Day off! I went and purshased a hammock and a giant water jug. Both will serve me well.
I am currently at my friend Soili’s house and it’s pretty awesome. I made an apple pie for her and Ashley and Soili’s family and dinner is being made.

This week was the first week of working 4 days with 1 day off and it was quite lovely. Yesterday I just died. It was so hot outside and we were planting such bad land that 3 times during the day I would take my shirt off at the cash and just nap. I still planted 1300 tree’s so i’m not too upset. I also beat my personal best again this week, I planted 1820 tree’s up from 1730! Very happy with myself. And it rained all day that day.

Last week we had two days off and it was great. We stayed at the Camalot Motel which had a pool and hottub! We spent the day pawnshopping and had a wonderful conversation with a scary biker. At night we went out to Sargent’s and danced up a storm.
I cannot wait till we get another 2 days off.

So I realized that nobody really knows what my day consists of. So here is a breakdown of a normal day for me.

I wake up at 5:45am and kick myself for coming out here. At 6am I force myself to get up, put some shoes on and head to the mess tent. I make my lunch which usually consists of 3 sandwhiches. maybe a wrap and leftovers from yesterdays meal. I grab snacks when vegan ones are available and tons of fruit. After making my lunch I head for the breakfast line. I get some fruit, oatmeal and when available I grab a ton of potatoes and tofu scramble.
We go to our team’s pickup and head to our block for the day. I get to my piece of land, bag up with my tree’s and start planting usually by 8am. Every hour or two depending on how many tree’s I bagged up with I go to my cash(the place where you store your tree’s) and take a food break, bag up and head back out. 10 hours later it’s time to go back to camp and we head home for a huge supper, a cup of tea and i’m usually in bed by 9pm. It’s amazing how much we eat and the cooks are amazing. Regardless of how much I eat, I lose it all. I’ve definitely lost tons of weight in the one month i’ve been here.

4 days ahead of me and it looks like it’s going to be a hot week! I hope everyone is doing really well and I will update as soon as I can.

Money!

So it’s been a while! We worked for 5 days and then had a day off and we were supposed to only work for 3 days and then have 2 days off but our contract was extended and that is why i’ve been slow on the updates.

Nevertheless, I am currently in Prince George. We moved camp yesterday to somewhere between PG and Vanderhoof. The camp is not as pretty as our last one at Marmot Lake but it’s still nice. I set up my tent right above a raging river and I have some awesome people around me.

The past two weeks have been insane! I have so many stories and i’ve forgotten most of them unfortunately but i’ll try my best.
We had some pretty good blocks(the area of land you plant on) and some bad ones. The good ones were amazing. No slash(debris) and it was all burnt. I planted 1730 tree’s in one day last week which is my personal best. Then two days ago we had to plant what is called an “overflow block” which is where you put any extra tree’s at the end of a contract. We pretty much had 40 people planting on one small piece of land which was completely covered in slash. The best part though was that under the slash was about a foot of snow and ice!

The day that I reached 1700 tree’s was a weird one for weather. Sunny skies one minute and then it would hail, then rain and snow. For three days in a row it hailed on us. It definitely makes you hate your life a little.

Two nights ago was our night off. We had a giant bond fire, played guitar and everyone got drunk. We had some Modest Mouse sing alongs and someone gave me a harmonica so I spent the night playing it. That night was also ladies night and everyone was treated so a very sexy(this is sarcasm) show by our very own ‘Midnight Kodogon’.

Right now I am in so much pain. Both my wrists have the starting signs of tendonitis. My ankles are swollen, my lips are cracked, my knuckles are bruised and my back hurts.
Mentally it’s even tougher. You wake up at 6am, it’s cold and your body hurts. You put on your wet boots and try and eat breakfast. You get to your block and you load up pounds and pounds of tree’s onto your back. You dig your shovel into the ground and hit rock after rock. It’s lonely and your tired. This job is mostly mental.

As hard as this job can be and as shitty as the days get, the good makes up for the bad. After a bad day you come home to a giant meal and everyone makes a fire and you play music and tell stories and try and get a good nights sleep and you make peace with your world.
I am also very lucky to be working for Sprectrum. The company had a bad rep for a while but they really do take good care of us. My foreman is awesome and it’s just a nice enviroment to work in.

Sorry if this post is a little boring. I plan of keeping a little journal with me now so that I can actually remember what goes on in my life.

