a word on tree-planting

  

I've always like the lovely stippling effect the Sun has on log decks.  It's better at sunrise.

This little fellow reminded me of the Lorax, the way he was posturing on top of the pile.

Deer at the Canfor saw mill.

Between final exams and China I took a two-week vacation to trant plees.  As luck would have it (or wouldn’t) most of this time was spent waiting for the remnants of a long winter to melt away and uncover something to plant the trees in.  So instead I spent several days sprawled on the plastic mattresses of old motel beds strewn with colourful back-country maps and ineffective government safety regulations, taking pleasure in the simple things in life, like motel-room art (my current quarters boasts a Siberian and a Bengal tiger cuddling, and a Persian kitten playing chess with a mouse) and stale beer.

             Another year on the prairies and I had thought the party might have simply gone out of me.  After finals I forced myself with an uncommon resolve to flinch through two hours of free beer at a popular club, watching thin blondes on tall heels coyly gyrate their hips to party remixes.  Everyone else around me seemed to be having a good time, and so I concluded clearly there must be something wrong with me.  What I learned in Prince George this week is that the necessary ingredients were simply not available at that time.  These as it turns out are old friends, a little pub on the side of a highway, and an old-fart soul cover band (think three Northern flavours of “Joey-the-Lips” Fagan and a red-head with pipes). 

That painful night at the Saskatoon club I was asked why I don’t dance.  I dance.  All tree-planters dance.  We dance with wild abandon and without a care for the corners of tables, or the constraints of gravity.  We spin and swoop and stomp our feet, losing the beat for a moment only to reclaim it without a hint of self-consciousness.  And in the middle of this bedlam is usually John, a student and planter from the DRC, dancing like he’s straight out of a Micheal Jackson music video. 

I have re-evaluated my previous self-doubt and have predictably concluded that clearly there is something wrong with the prairies.