Well shoot, it’s getting to be that time of year again. The long lead out from the last planting season is well over, the misleading period of tree-free normalacy has run it’s course, and the frighteningly quick ramp up to the next season is underway. I’ve signed up with my crewbosses. It’s to be Nechako for a francophone spring in the interior BC plateau area, probably based out of Vanderhouf, with Jean-Sebastian Marcil at the helm, followed by Another Summer with the Christian Thunder, namely Ryan Macleod running the best damn planting crew in existence for Little Smokey Forestry Services in the Grand Prairie area.

After that, I may actually be done. I’ve hinted at it in past seasons, but I say it a lot less than some planters, and when I do say it, I mean it. I think this really is it for me.

But that’s a long way and a lot of tree seedlings away. In the meantime I’m staring down the double barrels of the longest and hence rainiest, buggiest, achingest, boringest, exhaustingest season of my life. I should be on the clearcuts from May 3 till August 20th. You do the math cause I don’t want to, that’s a lot of days.

I got email today from Jean “Jonny” Marcil. It’s the standard “hey crew, here’s the dates, see you in a parking lot on this day in this town”. I did a cameo plant briefly with Jonny last year but I think the crew may be changing up for this season, this will anyway be the first time I’ve pulled a full contract with Nechako. Looking over the email addresses in the “to” line, I’m struck that even this far into my career, I’m still going deep into places I don’t really know with people I don’t really know. It’s always kind of a dirty scary adventure. And who the hell is wastedyear666 anyway?

Guess I’ll find out.