Some mornings are harder to wake up than others. I could feel my cell phone alarm vibrating beneath my pillow, and knew I could not ignore it much longer. The cold air on my face warned my body not to get out of its warm cocoon. I had been tree planting for almost a month, and it still wasn’t getting any easier.
Instead it was becoming increasingly difficult to get out of bed each day. This job was one of the greatest challenges I had faced in my life so far. Nobody knows what they are signing up for when they apply for tree planting; It’s no walk in the park.
I would rather describe it as a steady run through a clear-cut forest with the weight of a small child on either hip. It’s here that the earth’s elements, your comrades, and your own thoughts defeat you any chance they have.
The day that tree planting broke my body and mind was the day I let all three of these elements defeat me. I did survive, however, and in being defeated, I gained a new strength.
Though the morning was difficult, the day was full of promise. The sun was out and there was a refreshing breeze. Before I headed to breakfast, I woke up a few people who had even more trouble getting out of bed than I did. One of these people was Cassie, my new friend and closest comrade. Cassie and I learned the ropes at the same time, experiencing both triumphs and disappointments together. We learned to plant good-quality trees, and because one gets paid per tree, we learned to plant enough twelve-cent trees to make over minimum wage.
It is an art you must perfect with many trials and errors, it is a sport that you must learn over hard, grueling practice. These motions, foreign to your body have to eventually become as natural as breathing. If they do not, you’re going home with only a back-ache as your reward.
On the truck ride to the planting grounds, someone’s iPod was blasting Joel Plaskett. Outside the window, the forest was flying by only to be interrupted by clearings littered with logs, and remnants of a manmade forest.
After drifting off into blissful dreaming, I awoke dreading the moment the truck would roll to a slow stop, and the forest that flew by before would soon be my home for the next eleven hours.
Finally, the moment came and we all filed out to stretch our sore limbs that ached from the previous day’s work and the long truck ride. Our planting bags were thrown off the tailgate, and we began to fill them up with frozen seedling trees.
I bagged up exactly 260, and to my left, Cassie bagged up 40 more. This was the beginning of my defeat—the unspoken competition that existed between us. I pretended not to care, but a big part of me needed to be the better planter. Forty more trees at the end of the day makes a big difference when you are trying to prove yourself as a worker.
I made it into my land before Cassie, swiftly plugging trees into the ground. Three steps, one tree. Three steps, one tree.
That familiar and repetitive motion took over my body, and before I knew it, I had finished planting my piece of land by 2 p.m. with good numbers to boot.
A spruce seedling planted in British Columbia, Canada. (Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)
As I walked into a new piece of land, certain I had surpassed Cassie’s numbers by now, I was motivated to bag more trees, and continue this speed.
Three steps, one tree. This second piece of land was particularly easy to plant in the front, but as I started planting closer to the back, I found myself constantly stepping over logs in order to find land space. My frustration grew when I got to the back of my piece, only to find water everywhere I looked.
Surrounded by marsh and swamp, I was using logs as bridges, and every step I took was a failed attempt to put a tree in the ground.
“A tree cannot survive in water,” my foreman’s voice rang through my head. I had only planted 10 trees in the span of 30 minutes, and I was becoming more exhausted and more aggravated with each passing minute that I was not planting.
My bag of trees was not getting any lighter, my pace slowed further, and my mind began to wander.
This task seemed too daunting, and I did not want to do it anymore. Picturing Cassie plant out her 300 trees, I forced myself to plant, but the land was nothing but swamp. The land was beginning to defeat me, and I was letting it.
Off in the distance, I saw dark clouds threatening to release their heavy downpour, like a plug pulled from a drain. The low rumbling sounded like an army on horses.
Far from being near any such group of fellow beings, however, I was alone. So alone I would have to walk 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) to see a familiar face.
Lightening forks spread like cages in front of me followed by buckets of rain and rolling thunder that shook the earth. Meanwhile, with a metal spade in hand (I repeat, metal spade), I still struggled to avoid planting in the flooded swamp.
My confidence was dwindling, and fear was taking over as the sky blackened, and the storm continued it’s attack. Unprepared for this downpour, I was soon drenched from head to toe and shivering like a frightened dog.
Uncertain tears began to role down my face, and I looked down the road in search of my foreman coming to my rescue, but he never came—no one did. My tears turned into full on sobs as I tried to continue planting. I wondered if everyone else was this scared and alone. It was one ear-piercing clap of thunder that did it, and I was done for the day; the warm trucks were calling my name.
Earth’s elements had soaked me, terrified me, and above all, broken my spirit.
I put my shovel down in defeat, and gave up on trying to plant the impossible land. Slowly trudging back to the road, I gave up on myself.
Still sobbing, I trekked the 2 kilometers to find another planter, to see if anyone was still working in the storm. My eyes widened in disbelief as I found Willy, my planting comrade, was laughing and hollering at the sky. I couldn’t believe anyone was still enduring these horrible conditions, let alone having fun in them.
The sudden relief, and utter confusion only brought more tears as I cried out for his help. He laughed at the storm while I hid from it. He worked through the pouring rain, while I gave up in it. A comrade had defeated me once again. This time it was not an ability to plant more trees, but an ability to persevere which surpassed my own.
I held the image of Willy in my mind laughing in the storm and walked back to my land. The clouds continued to spit on my bare arms, and the thunder laughed in the distance, but I somehow did not mind as much. I had a job to do.
It was only a rainstorm, and I knew next time I could just laugh back.
I planted slow the rest of the day. The numbers didn’t matter, and neither did the flooded land. The day would end in an hour, and I knew after that day that treeplanting could never break me again.
Tonight I am sitting at this desk typing. My eyes are drowsy and there is a bed calling to me, like the warm truck called out to me during the storm. This time, I will not listen to it. I won’t stop writing until it’s done. This fatigue can’t defeat me, and I get to chose when it is time.
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