FITNESS

People often talk about getting into shape as being a positive by-product of planting trees. It is true that you build muscle and lose weight - it is a natural process. We are working ten hour days, hiking with weight around our hips, prying open holes in hard ground and bending over thousands of times a day. After a while of doing this you become extremely fit - and after that you begin to wither away. By the end of the season you are so physically drained as to become depressed, your system overtaxed and in utter shock. After two weeks on the outside, your muscle, now purposeless, will melt into fat. This is a level of activity that cannot be sustained, and an unbalanced fitness that can never last.