Hai look, they’re treeplanting.

This guy is writing a novel about treeplanting. And he’s serializing the writing on myspace. Why not?

(it seems to start here)

Apparently this guy is working on a novel too, although maybe non-fiction this time.

Peppermill Records is a little indie outfit based in Terrace, and run in the off-season by planter Peter Krahn. Peter has laboured mightily to bring together a massive compilation of music by planters, for planters and yes, of planters.

It’s cheaper than Outland bidding on a bladed ontario hedgerow block. It’s free.

Hi and Ho, We Plant Trees

If you’re a planter then you probably know some of the performers, or know somebody who knows them, or have unknowingly worked fill over top of their hopelessly j-rooted trees from a few seasons back, or they are right now working fill over your hopelessly j-rooted trees from a few seasons back.

And yes, it includes what may still be the greatest planting song of all time.

I’ve been emailing back and forth with Peter since he wanted to use some of my photos for a gallery. (I’m pleased he picked out a couple I took in ’03 with a ziplocked disposable. I forgot about those.) A few weeks back I got excited and played the radio debut of a couple of the tracks. Since then Peter has locked in a bunch of new numbers and officially released the whole thing to the winds.

Plug yer ipod into the crewcab speakers, roll down the windows and blare it into the blasted ex-wilderness like some kind of misguided call to prayer.

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:

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.

Back in 1999, I decided to forgo my routine summer job in Collingwood to work as a treeplanter in northern Alberta. Since then, I have spent every summer but one planting trees in clearcuts in Alberta and BC. Missing that one summer (because I thought I was done as a planter and was needed at my for-real job) was emotionally difficult. By the next year I was back, and then again and again and again.

Since I’m a graduate student now, and rely on the tuition waivers that come with in-semester work more than the real money that can be made in summer, I’m presumably officially retired. Which means that this is my first summer actually off in nearly a decade, that one non-planting summer having been a wickedly busy field research season. I was expecting it to be a bittersweet transition, and I’ve subtly dreaded the emails I would get from active planters on “the inside”.

Here’s what I wrote in response to one such email:

Hey DR,

I enjoyed your first email, and postcard, and I regret that the emails haven’t kept coming. It was very satisfying to read about cold fingers being shoved into icey holes (or perhaps I extrapolated that part) while sitting at my desk with a coffee at my elbow and the warm summer breeze blowing in the window. Let me tell you how I feel about leaving treeplanting. Before I left, I knew I would have a hard time when the start of the season rolled around, and that there would be some sense that I was abandoning and being abandoned by something that has given my life shape and fullness. I was wrong. Being an ex-planter is so much better than being a active planter. Each morning, when I roll out of bed around 9 and think about which of my various tasks I will choose to do, is a gift. There is no rain to be listened to on the tarp. There is no lunch table to be waited for, nor devil’s club nor roots nor wasps nor rocks nor air pockets nor duff nor high plots nor low slash nor grass mat nor open holes nor hail nor unrelenting rain nor cold fronts nor airless boiling hot afternoons in the fill nor torn gloves nor timed bagups. Every planting-season fantasy of what a summer off would be like turns out to be largely true. I take my leisure. I sit late at night in diners. I wander the town in an unhurried way. I visit my friends who live in fun cities, and walk up and down. I have work to do, and I do it, but at my own pace and choosing. Sometimes I ride my motorcycle to places I don’t know. Sometimes I drink beers and such. It’s lovely. Presumably much of this feeling will fade as it becomes the norm, but it hasn’t yet. Presumably much of this feeling had to be earned with my many stupid years of planting, but I have to tell you, cashing in these checks is a lot more fun than writing them.

What I really want is a webcam that I can look at whenever I want that shows you guys working. That would further sharpen the sensation of relief.

Today I wandered around Toronto, in the summer, which is a novelty. I haven’t spent a lot of time in cities in the summer since I was a highschool teenager. I had beers on patios and lounged in parks reading novels. This is great.

A former treeplanting comrade who also happens to be a textile artist has a gallery show in Montreal. It’s about treeplanting. A textile art show about treeplanting–strange, and cool. But here’s the really cool part: among the things she crafted tapestries of are some pictures I took of my hands after my last day of treeplanting last summer. HOW COOL IS THAT? Cool enough to justify all caps and more. I’m so damn thrilled. People are wandering around a gallery in Montreal looking at treeplanting art, and I contributed to it with my photos and my bashed up hands. I love it. I love it.

The artist’s name is Dahlia, but um I don’t think I know her last name, and I don’t know if that is actually tapestry or something completely different. My ignorance of textile art knows no bounds, but I have been told that “the repetitive movement of jaccard-loom weaving has a similar sort of rhythm as the old step-step-plant”. Art. Yes. Man, I wish I could see the show.

photo Jane Boles

Received email from Andrew Querner, who was looking for background details for a photo of his that will be published in a photo essay about treeplanting. Andrew is a professional photog who I planted with back in 2003. He was the first person I saw trying to seriously take pictures of treeplanting, and they are fantastic. His website is at

Resless Planet

The photo in question is below. That’s me and Ax-paq and somebody else riding in the mudbogger truck that Chris Howard rented off some Chetwynd townie to traverse an especially bad stretch of logging road. If anybody can remember Ax-paq’s real name let me (or Andy Q) know.

The photo essay will be in the summer issue of Kootenay Mountain Culture.

(That’s me looking way relaxed in the back.)

For the first time in half a decade, it is exam season. Which really is not a good thing.

Thanks then to this anonymous planter-blogger for an extended reminder that it could be much worse:

Girl Gone Wild: Treeplanting Edition.

I asked Tony to be paired with Joel one day last week to help me with my speed. It was a cut throat day: Joel trying to lose me, fuming that I had replaced Laura. Criticizing all my moves. Blaming me for creating holes, and not flagging properly. It got me going. I’ve been out here as long as he has, and I lost it. The feminist spark in me reacts violently to his alpha-male-football-player gasolene. I pounded in low quality shit all over his piece, ghostlines and all.

Sara quit last week after nights and nights of gut wrenching coughs and tears. She developed severe tendontis in her shoulder. There is a big dry space in tent city where her “home” used to be and the truck has been quiet without her loud voice garbling unnecessary cheer every morning. That leaves Mary, Laura and I as the only females on the crew. More block discussion about the merits versus benefits of Sara’s existance in our world. “But she kept me up at night.” Bend. “Yeh, but I felt good knowing someone had it worse than me.” Up. “She brought moral down…..” Bend.

Okay, maybe it doesn’t sound so bad. Naw, it does. Or maybe not. What the hell.

Not entirely coincidentally, there are a couple of new LSFS photos up.

Also… it seems that Ed from the Barenaked Ladies has a tv show (wtf?) in which he travels around and does jobs, and one of them was planting. So if ever you wanted to watch a member of the Barenaked Ladies get busted for Js, now you can. Was I supposed to be studying? Some things never change.

After an immensley long pause I have finally put a bunch of photos from the summer Little Smokey plant up. Available here if you want them.

Not very many this year really. Sort of a quieter, more reserved bunch than previous years. Reflective of the general sadness of the passing of an era. Which isn’t very appropriate, considering we went out with a blazing fury.

Maybe more will follow. Also, I have emailed Sherwin to remind him that one or both of us needs to do something about the Ryan’s crew tshirt. Expect action on that, oh, any day now.

I spent my spring planting for Nechako Reforestation on their plateau contract. I’ve got a bunch of photos up now. They’re here.

Shouts to my peeps.