Hope all is well with everyone and since we now will be working 4 days on and one day off I will update soon.

Hello everyone,

It has been a little while but i’ve almost literally been in the middle of nowhere. I’m currently in Quesnel, B.C and we are planting in a town called Nasco.
I’ve been planting for a week now and it’s my first day off. So far it’s been pretty good…I guess.

For a rookie i’m doing pretty good I think. 1200 tree’s on my second day. But our third day was hell. I woke up in the middle of the night to rain. At 5:30am when I woke up for the day the rain was just as hard. As we started making our way to the block(the area you plant) it started turning to snow. By the time we got to our block we were in the middle of a snowstorm! I planted from about 7:30am till 9am and just gave up. I finished my piece of land and went in the truck and gave up. About an hour later I was talked into going back out and start planting my new piece of land. It was fucking hell but I couldn’t help but laugh because I was in the middle of nowhere planting tree’s in a snowstorm…how ridiculous.

The mornings are really cold and my sleeping bag is really warm but once you get going it’s fine. The work is hard but not as hard as I thought. You get a flow going and it makes the day pass by really quickly.

Aswell…the food is beyond amazing! The camp cooks have made such an effort for me. It’s more amazing when you think that the camp has 100 people in it.

On a final note, nothing is better than tree planter lingo. Screefing, slash, throwing a plot, throwing 5′s and 6′s, blocks. It’s a whole other language.

Well I want to write more but my time is almost up here. I just wanted to let everyone know that i’m alive and doing well. I will try and call people when I can and write as soon as possible.

Air Canada.

What a day I had yesterday. I left for the airport at 9am. I flew to Toronto with no problem whatsoever. In Toronto I boarded another plane at 12pm. Before leaving the pilot informed us of a mechanical error and that it would take an hour to fix. 30min later he informs us that we will now need to leave the plane because the parts needed are in another city.
So we change gates and I befriend 3 fellow planters, 2 of which are planting for the same company as me(Luke, Diane and Steph) At the new gate we are all told that the plane is smaller than the last and not everyone will get on. Luckily since our seats were near the front we got on.

As we left Toronto we passed by a hangar with a burnt up plane outside.
The upside to our new plane was that we all had TV’s in front of us. The downside was that myself and my 3 fellow planters missed our connections in Prince George. And…we all had people waiting for us at the PG airport. We decided to wait till the 10pm flight which was booked solid to see if anyone could get a seat on it. We were told to pick up our luggage and re-check it if we did get on. We were given a meal voucher aswell for 12$. We went to pick up our luggage where we were told that they would hold on to it for us and if we didn’t leave Vancouver our luggage would stay there until the next flight we could get on(this is an important part of the story.
So we ate tons of food and watched the game and everything seemed to be getting better. 10pm came along and only 2 seats were available. Diane and Luke took them and Steph and myself decided to take the free hotel room that was being offered(Travellodge) and spend the night in Vancouver. We went to pick up our luggage which should have still been in Vancouver but apon arriving at the front office we were told that our luggage was well on it’s way to Prince George!!!

Pissed as we were, we sort of laughed it off and went to the hotel. We each had a room and I quickly passed out after having spent 15hours traveling.
So we got a free supper a free breakfast and a free hotel room. not bad…

I’m in Prince George at the moment. I’m staying at the dorms at UNBC. I have the day off tomorrow, we set up camp of friday and start work on saturday. My crew looks pretty sweet and i’m excited to get started.
My camp is going to have free internet somehow so hopefully i’ll update this weekend.
Take care everyone.

So it’s 8am and i’m very tired. I should get used to this feeling though. I’m packed but I feel like
i’m missing 1000 things.
I know i’m only leaving for 3 months but i’m going to miss everyone so much. I’m also going to miss TWIGS and a warm bed. But i’m going to have a blast this summer and come back with tons of cash and lot’s of stories.

I’m going to listen to so much Greg Macpherson on the plane.
I leave Montreal at noon. Stay in Toronto for 2 hours and then fly to Vancouver and I finally get to Prince George at 8pm(Pacific time) From there i’m going to get picked up by my boss and then it’s off to a sketchy motel for the night. Tomorrow i’m assuming that we will be setting up camp and we will be having some sort of orientation and then on the 3rd work starts!

It’s currently 3 degress in Prince George with light snow falling. No rain in the forcast though and sunny skies for the rest of the week.

Well goodbye for now, wish me a safe flight and expect a post very soon!