We left Naramata on Sunday, July 31st, expecting to stay in Nelson for a night and then head on to Salmo Ranch for our orientation as volunteers for Shambhala. Eren and I had been invited to a rave somewhere in the bush near Oliver on the Saturday night and navigating through the dark hills had a noticable effect on the poor Westie, the battery was having a harder and harder time holding a charge. We left with one of our fellow pickers, Thomas, who was hoping to stay in Nelson until the official beginning of Shambhala and then meet up with us at the festival. Somewhere between Middway and Grand Forkes, the Westfalia gave up for good. We were towed by a nice gentleman named Bill to Grand Forkes where we shelled out for a motel and a good night’s sleep. All of the garages were closed due to some civic holiday but the van seemed to be holding a charge so we attempted again for Nelson. That lasted as far as Christina Lake where the van quit again in front of a gas station. We called another tow truck that waited only long enough to boost the battery and then left. The battery died as we watched them pull out of the driveway and we waited another couple of hours for a third tow truck. The final tow truck of that day arrived to find Eren and I absentmindedly playing chess on the asphalt beside the poor dejected vehicle. We were finally towed to Nelson where they left us in front of a garage, closed until the next day. We slept in their driveway and then woke up early to sort things out. The mechanics told us that they didn’t have time to look at the Westfalia but that they could boost us again so we could get to the Volkeswagon mechanic nearby. Despite our skepticism they explained that it was this or we had to wait for another tow truck. We were boosted again, only to die again at an intersection, uphill. We called a tow truck and went off for breakfast. The upside to this was that we ran into some more of our Naramata friends, Maxime and Phil. Nelson was beginning to buzz with all sorts of expectant Shambhalites, many that we had met picking. Nelson is a beautiful place and it really wasn’t so bad to be trapped there among friends.
The van was finally diagnosed at the Volkeswagon mechanics as having a broken alternator, a part which wouldn’t arrive until the next day. I had already resigned myself to the fact that I would have to miss the volunteer orientation and for those of you who know me, tardiness gives me indigestion. We camped out near one of the many Nelson beaches and then retrieved the repaired van for a mere $400, finally setting out on Wednesday afternoon with our friends Maxime and Thomas. Things were looking up with the entrance to Shambhala only meters away when we were stopped at a routine police checkstop. Studded tires are apparently illegal and because of this as well as some other technicalities not worth going into on this blog we were told that this was as far as the van was allowed to go and were given the amount of time it took for a tow truck to come (our fifth in four days!) to pack what we needed out of the van. A good samaritan from Salmo gave the four of us and our meager belongings a ride to the entrance where we waited for another lift down the 8 km hill. Maxime and I were seperated from Thomas and Eren and we waited a few hours until finally deciding to set up a temporary camp and explore. The next day by divine chance we met Thomas and Eren at the message board, both Eren and I bearing notes for each other. When we all headed to the river to bathe we found Phil, Maxime’s travel partner, on a hit of acid and a bottle of Jagermeister, who had snuck in only to be discovered, kicked, out and snuck in again. He would later sneak out to his car again to pick up more stuff, evading Shambhala security three miraculous times. This guy was one of the craziest and most resourseful people I have ever met, a force to be reckoned with.

My third and definitely final Shambhala had a few bright moments but all in all it is easy to say that I won’t be back next year. I slept through my first volunteer shift and on the Monday night my three months away from home began to take a serious toll. My grandmother died the day we left Quesnel and the enormity of this loss was finally beginning to dawn on me the closer I came to arriving home. I could feel a cold brewing in my sinuses and throat. I roamed the carcass of Shambhala looking for a pay phone for an hour finally coming across Legendaryl, a busker/picker from Naramata, who lent me a shoulder to cry on for awhile. I managed to secure a ride to Calgary from some mutual friends and upon waking to a maturing flu, abandoned my final volunteer shift, packed my shit and headed home. The ride home was long and in a cramped seat in the back I was attacked by fever, chills, body aches and maybe even a little delerium. At 2 a.m. I sat ringing the doorbell to my parent’s house, shaking and exhausted. I slept twelve hours and will soon sleep again, aided by Buckley’s and chamomile tea. I chuckle at the fact that I first left home at the end of April with tonsilitus and a raging sinus infection only to return and be bedridden again. Everything comes full circle, always.

