Last year, after a 3-year hiatus, I returned for a 6th season to the world of treeplanting. This year, I came back again for a 7th, but there's a 50/50 chance I'll ever have an 8th season. Alas, here's a short story collecting a few of the more notable moments of the season. Enjoy!
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| The tents may be the same, but the camp is very different |
Pretty much everyone from the old blogs have changed. A few people remained: Jasmine is here (one of the few who didn't get a blog name change, although she's now an assistant supervisor and no longer plants), Colin stayed (although he is now a checker), Eddie stayed (and still plants), and a spattering of others not mentioned in previous blogs. Otherwise, pretty much everyone is a fresh batch of under-30s; our supervisor is also new (okay not entirely new; he was a crew boss one of the earlier years and a co-supervisor with Rainer another year, but he took over completely in the years I was gone).
There are also a lot of changes in the way camp is run: some okay, others less so. For example, there are twice as many showers and always leftover food available on the day off (these are excellent). However, only half the crew bosses still plant and the number of non-planting staff roles has gone from 3 to about about 13 (not excellent). "Do this" his very differently when the person telling you is also doing the thing vs. one of an ever-growing group paid to boss others around without actually doing the work themselves. Leading by example is very much a thing of the planting past. Luckily, for most of the season, I'm on one of the crews lead by a foreman who does still plant.
The crew I'm on for the bulk of the season is a continual absurdist cacophony of insanity, so this story is centred on that crew. They're all getting pseudonyms, in the same style as previous planting posts (except Jas and Eddie for some reason?). We'll call the crew boss Ferdinand because he reminds me so much of Ferdinand the Friendly Bull. Just like Ferdinand the Bull preferred to sit and smell the flowers to fighting with the other bulls, Ferdinand the Foreman can often be seen sitting calmly in the middle of the block rather than planting. Then we have Bob & Doug, named for being slightly more clever versions of Bob & Doug McKenzie (NOTE: there is a Real Doug in camp, but this is not Real Doug). In the early season, Bob invariably has a touque perched at the top of his head, neck bleach pale and fully exposed; how his neck never freezes, I've no idea. Doug, on the other hand, is thoroughly protected from the cold: hoodie drawstring clinched tight around the sides of his face, concealing the varying number of warm hats beneath and essentially ballooning his head to twice its normal size.
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| Bob and Doug McKenzie, Canadian icons |
The one other girl on the crew is Annajo, named such because I am incredibly lazy. Annajo is full of energy and generally positive, which is a great respite from the often-depressing work of slamming your shovel into an old coal mine for 10 hours/day. The final seat in the truck tends to change.
There is one particularly terrible shift this season (but for the story's sake, I'm going to use some creative liberty to combine all 3 days, and the people in the ever-changing seat, into one). It's on the coal mines, which are rock hard and way up on the top of a (former) mountain. We also have to drive through an Autonomous Operating Zone (AOZ), in which giant haul trucks do not have drivers. This means we will spend a lot of time waiting for an escort through the AOZ.
Before this, however, we have a morning safety meeting (in which they steal several minutes, and therefore income, from our day to brief us about things like "stay 20m away from animals," "remember to drink water," "look out for rocks," and other things to both make themselves feel worthwhile and help the mining company avoid a lawsuit from Worksafe BC).
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| Vibram soles are supposed to be the best in the business AND YET |
Stumbling out of the truck in the morning, planters are tying their boots and fumbling around for their hard hats and hi-viz vests.
"Alright, Doug, let's take a look at you," Bob says, positioning his hard hat and turning toward Doug before concluding: "You look like a fucking idiot."
Offended, Doug immediately responds: "So do you, dumbass." He then turns to gaze mournfully at his own reflection in the truck window. "Dude, we look like idiots," he laments, "All our swag's been absorbed by PPE."
Once the safety meeting is finished, we clamber back into the truck to wait for the drivers to finish their added safety meeting. While waiting, Rob, the English first-year planter currently occupying the ever-changing seat, is having a minor crisis: he needs to use the toilet but there are none around. At first, this just provokes a round of chuckles and jeers, along with a few genuine responses like "Just go find a spot, Rob" and "Hurry up and go, dammit, or you'll make us late."
Hesitating, Rob stammers, "I'll wait for Ferdinand and ask him." This immediately ignites the rest of the truck in a fresh round of giggles and guffaws.
"You wanna consult the crew boss about your shit?!" Doug starts to nearly cry with laughter.
