My treeplanting contract, being just a very small one, has ended. I am back in Vancouver and happy to be here.

Our planting crew, being just a very small one, is pictured below. Thanks to Mike Cawley for the picture. Absent from the photo are Mike and our rookie Drew.

Deva, Peter, Marie-Christine, Me (below), Rich (above), Andrew, shovel.

That’s me modeling a pilsner, energy drink of choice in the Northlands.

As anticipated, it was indeed as close to coastal planting as I’ve come. Most of the crew were coastal vets, according to them the cutblocks weren’t much different from what could be found around, say, Bute Inlet. Although they also pointed out that the extremes of slope and slash size weren’t as extreme as true coastal extremities, and that the rain was coming in from above rather than from sideways. Which is fine. Close to coastal style planting is as close as I ever want to come.

The buddhists say that self-awareness allows you to suffer and yet not truly suffer. That occurred to me once or twice when I was working through the worst of what was indeed pretty bad land, and finding myself mentally in reasonably good shape. I guess there is some benefit to being a planting vet, namely that you can get through more treeplanting with equanimity intact. I wish I could say the same of my shins.

Tree prices were high, crew and company were good, and camping out on the Dinwoodie homestead was fun. My back feels a little funny, but I’ve got some more jingle in my pocket and I’m home in the city. And I get to swagger around here pretending to be a treeplanter back from a contract. Two weeks of slash climbing is a reasonable price to pay for these privileges.