Tree Planting Reflections: Part Two

There are times in life when everything is stripped down to its bare essentials.  Success and happiness rely on our casting off of superfluous, unnecessary, thoughts and activities.  It’s amazing how many of these things we can accumulate over time.  A comfortable lifestyle breeds unnecessary activities and thought patterns.  I was looking back at a journal I kept during the planting season in 2011 and found this written at the top:

When it is time to plant, plant
When it is time to eat, eat
When it is time to sleep, sleep

The time will pass as quickly when it rains as when it snows as when it is sunny and warm

Do not think about tomorrow for tomorrow does not yet exist

The goal is money.

Everything else is a bonus.

Single-mindedness. 

Every year we would have a t-shirt design contest. Planters were encouraged to come up with and send in their artwork for the shirts given away at the end of each season.  Typically, one would be an artistic design of the company name and one would be a funny take on some inside planting joke.  Its telling that the inside joke would almost always be based in a deeper piece of tree planting wisdom.  “You are not the fastest human” riffs on the annual bear aware video.  Wisdom that permeates life will often find its way into humour.  The one I liked was “Eat, plant, sleep repeat”.  Single-mindedness will propel you towards your goal. 

Think of the worst experience that you have lived through.  Do you count this experience a blessing or a curse?  I cannot speak for all people and all situations, but I would argue that even your worst life experience can be a blessing. 

Tree planting allows you to put yourself in a situation where you will potentially suffer beyond anything you have known up to that point.  At the physical level alone, few will have felt the prolonged cold, wet, heat, torment from bug bites, and bodily pain that accompany the job.  The opportunity for emotional anguish as a result from the physical can be hell.  Let me paint you a picture of just one of many such days. 

During the last year I went up north there was a day on which I was behind in my work.  I was stressed about getting things finished and I was missing my wife, who I had left home for the summer, more than usual.  The job I was working at the time required me to work in isolation for the majority of the day.  It was about 30 degrees out and the black flies were at their peak so I couldn't dress adequately in a way that kept the bugs off and prevented me from overheating.  I also had a sore hip from a fall I had taken recently that kept me from moving freely and quickly.  It being my fifth year in the bush, I had become pretty good at pushing through pain of all kinds but the accumulation of all these factors snapped something and I ended up sitting on a tree stump, probably 100km away from the next human being, hyperventilating and sobbing, in a swarm of black flies crawling in through my clothes at every crevasse.

It’s an embarrassing story for me to tell but I think it communicates at least part of the stress involved.  So how in the world can that experience be a blessing?  For one thing it didn't last that long.  I managed to give myself a pep talk and get the job done.  Most importantly I will remember that day forever.  It is one of my benchmarks for suffering.  Every experience I have had since then has been compared to it. Until I go through something worse, everything will be manageable in comparison.

What is your benchmark?  

Don’t push it from memory but rather use it as a tool.  Own your past suffering and make it work for you.  Another planting proverb states that “pain is weakness leaving the body”.  Suffering will always be present in our lives, how we respond to it will determine our joy and happiness.

photo credit: Luc Forsyth via Flickr (licence)

Life in a Fish Bowl

There are few, if any, reasons I can justify complaining about living in the Lower Mainland, but the rain is one of them.  That and the hay fever. Somehow one day of rain makes all memory-- and benefit-- of a week's worth of sun all but disappear from memory.  A week of grey clouds that obstruct the view of the sky and mountains is enough to trigger full blown fishbowl effect.  The world becomes a very confined place and small issues and feelings begin to look massive and unbeatable.

As someone who has and continues to periodically struggle with depression, these longer, brighter, sunnier days are a God-send.  The January/February doldrums hit hard this year and I found myself searching rather desperately for ways to shake the oppressive sadness that seemed like it wouldn't go away.

So what do you do when sadness has you down?  Here are a few things that I have found to help.

Share your feelings. 

Maybe you're like me and keep feelings bottled inside.  Maybe you don't want to burden others with the responsibility of knowing and caring about your sadness. After all, it is 'just sadness'. Stop it. Whether it is to your spouse, a friend or your small group, at least share that you have feelings.  You are not alone and the voices inside your head telling you that are lying.  Which takes me to the next point…

Take every thought captive. (2 Cor 10:5-6)

As one who follows Christ, listening to and believing lies about who I am goes against God’s desire for my life.  As Christians, we have been set free from bondage and yet those voices-- both in our heads and in the world-- do not stop.  Speaking truth in the face of the lies cuts off any power that they have.  So many of us, me included, have come to believe the lies without really realizing it. 