"This is planting, Rob," Annajo offers helpfully, "You gotta just go."
"This is a carpark, Annajo," he sarcastically snaps back . More chuckles and jeers.
Panicking, Rob finally blurts: "Guy, guys, this is a Code Brown!"
"Omg just go in those bushes!"
"There's so many gaps; anyone could see through!"
"Go behind them then."
"That's the road; anyone on the highway would have fully view!"
"What about just over that hill?"
"What if there's someone on the other side?"
"Jesus Christ, do you have to go or not?"
At long last, Rob winces and finally bursts out of the truck, running full speed down the little road to the end of the hill... and keeps going... and going...
"Damn he's really going for it."
"And no shovel either?"
"He's a rookie; he's not burying anything."
"He'd better not take forever."
Eventually, the driver meeting finishes and Ferdinand re-enters the truck. "...Where's Rob?" he asks, having been, in the end, left unconsulted about Ross' shit. We wait... and wait... until nearly all the other trucks have started to pull out of the parking lot. Ferdinand starts honking.
"What's taking him so LONG?" Bob laments, climbing out of the truck to get a better look, "Seriously, did he run off to fucking Timbuktu just to take a shit? ROB!!"
Several minutes later, Rob makes his way back over the hill, climbs back into the truck, and we make our way toward the AOZ to then wait in line for another truck to escort us through. While waiting, Ferdinand looks at the desolate, bleak world of coal and shale rock all around us.
"It looks kind of like the moon," he says.
Doug frowns. "Yeah but it's way worse and it's just on earth and it sucks."
Suddenly, Bob changes the song playing from Bo Burnham to a Cosmo Sheldrake album, a very sudden shift.
"Hey wait, what's that about?" Ferdinand interjects.
"Because I like it," Bob snaps back, "Feels whimsical, motherfucker."
A few moments later, Bob and Doug are having an earnest discussion on whether or not they could successfully sneak a bomb onto an airplane.
"Naaah, I doubt it," Doug muses, "They'd catch us for sure."
"Yeah," Bob agrees matter-of-factly, "I mean, they'd probably do an anal cavity search."
"WHA-?!" Doug blurts, exasperated at the sudden turn of this formerly-serious discussion, "Bro, who the fuck is hiding a bomb in their ass?!"
"I don't know," Bob responds defensively, "it just seemed like a reasonable response."
After little over an hour of waiting, our escort arrives and we are driving through the AOZ. Looking at the massive haul trucks towering over our tiny Ford F350s, it's wild to think there's no actual human sitting inside.
Pulling up to our piece, Ferdinand informs us that (1) this is an extremely important piece and all of our trees have to be perfect, and (2) there is a blast at 4:00 that, should it be delayed, might delay when we can leave.
"No." Bob blurts decisively, "No, I'm not doing that."
"Yeah, what's the point of taking extra time to plant perfect trees without an actually-appropriate price bump," Doug agrees, albeit significantly more articulately than Bob, "and if we do get a price bump, we'll still need to put like 2000 in to make it a good day."
"And if we stay late, that means we'll have to eat shit for long!" Bob adds.
"Eat shit for long," Annajo echoes, "what a phrase."
"Look, I'll ask," Ferdinand sighs, pulling out his phone to call our supervisor while the rest of us start bagging up. A few minutes later, he comes back. "Okay, he's agreed to day rate of 400 each."
"No." Bob and Doug respond in unison, before Doug follows it up with, "we can make 500 just by putting 1500 trees in the ground. We're not putting in perfect trees for that." Ferdinand nods and pulls out his phone again, making another call to our supervisor.
When we're all fully bagged about to head into the land, Ferdinand comes back with yet another proposal. 500. Bob and Doug agree to put in "perfect trees" at the expense of numbers.
"It's a good thing Bob and Doug are always so irate," Annajo chuckles as she and I head toward our respective pieces, "I would have just taken the 400." I laugh in agreement. 400 ain't bad. Luckily, both Bob and Doug are young, energetic, and short-fused hiballers.
