Remoteness, clean air, cameraderie, and making money

October 24, 2017 6:45 PM

An Acclaimed War Photographer Turns Her Lens on Canada’s Tree Planters
posted by jacquilynne (17 comments total)

I know some tree planters. They do love it. I would not love it.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 7:21 PM on October 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

I find it surprising that they said tree planting isn’t well known. It was certainly always an option in my circles, depending on how desperate you were for money. Those who loved it loved it a lot — the physical and mental testing of oneself, the cash, the comraderie, the sex.

Personally, I couldn’t do it, spending days on end in longjohns duct-taped closed around my wrists and ankles for all the blackflies...
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:23 PM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Fantastic pictures. If the lifestyle intrigues you then the book Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill is highly recommended.
posted by Rumple at 8:37 PM on October 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

I like the range of people who do tree planting, from guy covered in bug netting to guy covered in nothing at all.
posted by thecjm at 8:42 PM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Tree-planting was my most favourite job ever and my most hated job ever. One extreme to the other. I loved it but never, ever want to do it again even though I count those years as the best of my life.
I did it and other bush work for several summers. Those pictures spark a lot of memories. That's pretty much what we looked like and what the land looked like. Though where I planted was much more hilly, the side of mountains and such. I'm proud of that work.
posted by Jalliah at 9:09 PM on October 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

When I was 18, a bunch of friends and I all had jobs lined up to plant trees for the summer near Hearst, Ontario. Someone at our school who'd done it the year before was our way in.

In the end, we all gave it a thanks-but-no-thanks after one of us got the bright idea to look at a map.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:13 PM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

I did not expect there to be so many downed limbs.
posted by aniola at 1:48 AM on October 25, 2017

I like them. I find that photographic style or technique consistently makes those shots look photoshopped or as if she used green-screen. Each feels jarring that way. Unreal.
posted by filtergik at 4:24 AM on October 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I did not know tree-planting as well as regular farm work was such a rite of passage for so many Canadians until I married one. Especially if you grew up rurally.
posted by Kitteh at 4:59 AM on October 25, 2017

Tree planting was the last time I spent a whole summer outside, rain or shine. It was tough and gruelling and exhausting and OMG it was boring and repetitive. It was also, in retrospect, awesome. I learned more about my ability to persevere by tree planting than any other work or life experience before or since. I lived in nature. The first beer I had in a bar on my way home was one of the peak experiences of my life.
posted by kaymac at 6:17 AM on October 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I like the range of people who do tree planting, from guy covered in bug netting to guy covered in nothing at all

Tree-planting must have borrowed from GI Joe's dress code.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:55 AM on October 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also I've never heard of tree planting either, at least not like that. But they aren't carrying trees, so I'm assuming small (1-2ft tall) trees are in the bags?
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:02 AM on October 25, 2017

Fascinating to compare these with the early (87-94) work of Canadian photographer Lorraine Gilbert, whose most well-known piece comes from this series.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:30 AM on October 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

The trees that are planted are very small. 1 foot is probably pushing the outside bounds. They're usually a single shoot, about as big around as a broom handle (including the width of the needles).

(I was never a tree planter, but I lived in logging country, and we did school field trips to the nursery that grew for the planting crews.)
posted by jacquilynne at 10:01 AM on October 25, 2017

Wow that photography site that Ten Cold Hot Dogs posted just above is wonderful. You can really get a sense of the size of the trees being planted and the equipment they are lugging around all bent over.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 10:08 AM on October 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

> The first beer I had in a bar on my way home was one of the peak experiences of my life.

One of my best friends tree planted for a summer; my understanding is that aside from your own ability to put up with the rigors of the work, the quality (or lack thereof) of the company you worked for also counted for a lot, and he worked for one of the lousy companies. It was not a good experience, but he has one (and only one) good story about having a very rare day off, hiking a number of kilometers to the only bar in the vicinity (which was most easily accessed by seaplane) and discovering that April Wine was playing that night.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:41 AM on October 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

In BC it would vary contract by contract. Your boss, usually a small contractor, would get a rate of, say, 20 cents per tree. On flat open terrain you could make a lot of money at this rate, but on hills or slash you'd make very little. If the boss was good at assessing the tree dollar rate to landform difficulty ratio, you could make a lot of money routinely, but if not, it was hit and miss.

For a lot of people it really was about the money - either to pay for university or to pay for six months off in Baja.
posted by Rumple at 1:02 PM on October 25, 2017