Here is a trick.  Spend some time writing down your train of thought, your inner monologue.  Notice what the voices are saying to you, that you aren't good enough, that you will never succeed, that you should give up, that you don’t deserve what you have been given, that you are guilty despite being forgiven.  Write those statements down and below them write the truth.  Ask God what he desires for your life and make those words your mantra.  I am free! My God loves me!  I have a voice and a message from God! Life is a gift and it is our responsibility to accept it.

Discipline.

I am a dreamer.  My wife will tell you stories of our first couple years of marriage.  About how I would continually declare my big ideas about grand projects or plans for adventures.  99% of those dreams came to nothing, often resulting in deep disappointment.  Although my wife has learned to take my expulsions with a grain of salt, I always let myself get too close to my crazy ideas.  They fail and I am, inevitably, a failure.  It follows, then, that failures will continue to fail and that any other ideas on the burner consequently fail as well.  This results in compounding despair.  This is what we call a depression spiral.  

As you can probably tell it is very hard to get out of the spiral, the vortex of self pity.  So how does discipline come into it?  My problem is that when I dream I see the end goal only and fail to map out the steps to get me there.  I see end-zone but don’t even think to call a play.  I don’t even bring the ball to the game.  It makes sense that these kind of dreams will fail.  So I started writing down my goals then breaking them into steps.  Every goal needs a road map to take you to it.  Sometimes its boring or tedious doing the leg work but its necessary to get you to the end.  

I also started getting up earlier.  When I am not rushed in the morning I have increased control over my day.  I don’t have to deal with as many surprises; surprises throw off my state of mind and make it harder for me to make positive decisions.

The mind is a powerful thing.  Its easy to take it for granted and when we do it has the power to wreak havoc in our lives.  When not paid attention to, when we leave it to its own devices, we are not heeding the desire of God who tells us to be anxious about nothing (Phil 4:6-7), take every thought captive, and dwell on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable (Phil 4:8).

God is much bigger than any word can describe or any thought imagine.  Don’t forsake this life for one in a fish bowl.

Tree Planting Reflections: Part One

Every year around this time I start getting an itch.  It's as if a chemical is released into the environment which causes an immediate reaction in my body.  The increasing morning light and the shedding of layers as it gets warmer, the subtle change in smell as the season shifts from winter to spring.  The sound of robins' song in the morning.  My long dormant heart begins pulling at its restraints; my brain is beginning the process of leaving for the North again.  Five years of tree planting will do that to you.

In the early years it was out of necessity that I steel myself for another round of pain, bugs, heat, rain, cold, bears, among other things.  As the years passed, however, the cognitive conditioning payed off and I learned to truly anticipate the coming of the planting season.  I looked forward to it with as much, if not more, joy than Christmas.  It's true.

If one, in a practical mood, asks themselves what tangible skills for future jobs and careers in the civilized world can be gleaned from planting they would soon come to realize that there are few to no transferable skills to be gained in the forest.  If, however, you asked what may be learned from planting, you may begin to understand why I, at least, continued for as long as I did to put myself through such torture, questioning my sanity and wondering at my masochism.

My first summer, a summer in which I struggled through injuries and mental anguish only to emerge in August with about as much money as I would have made at home, I promised I would never put myself through all of that again.  In the years following I managed to suppress most of the memories associated with that summer.  I cannot begin to communicate to you the feelings of frustration, despair, and confusion that accompany learning to plant trees.  You would think its simple.  

Picture this if you will.  You have a shovel, a tiny tree, and, like, a hundred empty hectares in which to plant it but after endless rules regarding where, how and into what you can plant this tiny tree have been driven into you- rules which until this point are meaningless- you discover that it's not simple.  It's almost impossible to figure out.  For like two weeks.  And in those two weeks you make almost no money.  You become very aware that you are paying for food and lodging but planting almost no trees.  You hear stories of the guy who owed the company money on his first paycheck.  You hear about the rookie in another camp who is planting ten times more trees than you and you despair.