I promise to replace my phone and get in touch with everyone soon, but for the next few days I will be at my parent’s house aiding in the arrangements for grandma’s memorial and recovering from my journey. After that I promise to be back in action, preparing for my 25th birthday. I’m still not sure what to do with this blog now that I’ve returned home, perhaps Eren will post some of her stories from Oliver and her trip to Burning Man. Maybe I’ll use it again for my tree planting escapades next year. Whatever happens, thank you to all who have followed us and lent us encouragement on one of the most important and transformative summers of our lives.

I’ve already said it but it’s worth repeating: This place is a paradise. We start picking at 5:30 in the grey dawn. Everything is silent expect for the sounds of leaves rustling and the occasional bad cherry falling to the ground. Two of the girls we pick with have actually gone to school for music and after a few hours you can hear them singing to each other softly, sometimes in English or in French. We are the only Anglophones out of 16 planters, with one student from Korea. I was nervous at first that we would be isolated because of it but our fellow pickers have been so kind and accepting. We attempt to mix in as much French as we can into our conversations and they are always ready to translate for us or explain terms. Halfway through the day the orchard owner, Jean, will arrive with water, rice crispy squares and some sort of baked good. Working for this woman is like working for your grandmother. She’s so sweet and talkative and always quick to chastise you for setting up your ladder improperly, worrying over how you might hurt yourself.

Eren’s cherry picking skills are coming along splendidly and though I’m again the slowest, it doesn’t really matter at this orchard. They almost prefer you to pick slower as the farm workers, Bobby and his long-suffering wife Belmachit can’t quite keep up with the sorting and counting. This suits me just fine as I will often start day-dreaming while I pick until I remember that I’m at the top of a ten foot ladder and I’m afraid of heights.

When picking is done we all arrive back at the camp to eat and take a cold shower to wash off the dirt and pesticides. We hang out for awhile and then pack up to go to the beach, stopping at the Naramata store to buy a six pack or a 2L of cheap sweet cider. It’s sweltering at the beach and every bit of shade is taken up by hippies from all the Naramata orchards, most of them Quebecois, all deeply tanned. Some have followed the fruit picking season from other parts of the Kootaneys, others have just started the season in Naramata, but will move on from here. Almost everyone plays an instrument; guitar, bass, accordian, harmonica, drums. Pickers throw around a football in the field, swim in the lake, play volleyball or juggle. Girls and guys will sit around making jewelry, making plans for upcoming music festivals or talking about home. One of the pickers we work with, Audrey, says that most of the people she knows from Quebec she will find somewhere in B.C. in the summer. If tree-planting is the great Canadian right of passage, then fruit picking is the Quebecois right of passage. We have talked a little to our co-workers about the culture in Quebec and their relationship with the rest of Canada, but mostly we just talk about music, raves, movies etc. Another girl we work with, Gen, is a philosophy major and we talk about literature, philosophers and French feminism. After all of the weird looks Eren and I got around Quesnel, it finally feels like we belong somewhere.

I’m not sure how many posts I’ll get in before we leave for Shambhala, but I’ll try my best to write one before we leave Naramata.

Eren and I found ourselves with the same dilemma as when we first set out to find planting jobs. No one wanted to hire rookie pickers. The wet weather has pushed back the picking season and this side of the Okanogan is swarming with pickers (mostly French-Canadians) trying to find jobs at reputable orchards. We were warned that some places will use harmful pesticides and we hoped to find somewhere that wasn’t too shady. After a few false leads we managed to get on the list of a pretty good orchard and were told to come on Thursday to set up camp.

