getting excited to plant trees

“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea — cruising, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.”

- Sterling Hayden, Wanderer
Via Nick Antosca @htmlgiant



My main priority is finding work that is not in a bush camp. Something happens to people when they go and live in tents, stinking like animals for five days at a time, and not talking to people in the outside world. Some people like it (what happens).

I fear going to a town and feeling like 'town is weird'. Walking all over town to do laundry, and even after you shower you still stink and feel greasy. I want a hotel room.

A solo room is preferrable.

Worried about getting on a really experienced crew and being very low in the heirarchy, and having to roomate with the least desirable person (roomate) on the crew.

Last year my roomate had a slow cooker and early in the season he put brussel sprouts in the slow cooker. Our room smelled like feet for a long time, but we had to explain to people that it was the brussel sprouts, not feet.

Matt Bock: "what the fuck do you put brussel sprouts in the slow cooker for"


Matt Bock, last year's foreman: "not sure I want to come back from Korea for a bull shit ass season" (paraphrased)

enigmatic half asian planter girl
heard she was like 27
she was by far the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in a planting camp
whenever I was in camp I was aware of where she was, or was looking for her
sometimes she would walk over this hill in the evenings, mysteriously
it seemed to me
I was fired and later found out she was gay

PLANTERS = ALTS IN THE WOODS

I found this when I was doing some research today.

Lots of them were still using Polaski like things. This was just when the D-Handle revolution was beginning.



I am coming to grips with having planted for a while now - well past college. Past an MA degree, even. Past moving to New York. I am trying to make a film about Franz Otto, who is a planting legend, and who I have spent some time with over the past month.


They Interview a guy named Pete Robson who had worked in reforestation since 1964. Are these Fitness babes?


haha above "flatulence reforestation."

"On the first planting projects I was involved in we used inmate labor, After that we hired whomever we could. we hired locals, hired off the reserves, got men off of Main and Hastings in Vancouver. We paid by the hour and few had much interest or much skill in it. Needless to say our production was low."



"By 1967 we decided to try letting a contract. We were not impressed with the results of the first one, but the next year we let a contract to two hippies - complete with beflowered volkswagen van. They camped under plastic and planted faster than we had ever seen."



'These two hippies were to revolutionize tree planting in the province.'

'They let the way for a new breed of planters, people pursuing what was once called "alternative lifestyles."'



'One big time contractor has a degree in religion. Another is a dropout nuclear energy engineer from the atomic energy commission of Canada. There are homesteaders. teachers, artists, craftspeople, lots of carpenters, and at least one potato farmer. '

'Tony Berniaz, mountaineer, world traveller and now gentleman farmer, has probably planted a million trees; he used to be a PhD chemist.'



'Holly Arntzen, a Vancouver musician, liked to wake up camp every morning with the golden sounds of Handel and Vivaldi played on her French Horn.'



'Clay Perry, legislative director of the IWA in Vancouver explains, "Because of the strategic importance of silviculture to the future of the industry, it has to [should] be organized in a rational way and give people a rational lifestyle. It is just not rational for BC to rely on 'counterculture' people for such important strategic work."'



'Dirk Brinkman, founder Brinkman reforestation, responds: "not only is it a logistical necessity to use tent camps and to move all over BC and Alberta doing short term contracts in remote places, it's also a part of our lifestyle."'

Article ends with planters finishing up a contract and drinking beer.

Finished with this Job

I am done as a planter, until the fall, when I might go to the coast.

I planted 36 days and earned an average of "enough to buy a camera and travel around in my new (self appointed) role as 'nomadic documentarian' for the next month or so."

My other blog.

This season has been pretty comfortable. I have not been in a bush camp. As a result, I feel, the planters have been less 'wild.'

What I mean: in my land the other day I was thinking "I have not seen anybody going to the bathroom nor have I seen anybody elses' penis on my crew." I attribute this to people showering and living where there is concrete.

Will hopefully never go to a bush camp again.

Brent

Brent is an older planter.
He isn't really forthright about his age - just says things like he has been 'doing this for a while.'

I asked him some questions last night. We went to a strip bar and one of the girls danced to 'I'm on a boat.' Another girl had narrow hips and visibly strong abdominals. I gave her ten dollars just to be nice, I guess.

'Do you feel rootless, like, a vagabond?'
'Yes.'
'Do you like that?'
'Yes, sort of.'
'Do you feel a strong pressure to not be a tree planter anymore?'
'Yes.'

Brent is writing a book of stories. I don't know what he writes about. I think he is going to try to get Benny and I a job on the coast for the fall.

8 more days til the season is over for me.

His nickname is 'the doctor.'

feeling okay about planting right now, will probably feel like I should be doing something else, a higher status job, in 10 minutes

I think about the kind of people who become tree planters.

There are a few groups.

1. People from Prince George or any town like Prince George to whom working in forestry is one of very few options

2. Ecotourists from all over the world

3. Educated, or in the process of becoming educated, Experientialists

4. Older planters who become, like, "planters" as a master status
-these people usually know many people in the industry
-they like to be free to not work all winter long; maybe they collect EI
-maybe they are still working on their undergrad / MA / PHD / novel / arts related project
-avoiding 'soul crushing' big city "job job"
-lots of friends who are planters, who they might see in "the off season"
-no fixed address
-possible seasonal depression, months of inactivity every year
-possibly live in asian / south american hostels for months at a time


These categories are not mutually exclusive.

What am I?

Pat is a Chilean raised in PG. His mother is from Valparaiso and fled after the Pinochet coupe, then married a logger in Prince George. Pat can drink 18 beers and a bottle of whiskey in one evening. I told him about Roberto Bolano and he seemed impressed with me. Pat has been in a lot of scraps.

I am a "peter pan planter," maybe, because I use it to avoid making long term career decisions / continue to "try to make art."

I am also a good planter (so is Pat), and feel positive about planting lots of trees and highballing other planters. If I were not a good planter I would not do this.

But then when will I stop?

If it were easy for me to give up the life I have chosen and get a job job that is pretty good and would allow me to play golf with my brother and father would I do it?

If it didn't require shame, and "going back on a lot of stuff that I quote believe"?

Would it be better if I were working for a high status planting company like zanzibar?

How much of this am I actually in control of / is worth worrying about?