Erika Drushka has made a documentary called “Rooted Lives” about 3 long-timers on the coast. There’s a website with a trailer here. Looks absolutely fantastic.

I notice the contact address for Mighty Films is on St. Charles St. in Victoria. The name’s a little familiar too. Have I met Erika?

And a reminder that there’s an increasing amount of quality audio/video about planting out there. I’m still blown away by just how little treeplanting has been mined as a source of material for mainstream movies and TV and such. Everybody in Canada knows somebody who plants. It’s like there’s a three-decade old war and nobody has bothered to make a Full Metal Jacket or From Here to Eternity about it. Or Band of Brothers. You could totally just photoshop some dreads onto the guys in Band Of Brothers, re-title it and re-release it for huge bucks in canukistan.

Jose-Luis at Twisted Tree Productions has made a project of filming short videos of treeplanting and related topics. Click on “Image and Video Bank”.

Here’s video of Ed from Barenaked Ladies strapping on the bags for TV.

Here’s Nicki Mosely’s radio documentary from a while back:

[audio:http://hughstimson.org/files/mosley_poetry_in_the_trees.mp3]

tree-planter.com still has the trailer for the “Getting Screefed” movie that never happened. Watching it now, I notice that one of the guys has the same Highland Helicopters hat that pilot Tim gave us, and I wore for a season, and then lost, and then Sherwin found me a new one somehow.

And there is more and more and more great photography out there, if you search around. When I started, Handmade Forests was the beginning and end of the subject. Since then, photography has come to the clearcuts in a big way, and the results have been phenomenal. There’s also a burgeoning movement of planting-blogging, as the facebook generation moves into the blocks.

Also there’s a great new project in the works which I’m probably not at liberty to describe at the moment, except that it’s about music and looks like it’s coming together nicely.

I can feel myself losing touch with my treeplanting existence. The memories are all there somewhere I suppose, but I’m losing my direct access to them. Now when I look at these movies and photos and hear these stories, they evoke a compelling world that I would like to experience, like a fantasy novel, instead of triggering my own experiences. What’s up with that? It’s a sad experience. It’s not like I didn’t go through this, in overwhelmingly enormous detail, day in day out, for what felt at the time like forever. I lived lives in the bush. Why I can’t I feel them?

Oh yes, there’s a chance I’ll be planting a contract in Creston this spring. Come to think of it, maybe the memories are safer forgotten. Oh god.