In the mean time, that little issue with my locked ring finger hadn’t gone away. For three days it had been locked in a curled position and any attempt to pull it straight proved very painful. Finally Eren drove me into Penticton so I could consult a walk in clinic. “I just need a shot of cortisone,” I told her, confident in my own self-diagnoses. When the doctor finally looked at it she told me that the tendon had become inflamed and some fibrous tissue in the finger had become locked underneath it, a condition called ‘Trigger Finger’. “Have you banged it recently?” She asked. Well, yes, of course I had. I had just spent two months banging my hand against a shovel, that’s sort of what tree planting entails. She tried just as I had to disengage the damn thing to no avail and then told me that I’d have to visit the Emergency room down the street. She also said something about a plastic surgeon that I didn’t quite catch and I tried to keep from panicking. Eren and I headed over to the hospital where I proceeded to wait another two hours to be seen. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” the admitting nurse told me, a sentiment later echoed by the triage nurse. “Good God,” I thought, “am I going to be like this forever?” Finally a  doctor appeared and prodded at my hand for a bit. He shot a coctail of cortisone and anesthetic into my palm and very painfully popped the finger back up. Another nurse then came in and rigged my hand up with a ridiculously big splint and tensor bandage.

Due to my traumatic experience Eren and I deemed it necessary to pick up individual coconut cream pies and eat them on the beach. I was in a lot of pain through out the night but the swelling has finally gone down. I can’t make a fist but I prefer that to the dreaded Trigger Finger.

We spent the next day in Penticton sleeping on the beach and getting marvelously sunburned. It’s a really beautiful place and there was an interesting mix of clean cut suburbanite tourists and dirty beach bums from the Common Wealth busking for food. Eren and I probably fit somewhere in the middle though we hadn’t had proper showers for a couple of days. We met a couple of the aforementioned Common Wealth beach bums, one from New Zealand and the other from Liverpool. The boy from Liverpool attempted to board the S.S. Sicamous, an old steamliner that was stationed across from our van, despite the clearly posted warnings of alarms and surveillance. At 1 a.m. the alarms sounded and we dashed back to the Westie, moving it to another parking lot three blocks down.

We finally found picking jobs and the owners of the orchard have set up a camp for all the pickers on their front lawn. We are the only Anglophones and we feel very inferior for it. Many of our fellow pickers have dreads to their waist and look exactly like the “dirty hippies” many of our beloved planters railed against. We fit in pretty well other than the language barrier and are quite content with our first attempt at picking.

I’m stealing internet now so I’ll end this here, but stay tuned for many more adventures!

We have finally completed our rookie year. The Westie was packed up and the Toaster Coaster began again down to the Okanogan. I realize that my posts got a little spotty in the last few days so I”ll attempt to capture the highlights here. I have to beg the patience of our readers though and apologize for any typos in advance. Just this morning the finger between my middle finger and pinkie locked into a hook and refuses to extend. This has happened before but has popped back in a matter of minutes. This little stint, however, is going on 7 hours now…

Eren and I both managed to break the 2k mark this year, something that I had doubted possible for myself at least. Eren pounded it out in trenches, and I eked in my success on the last day of spring plant on a 10 hour day in mounds. In the pouring rain/hail without rain gear. Oh, and without gloves. The line between stupidity and grit really starts to blur after awhile.

I’ll try not to say too much about our second last block as our boss Davin reads this blog and has heard it all already, except to say that there was a 3-5 km uphill walk in, a lot of rain and a sharp decline in the number of planters on our crew. The bugs were intense and I took to bagging up with a cigarette in my mouth just to keep them away. A real.. er… character builder. But the last block we were on made up for everything! Creamy ground, good prices; Trevor could be heard happily announcing that it was like “make-up sex.” A fantastic way to end our rookie season!

A few people were sent back for a second day on that final block, but being the thoughtful and selfless individual that I am, I graciously offered to forgo a spot in the truck and instead took in some of Quesnel’s famous Billy Barker Days. As I walked into town at 8 a.m. people had already started lining the streets with lawn chairs in preparation for the Billy Barker parade. All of a sudden I flashed back to age 12, shivering in a similar lawn chair at a similar hour, waiting for the Calgary Stampede parade to begin while suffering an outrageous allergy attack. I shuddered for a moment and headed on to finish some last minute errands. Billy Barker Days looks exactly like a mini-Stampede, even featuring a handful of carnival rides that they use at the Stampede. So for all my gloating about missing Calgary’s biggest pain in the ass, I couldn’t escape without a taste of it.