The land itself is terrible. Rock, really. Imagine slamming a shovel into the Canadian Shield. Or trying to spoon soup out of concrete. The earth doesn't give so much as flinch; every shovel thrust clangs like you've insulted it. But you still need to get those trees in so you just keep hitting it, over and over, like some cruel geological joke indifferent to your blisters. Actually, blisters are the least of our worries; at this point, all blisters have already formed into a thick shield of calluses. The real problems are tendonitis and tennis elbow, so we have Leukotape to restrict movement and reduce the likelihood of developing them. Also probably lung disease is up there: stabbing holes into the blown-up lungs of the earth while your own lungs fill with black dust can't possibly be great for them. The job is a delightful exercise of self-destruction in the desolate land of Mordor. We trudge, sweat, and swear our way through the day, pushing saplings into the bones of what was once a mountain.
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| Found this sad little collection of larches in a tiny area of dust surrounded by rocks |
By 4pm, we hear that the blast was delayed. By 4:30, it's still delayed but we're too tired to keep planting overtime. Instead, we haul our sweaty, sooty, coal-coated selves into the trucks, drive to the blast guard, and wait until we can pass. We wait... and wait... and wait... The blast goes off around 6pm, but then the mines have their shift change and our escort back through the AOZ is the lowest of priorities. By 7:00pm, Annajo and I are getting hungry in the front with Ferdinand, the boys in the back seat are going loopy, and poor Ferdinand is just trying desperately to hold things together. He hands Annajo and I the leftover remnants of his lunch.
"Whatever you do, don't look back," he says seriously while passing the food. Annajo and I promptly turn around to see three pairs of legs reaching upward, boots positioned firmly on the ceiling.
"Oooh yeah that's a good stretch," moans Doug.
"Fuck, man, how did you get that far?!" gushes Bob, as Doug's legs march even further up over his head, along the ceiling, until reaching the back window of the cab.
"Stretching. Don't you stay in shape for planting?"
"Fuck no. Gotta keep it tight; gotta keep it locked in."
"I don't think that's what 'locked in' means."
Annajo and I turn back toward the windshield.
The next time we turn back is when the boys have devolved to threatening each other as a means to hold our supervisor ransom for a raise (at this point, there was no communication whether or not we'd be compensated for being stuck in the truck this long).
"Not gonna pay us?" Bob threatens our imaginary supervisor, "Oh yeah? How bout if I just kill Rob then?"
"Wait, what?" Rob starts to protest but is overpowered.
"Or what about Bomboclat?" Bob continues growling, "Seen him recently? No? Better start looking."
"Who's Bomboclat?"
"His fucking cat, dawg," Bob breaks the menacing hostage-holding character to explain, "I stayed at his house for a couple weeks before the season, living in the reefer because I didn't wanna buy a tent, but I made myself sick in there. He has a cat named Bombardier, but I call him Bomboclat because it's way cooler."
Doug immediately takes this information and runs with it.
"Better keep and eye on Bomboclat," he picks up the ransom threat toward this imaginary supervisor, "because I need some new loafers."
"Or a nice new leather bag," Bob chimes in.
"Call our work 'reclamation'? Try reclaiming Bomboclat off my fucking loafers."
This sends the whole truck into fits of laughter.
"Oh god," Ferdinand winces, "I don't think we're allowed to say this." (Let it be known that both Bob and Doug are actually the sweetest humans and neither Bomboclat nor Rob were ever in genuine danger. Ferdinand, however, may have suffered from the stress of being responsible for them).
At 8pm, our escort finally arrives to drive us through the AOZ. We leave site at 8:30pm.
Total workday: 14.5 hours
Total time actually working: 5.5 hours
Total time sitting in a truck: 9 hours
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| In the bottom right of the screen, you can see our departure time |
We later learn the other reason why the escort took so long to arrive, in addition to the shift change, was because one of the automated haul trucks malfunctioned and was not where it was supposed to be. Giant robot haul trucks going rogue in the area we're supposed to be driving in our little F350s? Well that's reassuring.
Perhaps days like this are just what happens when you've been eating shit for too long - seven seasons' worth, in my case. Somewhere along the way, the point became the weird loyalty, shared absurdity, and sense of camaraderie forged in wasp stings and tendonitis. But the last two years, I started asking questions - about the work, about increasing management, about how much crap one person can actually eat and still call it a lifestyle, about whether the collective delusion is still funny or just deeply sad. And once you start asking, it gets harder to keep swallowing.
Maybe it's time to step away. Or maybe I'll be back next season anyway, still bumbling out of the truck at 7am, still complaining, still duct-taping my bags together and muttering something about vibes.
Either way, at least we know exactly what we're eating.
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| Our motley crew (albeit with faces removed) |
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| My cousin came this year too 💓 |
