A collection of days, and two weeks left.

Day 0, Monday

Time is interesting. You can be soaking in the sun and the company of warm spring day, knowing full well that soon, your very same well-rested body bathed in sunlight will be wet, cold, and broken; most likely crying out some curse against the ever-changing land and weather of the north. Now, sitting on a bus heading to set up camp, it doesn’t feel like it’s been any time since I’ve sat with these same people. And now, at the beginning of my fourth season, I have more fears than hopes, more doubts than certainties, more school debt than I’ll be able to pay off, and more determination than ever.

For the past month or so, forested poems have been circulating in my mind, verses about spring have brought me to quiet branches in tree heights, and my pulse quickens in knowing planting anticipation. It’s time, and my body would know it even if the calendar didn’t.  

Day 13, Wednesday

Every joy of the day feels like it’s been robbed from me… and I feel in the depths of misery. Another planting partner loss. Chapin is getting his bus license on Monday and we were told tonight that we’ll be split up starting next week. I’ve written about the planting partner relationship before… it’s still a bit of a mystery to me I think. You go through hell and back together. You share each other’s successes as well as their failures. I feel like half of myself is being torn from me; when I first arrived this season without Angie, I was literally half a planter. She was my right hand and my other half; my smile in the afternoon and my hug at the end of the day. I think I have planting partner abandonment issues. I literally fear/have anxiety over the thought of losing Chapin as my wingman. We split up for a short while this afternoon in a cattle plant and I got so disoriented… the days go faster with a partner, and I’m less likely to despise the work. My heart sinks to the very bottom of my sopping wet planting boots just thinking about it.

Monday, Day 15

I haven’t been very positive of late… I’m weary of my own droning voice of hopelessness and haven’t written for a few days.

Last night I could hardly fall asleep because of the fear – the continuing contract, planting thousands of trees day after day without even a partner for company. And then – I decided – what if the last three weeks were the worst of the contract, and it’s only up from here? Since the beginning of the contract, five trucks and a bus have broken down, a crewboss ran over his own dog… our crew split up, and one rookie planter got left on the block and wasn’t discovered to be missing until the next morning after it had poured the entire night (he is now deemed ‘survivor man’, is still here, and continues to live up to the new name well). The thought of the rest of the contract being better than the last four weeks was a little light in my day J.

Tuesday, Day 16

Every other year I have planted, I took a copy of Annie Dillard’s, ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ with me. In my first year, I read it on the bus on the way to the block, to remind me to be aware and approach my wild surroundings with wonder and curiousity. I didn’t bring Annie with me this year. I have, instead, some Walt Whitman (Thanks, Brad!), and Thomas Merton. I also have a Francine Rivers on the go, borrowed from the church in Fort Frances. Accordingly:

Dear Ms. Dillard,

Perhaps it is only in the lack of your words, that prompts me to write my own. I’ve been pleasantly surprised this season with so many nature sightings and close-up experiences. Yesterday, I saw a tiny bear cub tumble after his Mother. As I was planting today, a protective mother bird flew out from beneath my next step, startling me and revealing three perfect cream coloured brown speckled eggs nestled in a tightly woven nest on the ground. This morning, Kida, one of the crewboss’ dogs, chased after a baby rabbit and maimed one of its hind legs; Chapin caught the little guy, and he seemed not to be hurt too badly. Since Kida wouldn’t leave it alone, we ended up nestling it in my back bag until she tired looking for the little thing. So, this morning I planted my first bag-up with a baby rabbit in my back bag. It calmed, and didn’t mind Chapin lifting its little fuzzy body out again to set it down in safety. Thank you, Ms. Dillard, for reminding me to have a posture of awareness, wonder, and gratitude.

Day 17, Wednesday

This morning I pumped the brakes on ‘Clifford’ the big red bus, and waited for a young mister moose to cross the road. One of the rookies from the city, jostled forward in his seat commented blithely, “funny how normal this is now”. On Monday I had to stop for a massive (Narnian, really) beaver, and an elegant deer as well. The deer crossed as we were coming back from out weekend in Fort Frances, and I was listening to the City Harmonic through ear phones.

“If I stumble, will you pick me up? What else would a Father do?”

Church that morning had filled me with longing = *groan. Such longing. To be free of my sin, to grow in patience, integrity, loyalty and trust… such longing. To be free. I watched as the deer leaped over the road and in town bounds she was across the wide ditch and was safe in the woods. She leaped so high – like obstacles were nothing to fear. I was envious of the enormous eagle in my piece a few weeks ago; I wasn’t envious of the deer – she had simply filled me with an ache to be able to leap over my own obstacles as easily as she cleared hers. Before I left Hamilton a few weeks ago, I painted these words on the prayer room wall:

“The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag…

If you were to see me in the land, you may see me cruising along, tree after tree in a smooth repetitive glide. Or, more likely, you may see me tripping and falling all over myself: getting sticks caught between my legs while I wobble back and forth probing for soil, with the weight of the forest on my hips and shoulders dragging me into each stumble and fall.

…Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on the cleft mountains” Cant. 2:8, 17

Tree planting is raw – one of the reasons why I love it so much here. People swear, have emotions, and are honest when they have shitty days. No one dresses like peacocks, and when we do, we hardly recognize each other. I like the raw flavour. It teaches me to unload my social constructs and use common sense again. However, in its rawness, I meet my own raw heart and mind. As I watch my body continue to heal itself from the would I casually afflict on myself as I move through the land, I am only too aware of my anger, frustration, hidden intentions and fears brought to the surface in a wild little community outside of society, where everyone works themselves to exhaustion each long day.

I pray that this raw heart, this raw mind, is shaped and molded here in this raw place – that even here, my shepherd is leading me by way of the deer, and I may have enough humility and longing to be led willingly.

Day 29, Wednesday

Over the half way mark, and the end seems to be so far away. Thunder rumbles overhead tonight, and I could hear the rain on the water before it started falling on my tent. There are so many things I want to do before falling, mentally and physically exhausted, to sleep until another day threatens to begin.

Day 32, Saturday.

The fingers on my shovel hand clicked into place this morning, and I am desperately applying cream to the growing welt on my side where my bags chafe my waist. I cried walking to the block this morning… the blackflies and mosquitos swarming my face made me feel like an abandoned corpse, and life was more hopeless this morning than ever before. After a six day week of long days, there is not enough time in the day for enough sleep. A two day weekend seems too good to be true… and yet it is here. I truly don’t think I could have lasted another day... I spend each day now, day-dreaming of cycling with Hamiltonian friends without the overshadowing fear of the next day looming over my burnt and broken body. 

Perfect.

 Day 11, Tuesday

Perfect. Today we had the best find of all my years – a perfectly tiny, perfectly vulnerable, perfectly newborn fawn, nestled in the sticks and logs of a skidder trail. My poor partner had almost speared it with his shovel but stopped his throw inches before accidentally harming the sweet thing. He sat down on the log next to it, white-faced and cursing. It looked up at us with its big dark eyes, and slowly breathed in and out through its perfectly tiny wet nose. It was about three of my hands in size; we flagged the space around it (I named it Spock), and saw that its mum was moving it a few feet every few hours. We would often see the powerful mother bounding down skidder trails or through residuals, just catching her erect white tail as it darted past. We also saw a bear today, a beaver, and a little lovely blue egg – the first I’ve seen this season.