Our final party was exactly how the year should have ended. Davin had a barbeque at his house with plenty of booze, food and laughs. Awards were given out for highest grossing planters as well as joke gifts awarded by the foremen. Eren received nicotene inhalers for her burgeoning cigarette addiction and I was given a new calculator for a math error that I’ve made previously on this blog (I’ve corrected it now, but how many of you were quick enough to catch it?) Johnny, a vet that has been mentioned before in this blog was deemed happiest planter, a title that runs counter to his industry nickname “Angry Johnny.” I had already taken to calling him “Johnny Taylor, Patron Saint of Rookies,” so this was quite fitting.

After final goodbyes the next day your hungover heroines took to the road, squatting in a random abandoned lot in Camloops on the way to Monte Creek. We arrived in Naramata today, a beautiful oasis after the wood pulp stench of Quesnel. Fruit trees, lavender farms, beautiful houses and gardens, this place feels like the Garden of Eden. In fact, as we were looking for parking we had to stop the van to let two peacocks cross the road. Despite the beauty of this place we find ourselves missing and talking about everyone that we worked with during our rookie year and are suffering a little bit of heart ache. 

We’re splurging on a motel room tonight for the sake of internet and hot showers. Eren has a crazy infected cut on her ankle and even as I type this I have to shout “breathe through the pain” into the bathroom door as she attempts to disinfect it. Tomorrow we find a better place to squat and some picking jobs until Shambhala.

Pictures soon!

Some quick pictures of Eren, our fellow rookie Lucie and me! I think we were working in some very wet trenches this day, probably around the beginning of June.

Dani had already posted this video on our facebook, but after watching it we were horrified to learn that every word of it was true. In fact, most of the other planters we are working with had already seen it, and occasionally will quote from it so I figured I’d add it to the blog!

I have more additions and will update when I can!

Area planting

When you use natural barriers on your block such as fallen logs or burn piles to section off parts of your block and plant those rather than planting to the back and crossing back and forth. I’m just finally learning how to do this and it helps to break up the monotony.       

Block

A large section of land as determined by a logging company’s contract. It can include a mix of prepped and un-prepped land, or all of the same. A block will have a pre-determined amount of trees to go in it, some contracts lasting a full shift, others only a few days. If it is decided however, that a block will be finished that day then you stay until it is done, hence the twelve-hour days.

Bundle

ust what it sounds like, a bundle of seedlings, pine, fir, or spruce, usually              bundles of fifteen or twenty.

Bags

A harness connecting three bags, two larger ones on the sides and a small     back bag with a pouch on the front to hold flagging tape. The shoulder straps on the harness have been affectionately referred to as “faggot straps.” Another early rookie move is “back bagging,” where one attempts to carry bundles in the back bag in order to carry more trees. This hurts the back quite a bit and I finally dropped the practice in my second shift, however I’m still using the shoulder straps, despite the homophobic implications.

Cache

Boxes of bundled trees are left at certain points of the block under a tarp to keep them cool. You will leave your bag and any other belongings next to this cache while you plant and a few planters may share a cache or one might have it all to themselves, my preferred way of planting. I do have people that I would prefer to share a cache with and there are many that I am completely intimidated by which usually effects the speed of my bag ups, re: fast. Cache breaks are the period in which you bag up and if you so choose, eat, smoke and socialize. A vet told me that his ex-girlfriend used to take only five minute cache breaks in which she ate, rehydrated and bagged up 500 trees. I usually take 10 minutes, bag up about 200-300 trees and try to enjoy a smoke. On days when have a cache to myself and there’s no one around to judge me, I’ve been known to take 15 minute breaks. The life of a rookie can be a charmed one

Checker

            This is usually and outside consultant that logging companies hire to check the quality of trees being planted. They will walk on to a piece and ensure that the spacing and depth of trees adheres to regulations. You can only have an 8% failure rate which means that if you plant 2000 trees in a piece, only 1600 of them must meet quality standards. If over 128 of those trees fail to meet specs your piece fails. Accuracy is huge here as well as speed, and managing to meet both of those is the true test of a planter.

Cluster-fuck

Cream

Sandy ground or soft clay. When your shovel sinks into the ground easily and the hole closes over that seedling with ease, you are planting in creamy ground. It is usually at the front of a piece while the back is often rocky or covered in slash. Burn spots can also be quite creamy. It can also be referred to as “butter.” Cream can be used as a noun, verb etc: “She creamed out the front of her pieced and f***ed off!” or “Way to cut a line you Creamer, you left me all the slash!”

