobbling across the road. Despite Braeden’s honking,
it still takes its sweet time tottering where it wants to go. “Why don’t grouse
ever move??”
Two minute
later, we slow down as a lone elk crosses the road.
“What is
this, fucking National Geographic
Day??” Braeden roars while blaring the horn, “Are we on a fucking safari ride?
GET OFF THE ROAD!”
Luckily, we’re
pretty much on the block at this point so no more animals cross our path.
Now for the
worst part of the last two shifts: when I DROPPED MY PHONE IN THE SHITTER. For
anyone unfamiliar with the terminology, the shitter is a rather crude term for
the hand-built outhouses we have here (but it’s the only term we use for them
sooo that’s just what they will be called in this blog). They basically
consist of a huge hole dug into the ground, a thick piece of plywood placed
over top to stand on with a hole in it for you to squat over. A white canvas box-thing is also placed over top for privacy. Alas,
these are our toilets.
I had just
left my tent as it was getting dark and decided to stop by the shitter. Lo and
behold, my phone tumbled out of my pocket and into the hole. There was a pretty
long freeze where the only thought in my head was just “Fuck.” After the moment
passed, I bolted out to beg the nearest person for a hand (two heads are better
than one right?). Luckily, it was Braeden who was just walking past, so my
shame was a little less.
I tell him
the story and he just moans, “Fuuuuck that’s the woooorst! Oh my god whhhyyyy??”
Talking
through the situation, I realize I have to get it out. With all the photos and
other various things saved on my phone, leaving it and buying a new one is not
an option. We walk over to Rainer’s office to grab a pair of nitrile gloves. I
tie my hair up as tight as it will possibly be tied. He shines the light on his
phone down into the hole in the plywood. We both just look down at the small
black rectangle laying atop the massive mound of human shit at least 4 feet
down from the board we’re standing on. I grumble for a few moments, shuffling
around on the board we’re standing on.
“No, stop
fucking around, Anneke,” comes Braeden’s typical ultra-directness, “You just
gotta get down on your stomach, know where you’re going, and lower yourself in
head first. You just gotta go for it. Just get it over with.”
Finally, I
do get down on my stomach, place my gloved hands on either side of the hole
(avoiding the spot where someone evidently had trouble aiming their asshole),
focus my eyes exactly on the goal, take a deep breath, and lower myself down
with one hand while reaching out with the other. The light disappears as my
upper body is fully submerged, but my hand has already memorized exactly where
to go. My fingers grasp the edge of the phone and I jolt upward, flinging the
phone into the grass far away from me.”
“Fuuuuuck,”
Braeden moans again, “This is what it really means to be a foreman, dammit.
Helping planting get their fucking phones out of the shitters. Fuck, I’m out.
Go get yourself in the damn showers, Anneke.” With that, he heads toward the
fire pit where several others are gathered.
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| I freaking missed this job |
So there we are. The first blog of a whole new season. Back with the misfits who are tough as shit and I'm more than happy to be here.
