The adventure starts in Prince George, the northern hub of BC. Now, before I got there, everyone to whom i had mentioned that i was going there, uniformly told me that it was a pit or a dump, or they made that interesting sucked in-take of breath noise that exists only to inspire confidence in others. I'm not sure whether PG has improved significantly in recent years (apparently it had trouble with gangs at some point), or whether i just had my eyes shut half the time, but it didn't exactly offend my sensibilities. Uninteresting, but essentially fairly harmless.
Nonetheless, it was home to the beginning of my transformation into a tree planter and a good (nearly a) month. While we were in PG we stayed in the UNBC dorms, which was awesome. Like being back at university but without any work to worry about. Sweeeeet. I mean, I suppose that's not exactly correct, four mornings out of five the alarm went off at 5am, signalling a blur of activity in time to be in the trucks at 5.45am. But there were no essays, which is probably adequate compensation. That said, I think everyone of us living on our side of the building were, without fail woken up at 4.45am every single morning (including days of) by an infernal bird that started calling very loudly at dawn every morning - just enough before your alarm that you couldn't really go back to sleep but had no desire to get up either. On the upside, since it was dawn, we did get to watch the sun rise over the forest more or less every morning that we were there.
Planting-wise PG was home to many firsts. I hit my first 1000-tree-day 8 days in and soon enough maintained that (or close) more times than not. I was introduced to quite a variety of blocks. The end of our second shift gave us our first proper swamp block. And that's being kind – there was quite a large portion of it that was really just a lake with a few islands. Here the name of the game is simply putting a tree anywhere you can find (dry?) land. This isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds, just depending on the mood you happen to be in that day, I mean, your boots can only get so wet... On the other hand, the PG contract ended on an absolutely vast tract of sand, where you could plant a tree in all of about 3 seconds – all the rookies at least, hit personal bests that day.
I perhaps didn't do nearly as well as I could have since that was the day after the flies first attacked me with all the might they possessed. They had been around for a maybe a week by that point, but had mainly been bumping into me (black flies) or buzzing into my ears (mozzies). Just prior to the end of the contract I got eaten so badly that the whole side of my face, and both my eye lids swelled up. Yum. It was quite the look, I can assure you. A bit Quasimodo. As for more friendly wild life, there was a resident moose that turned up once or twice behind the dorms, and I also saw my only antler'd moose so far on the road in the first shift. 
The first moose
We saw multiple very very cute black bears on the road, and one that might have been a grizzly. Later on, when we were in Houston, we even had a family of bear on the block (fortunately they seemed to be inquisitive rather than aggressive.)
Evenings in PG had a pretty regular routine. Get back, shower and eat, but most importantly, watch Jeopardy – got a bit addicted to Jeopardy. This is a quiz show that probably has a similar audience to University Challenge, though UC definitely trumps Jeopardy in it's obscurity. Still, good fun. I seriously need to buff up on my entirely non-existent knowledge of American history. I do quite well until that's frequently the topic at which point my contribution becomes somewhat pitiful.
Probably the best bit about PG (and planting in general) is the days off. Hehe. Working so hard all week and going to bed at 8 or 9pm every night (something I probably haven't done since I was about 6 years old!), by the end of the week you feel like a break and a late(ish) night are well deserved. There were some excellent nights in PG with bonfires, parties in the woods, and chilling out by the lake until sunrise. In the same way, on the day off, you can justify eating more or less anything you like, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the week you can't eat enough calories to catch up with your work anyway. More or less every day off started with a really nice, rather greasy Canadian style cooked breakfast (We thought that we'd found the best of these in Houston until we went and had breakfast and waffles in Vanderhoof. These were so spectacular that on our very last day off we went back there even though we weren't even in that town and it was totally worth it.)
And on that note, we went to many and varied small towns (sorry, 'cities') up north, some of them more exciting than others.
One of my favourites, of the towns we actually stayed, in was Houston. It really sells itself as a town; Houston is home to the largest fly fishing rod in the world!