Cutting

When your foreman first cuts you a piece they will usually point out a landmark at the back which will be your right of left line. Your piece may extend to another landmark or simply end when you reach another planter’s line. You attempt to plant in a straight line to the back which can be very difficult depending on the number of obstacles and you flag “high and proud” with biodegradable flagging tape.

High-baller

A planter who puts in high numbers every day. We’re talking anywhere between three to four thousand trees a day. I haven’t had a chance to interview any of the vet planters yet, but the title high-baller comes with a lot of implications. Usually it is either younger planters, four or five years into their career or some of the older vets who carry this title. High-ballers can be very egotistical and to describe some of the less desirable traits of a high-baller I have been attempting to coin the term “Prima Ballerina.” It hasn’t caught yet, but maybe if I keep pushing it for a few more years? Another memorable quote connected to the title made between my two favorite vets, Johnny and Trevor. Johnny said that “High-ballers are made, not born,” to which Trevor chimed in, “and they usually have short lived careers.” The term can also be abbreviated to “baler,” or used as an adverb or adjective in the form of “ballin’.”

Fill Planting

A method of planting where the land is left un-prepped and as many natural trees are allowed to grow as possible. The maximum number of years this land is allowed to be left without planting is 7 years, I think. When planting you must space off of natural trees as well as the “drip line” of mature trees, usually about three meters. Fill planting was the first contract we started on and you could spend a good three minutes putting a tree in the ground only to realize that a little pine tree that had just barely achieved ten centimeters height was in front of you. It is then acceptable, if no one of authority is around you, to pluck that little bugger out of the ground and back bag it.

Piece

Chunks of the block that each planter is assigned. They can be small or large, difficult or easy. In some cases preferential treatment by the foreman can lead to a better piece. If you piss somebody off you may find yourself planting a sun-baked hill on a 45-degree angle. It pays to be pleasant out here.

Plug

The root of a seedling. As one vet helpfully informed me, plant with the green part sticking out. I promise I wasn’t doing it the other way around before.

Trenches

A type of prepped land where trenches are cut into the ground either parallel or perpendicular to the road, though perpendicular is best. One side of the trench is where the ground is tilled up revealing a “micro-site,” prime ground for planting. One must plant at the “hinge” of the trench or else the entire damn thing falls apart. When planting trenches I feel like I’m a soldier in WWI dodging German bullets and mustard gas.=

Mounds

Like trenches but instead of cutting lines into the ground a machine scoops into the ground leaving a hole with a mound or micro-site on one side. They are usually full of water and bugs and at least a few planters will fall in to some stagnant scum during a day of planting these. They seem to be my favorite so far though.

Straight Planting

Un-prepped land without natural trees. Though the prices are better on this land they can be a serious pain, rocky and scattered with litter. Last shift I was stuck straight planting while everyone else was in trenches. It was rocky, frozen ground because I was planting on the top of a damned mountain. Every once and a while though I would look up and enjoy the view which was quite beautiful

Screef

Using a shovel or foot (rookie move) to remove the litter layer, moss or other material to better determine the soil underneath. Many of the vets can do without this step but as a poor rookie I plant shallow trees otherwise.

Naturals

Small sapling trees that have been allowed to sprout and depending on the logging company must be considered viable trees if they are above a certain height (10 cm usually) and of “good health and vigor.” To quote one of the vets, “that crap is guerilla soldiers and I’m bringing in the cavalry. Pluck it and plant a winner.”

Plot

On the night before our first day we were assigned a thin rope with a loop on the end of it, about three meters long. I mistook it for a noose at first and ever since have been tempted to use the damn thing as one. It is a plot cord, used to determine the spacing of your trees. You might be planting sixes, sevens, eights, even tens on some contracts. Jam that shovel into the ground, throw the loop over it and then walk in a circle counting the trees that the rope can touch. When our foreman “throws a plot” on us she will also check the trees to ensure that they are not too shallow, deep, or j-rooted. My spacing continues to be less than ideal at times and the moment I see Andrea on my piece with her cord out I break into a cold sweat.