To say that I learned how to persevere at this point would be a lie.  Rather, I spent my unproductive days dreaming about ways I could justify quitting.  I should tell you that quitting was deemed unforgivable, the most shameful thing you could do as a human being.  I thought about trying to break my leg by jumping off a slash pile, falling on a pointy stick or tripping and giving myself a concussion with my planting shovel.  I was not alone in this.  Some guy actually wrote a book called "The Book of Tree Planting Suicides".  It's funny how we as tree planters share a collective desire to comically off ourselves.  

Though all of this, the thing I am most ashamed of is the poor attitude I had.  I was a hater.  As I look at my young self with the benefit of a few more years I wonder at the possibilities of that summer had I only adjusted my attitude to be positive.  But tell that to my 19 year old self.  People tried.  It didn't work.

The best I can say for myself during this first summer is that I didn't quit.  I looked into the abyss and pissed my pants and cried a few times.  I stayed because I didn't want to embarrass myself or let down my friend who thought it was a good idea to hire me.  I stayed but I promised myself I would never go back again.

Wouldn't you know it though, nine months later I found myself in the exact same place and situation.  It took a lot of lying to myself to go back.  "First year learns, second year returns, third year earns" as the saying goes.  I was on a three year plan.  Things were looking up.  I already knew how to plant a tree.  No more wandering like a lost man through a cut block with a tree dangling from my hand.  I tell you, those first few weeks were gold.  I sprinted out of the gates, refusing to succumb to the habits and standards of the summer before.  I was really proud of myself; by the end of the second shift I had planted more in a day than at any point the summer previous.  I had been given more responsibilities this summer for some reason, which stoked my pride even further.

But then something happened.  In my zeal for redemption I didn't pace myself in those early shifts.  Nowhere else in life do you work your body in the way you do when you plant trees.  

It's a truly bizarre sight to watch a tree planter in the zone.  First, there are the clothes.  I for one adhered largely to the fashion of the time.  I favored the cotton/synthetic blend dress shirt, black leggings and cargo shorts, gaiters and hiking boots or bright orange corks if it was raining hard enough.  If it was cold and/or raining and/or snowing/hailing a thick over sized wool sweater could be thrown on.  Then there are the planting bags which you have around your waist to complete the package.  The motions of planting are best described as avian.  Typically there is a step, a shuffle with a kick, a quick bob and jab of one arm then the other then back up again and repeat.  Now do that 2000-6000 or more times a day.  Some days you get lucky and get to plant trees in actual dirt.  Some days you plant on what can best be described as solid rock, with metal shovels ringing out amidst the curses of those whose wrists and elbows are reverberating like death knells.

My planting career was about to be cut short.  Tendinitis is a word that runs shivers down the back of the most seasoned of vets.  My elbow was toast as was my moral.  Despite the fact I couldn't plant anymore I stayed to help around camp.  Here finally is the first and possibly most important lesson I learned from tree planting.  I learned the importance of community.  

Tree planting camp is a boiling pot.  There are fifty young people, give or take, sleeping in tents, in the middle of nowhere, going through the same hell for God knows what reason, each with their own baggage, morals and addictions.  Give these people two weeks of rain, poor land and see what happens.  Things can go sideways quickly.  Thankfully, my experience was largely positive.  

Until this point in my life I had managed to avoid most situations in which I would have to be raw and open about my feelings with myself let alone other people.  A planting crew is, for better or worse, a family in which pain and joy, triumph and failure, friendship and grievance and all sorts of sights and smells are intimately shared.  In a lot of ways a crew lives and dies together and what you get out is determined by how much you contribute.  It's here that I found a home.  Something about this community was fiercely appealing to me.  There is nothing like going through hardship for bringing people, no matter who they are, together.  Here in this weird world of self inflicted misery there was joy found in the sharing of pain.  I by no means speak for every person foolish enough to put themselves through planting but I am glad to say I found a silver lining.

As the season came to a close I once again promised myself I would never return to the hell that is tree planting but rather pursue a life of comfort and fulfillment.  But fate would have it otherwise.  While it was true that my days of planting trees were over, another position presented itself to me, one in which I would come to love and take joy.