I mean, what more could you want from a town? Um... don't answer that question. However, it was actually a charming little place, with many of those other things that you do want from a town. Our 3 weeks in Houston were spent gradually improving my numbers day-on-day including my first 1500 day (and 1680 the next day despite moving to 3 different pieces in the day), staying in a cute little motel where our rooms were tidied before we returned each day (I happened to end up with a particularly sweet room too), and where on days of we could all chill out on the balcony, play in hammocks or on a slack line, and chat with Wilf a permanent fixture in the motel would periodically fed us nice food and let us have a good on his rather awesome aquatic vehicle thing...
My office for 3 weeks this year... Sooo pretty.
Sometimes we would head to the nearby town of Smithers which was a lovely place to hang out. Though we never actually worked from there, we went quite a number of times since it was also our centre of civilization while we stayed in Gran Isle a little later on. It's quaint and Alpine themed with a really really nice, very hippy second-hand bookshop/coffee shop – our go-to for all internet needs.
The view driving into Smithers
It had a local ski hill that looked like it would be great fun in the winter, and some absolutely stunning waterfalls coming off that mountain. Not that big, but really really tall. In fact, next to the waterfalls I also managed to throw my first ever July snowball. There was a gorge thing where a huge sheet of snow/ice had created a grotto/bridge that hadn't managed to melt yet. Cool. ;) Besides it's nice little shops, and trees to play cribbage under, we also had a great time at an awesome Mexican restaurant there – see, I told you, we just spent our days off eating...
On the barge on our way to Takysie Lake...
After Houston, we had a 1 shift contract near Burns Lake along with another couple of camps on the company. The planting there wasn't exactly great, but was, as it turned out, no where near the worst. The best thing about this contract was where we stayed through. We all stayed in Takysie Lake Resort in cabins (and a few tents) by an absolutely beautiful lake. There were little camp fire pits and not too many bugs!
Awesome sign on the resort, unfortunately the only picture i have at Takysie...
The whole place did look a little like a slightly run down summer camp that might not be out of place in an R L Stein Goosebumps novel, but it was essentially rather quaint. I'd have had a happy holiday there as a kid. Along the lake there were several little jetties, and since a couple of people had brought fishing rods with them most people tried their hand at a little fishing. Tried being the key word there, really. Emile managed to catch a few fish, but for the rest of us they mainly ate the bait and then swam off. I had a fun time feeding the fish though, and i imagine if i'd actually caught one, I'd have felt a bit bad for it...
After Burns Lake, we went on a little hiatus to Mackenzie and stayed in our first bush camp with another 'camp' from our company. It was at this point we stopped in Vanderhoof fo the first time and experienced the best waffles in the world ever. What a great way to break up the journey. I never actually went into the town of Mackenzie, but apparently it's home to the worlds biggest tree crusher – the claims to fame just keep coming! Bush camp, I think, was unanimously NOT our favourite week of the season for a whole variety of reasons. I was quite enjoying the camping, but everything else was a bit rough. It rained on and off throughout the week and the bugs in camp were just as bad as they were on the block. Mainly the thing that sucked was that the block itself was by far the worst block we saw for the whole season (with perhaps one exception, but that was a lot more fun – see Gran Isle) and was under priced to boot. I really don't think it's possible to describe to you how difficult this block was. It was impossible to find actual ground to plant in, and large swathes of it were on a massive slope too. There were fallen trees everywhere – it obviously had never been cleared of anything, and you could stick your shovel into piles of slash so deep that you could loose your shovel in it before you hit ground.
The shovel was a new development here though, and perhaps didn't help us rookies that week (or maybe it did, we'll never know how much more difficult it might have been with a dibble). We'd all opted to give it a go because in the long run it's faster and more versatile. It's a lot easier to plant a bad tree with a shovel than a dibble, but conversely, I think it's also easier to plant a good tree with a shovel. Nonetheless, it takes some getting used to and quite dramatically damaged my numbers for a good 2 or 3 shifts, though was worth it in the long run.
It's fair to say that for most of us the Mackenzie contract couldn't end quick enough and we were all rather glad to move on. Cue: Gran Isle.
Arriving at Gran Isle - our back garden.