Rookie

A sub-human category of planter. I was told on my first shift that just because you plant trees, that doesn’t make you a tree planter. In your first year as a planter you are considered a tourist. Many do not last their first year, and they are prime targets for pranks. However, even if you make it through your first year this does not mean you are quite out of the woods yet (pun intended). One of the other planters told me that she didn’t start getting taken seriously until her fourth year. I look forward to another three years of snide remarks after this.

Shift

A full shift is usually four days on one day off. Second day is the hump day, fourth day means it’s time to drink your face off.

Slash

Large logs and sticks left over from logging. My first shift planting I didn’t even realize I had to plant in this crap until my foreman chuckled and showed me how to screef through it. I still hate it and have impaled my leg on enough sharp sticks to be wary of the stuff. I’m told this is nothing though, and a few veterans have told me war stories about planting on “The Coast,” a place of nothing but slash and wicked hills. As I have not yet planted on “The Coast,” these stories do little to comfort me as I screef hopelessly in search of soil.

Slug

Some of the terminology that we have come across here runs counter to what you would first expect it to mean. For instance, the first time that I heard the other crew was “slugging it out” in Horesefly, I assumed that slugging it out would be akin to a slugger in baseball, hard-hitting and fast. Here the term slugging takes after that slimy invertebrate and to slug it out means to go slow and lazy. I finally realized this when I was caught spending the last five minutes of a workday at the cache trying to sun my legs with one of the other planters. I heard a vet shout from across the block “move it you slugs!” Finally the definition clicked.

Slutting

 I can’t be completely sure of this definition but I’m pretty sure “slutting it out,” “slutting those trees in,” or “slutting out a contract” is to plant in a careless and haphazard way without concern for the quality of work. Another term that works with this is “cache slut,” one who takes numerous and long cache breaks usually spending them smoking, eating and talking with anyone else who is sharing the cache.

Pounder

A favorable term for someone who can “pound” trees into the ground. It can take a serious amount of force to get a shovel into the ground, especially if there is a lot of slash or if the ground is hardened or sun baked. Eren earned the nickname pounder almost immediately, I, however, am usually accused of pussyfooting with my shovel.

Veterans

Vets are the older planters, sometimes career planters who have been working at this job for 7 or more seasons. The ones that I have encountered are a lot nicer than the average high-baller, probably because they really don’t have anything to prove anymore. They have great stories, sometimes dubious advice, and have been known to plant a few trees for hapless rookies now and again. They are some of my favorite people to be around.

Personal Best

Just like it sounds, the highest number a planter has ever hit. I’ve heard numbers as high as 6500, but the type of land that you’re planting in as well as the length of the work day will have a considerable effect on this number. It is often referred to as a “PB” or “peanut butter.”

Replant

A replant occurs when your foreman reviews your quality and finds it lacking. This means you stop planting (stop making money) and go back to check all of the trees you have already planted. If your density is too high or your trees are planted too closely together you have to throw plots and pull any offending trees. If your trees are too deep or too shallow you check each individual tree and correct. On trenched block both myself and another planter were sent back to replant. My density was too low and I had to place a few more trees which meant I was still making money, however slowly, but the other planter had too many shallow trees. As I threw plots and attempted to fit in extra trees I could hear her screaming and swearing as she corrected her trees,

The days are getting hotter, the rides are getting longer, and the blocks are getting greener: summer planting has begun. Ground that was still frozen when we first got here has finally thawed which means our rides are up to two hours long to the block and back now. Of course I don’t have to remind our dear readers out there that these logging blocks are secluded and without running water or washroom facilities, but with the longer rides it is becoming an impossibility to hold it till we get back to the motel. I had often wondered at the hardened vets completing their first bag up and reaching into their sacks for toilet paper, carefully folding it and tucking it into a Ziploc bag before they headed in to plant. Now that my body has become accustomed to this lifestyle however, I too find myself performing a similar routine at 11 o’clock sharp everyday. The secret, one of the other planters explained to me, is red and green moss. A simple sheaf of one-ply toilet paper pilfered from a motel room hardly provides the coverage necessary and you will find yourself resembling one of those bears in those creepy Charmin commercials. However, a sizable handful of luscious moss wrapped in toilet paper adds significant bulk ensuring a clean and comfortable day. And so you have it, a new rhetorical question: does a tree planter shit in the woods?

