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.
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