An upside to the summer planting is that it is mushroom season. Many of the planters have been picking morels and I’m hoping and praying that I’ll be around when they cook up those tasty fungi. We came across a mushroom picking camp on the way to a block one day and witnessed a man that bore a disturbing resemblance to Randy from Trailer Park Boys. I repeat again: disturbing.

That’s pretty much the end of this post, but I’d like to put a shout out there to all our loved ones back home. We’re not on the Internet or Facebook as much as we’d like to be and we don’t always have the energy to phone home but we miss you all a lot. Hardly a ride home goes by that either Eren or I don’t mention the name of one of you that we miss. I just want you all to know that you’re in our hearts and thoughts.

I may be driven mad by bugs. Seriously, I am no longer a rookie planter, no longer a human being, only living bait for mosquitoes, black flies and no-see-ums. Every day I become more adept at identifying each individual bite on my body, the diverse way they look, swell, redden, and the patterns that they make. I bathe in deet on the block and still it only holds up for a few hours before the insects buzzing in my ears deafen me. Mosquitoes enjoy my forehead and temples, black flies like under my bandana behind my ears and no-see-ums find their way into my tights. The block we have been working on the past shift is peppered with mounds, which means a lot of holes for water and mosquito larvae to collect in.

Exhaustion is setting in on all of the crewmembers and a number of injuries have started to affect our numbers. One of the other rookies, Mary-Anne has a cat scan tomorrow for her ankle. A stick stabbed her pretty badly and her leg has started to turn a psychedelic pattern of purple, blue and red. Tempers are running high and morale is dipping lower and lower. Your favorite duo works hard to remain in good spirits and we have baked brownies and scones. I bought some bananas the other day and am letting them blacken for some really good banana bread. Last day two our next-door neighbor cooked an amazing tortellini dish with some of the morel mushrooms that the crew has been picking. He breaded and fried them ad served it all with a white wine cream sauce. Don’t be deceived though, dear readers, we do not eat like this everyday. While Eren and I once sprouted sprouts and put together fantastic vegetable sandwiches for our lunches, our midday meal has slowly degenerated to Pb & j, everyday. In truth, this is about all I can stand to choke down everyday. We eat chocolate in abundance and have began following the lead of other tree planters, gulping down sugary energy drinks at around 1 p.m.

There were a few really bad days of rain but it has been especially warm for this last day off and we hope it will hold up. Planting in pouring rain is particularly unpleasant. The upside to all the moisture is the giant toads on the block and around our motel. Every time I see one hop by I stop what I am doing to pick it up and have a chat with it. Afterwards I have to plant a bundle of trees really fast to make up for my five minutes of toad time.

After a few 12 hour shifts we were finally granted two days off in a row so we headed to Barkerville for a bit of a field trip. It’s sort of like Heritage Park, only better. It’s a preserved gold mining town that is actually quite extensive including a  school house, church, courthouse, gallows, cemetery and there are tours into some of the old mines. Professional actors walk around in full costume greeting visitors and interacting with each other. For anyone who has ever read Choke by Chuck Palahnuik, it sort of reminded me of that, except without the deformed chickens. We had lunch in the old China Town and while it is apparently some of the best Chinese food in Northern B.C., though I didn’t feel that it quite measured up to Calgary. I kept my mouth shut however and enjoyed some greasy, greasy egg rolls, later downing half a pound of fudge from the old fashioned confectionary.

We’ve planted in all kinds of ground now, form fill planting to mounds and trenches. Planting in trenches looks exactly how it sounds and I often spend my time pretending I’m a WWI soldier dodging German bullets and mustard gas. One of the rookies has already pushed the 2K tree mark and the rest of us are still pushing. My personal best was 1700 after one of the 12 hour days but I usually rest around 13 to 15 hundred tress which is around $100 depending on the price.

I’m currently working on a planter’s dictionary which provides some amusement in the off time and I’ll start posting and amending that after this post. Again, pictures to follow at some point here… I promise!