We couldn't believe our luck when we got to Gran Isle. The town itself is clearly past its hey day and is pretty tiny, but it's on an incredibly beautiful lake and is altogether rather tranquil. That and it had a jetty/beach area down by the lake that was perfect for having a fire on evenings off.
The planting there was fairly reasonable too. One block in particular, after a rockie first day turned into a swathe of mostly burnt soft ground. Gorgeous.
On a burn block; fun times.
That particular block was also home to the worst bit of navigating we saw the whole season where, in an effort to find a short cut, we walked round in an extremely tight circle and in maybe less than 5 minutes had managed to land ourselves back exactly where we had first started. I had no part in the navigating in the this instance, incase you were wondering... That said, Gran Isle involved a lot of walk-ins and also a fair share of trucks getting stuck on ridiculous roads. It rained so much in the mornings those weeks that some of the roads had just turned into massive slush pits that even our superduty trucks were struggling with. So there were a fair few long days along the way.
Easily my favourite block in Gran Isle was our jungle block, just because it was hilariously ridiculous from start to finish (and we got to go on a boat to get there!); i certainly wouldn't have wanted more than one day there, mind. Just finding the block was a challenge. It was down a road that no longer exists, and is completely grown over. But if we thought the road was over grown, it was nothing compared to the block. Most of the block was covered in reed-y grass stuff that was taller than i was, along with alder that was growing sideways so there was no way through it and then other bushes and trees besides. Judging by google maps satellite, which Neil found the other day (but unfortunately I can't find to link you too) the 'block' must have been cut well over 10 years ago and has just gone nuts ever since. And it probably wouldn't have been so bad if it were big and open, but it was just a thin strip going all the way into an otherwise very forested area. Goodness knows who logged it like that or why. As it happened, just as we found the block in amoungst the jungle, it also started to rain. Within an hour or two, it didn't matter what you were wearing, or how good you boots were, we were all soaked through just from constantly wading through the undergrowth.
The best bit was, that this wasn't even the whole block. There were two random pockets behind the main piece and the only way to find them was a wild goose chase through the rest of the forest. In fact, this took Evan (our supervisor) most of the morning to map a path to. And it wasn't even a nice amble through the forest because with no other way to get them there we had to carry in every last tree that we need to plant. The whole thing was thouroughly ridiculous. I planted just about 400 trees that day... And our crew highballer managed something a bit over 6oo (normally the highballer will probably be over 2000, sometimes closer to 3000). Fun times. Some people weren't fans, but as long as you'd given up on making any money that day, variety is the spice of life and it was kind of fun intrepidly wading through jungle...
After planting, there were some epic nights off in Gran Isle, with some aswesome fires too. The boxes that the trees come in are normal cardboard but covered in a thin wax coating, and as such they make the most incredible fires. Just one box will cause a blaze - if you put one or more box that is itself full of boxes, then results are quite spectacular. This is the bonfire that we had after the end of the Mackenzie contract - very carefully constructed:
In a very big clearing... Quite hot.
The Gran Isle contract went out with a bang when on the last day all 3 of our trucks managed to get completely stuck trying to make it out of our last block. All was more or less good when we drove in to the block, but while we were there it started raining and the road which was a sandy fine kind of mud just turned into a series of very slick ditches. Though we finished our last trees at 4.30, it took us another 3 hours to dig/bridge the trucks out. Think we were all rather glad to get back that night.
One downside: the day the ants build a next in my bag... an actual nest, with rocks and sticks and things...The land here was mostly rather awesome too. On the second day of the contract I hit 2k for the first time, and the next day I hit 2145, which remained my personal best for the season. Not half bad. The other great thing about the land here was that sum mer had finally arrived and all the berries had come out. After one night of rain at the very beginning of the contract, we had two weeks straight of beautiful (sometimes stiflingly hot) weather. The blocks were all just chock full of strawberries and wild and normal rasberries, blueberries, saskatoon berries, and few red currents here and there and more besides. Block berries are just the sweetest, tastiest berries I have ever eaten, which is great, but is terrible for productivity. In your head you're just going "plant, soil, hole, plant soil, oooooo BERRIES!!!!" and any thoughts of tree planting are just knocked out your head. It's really hard to concentrate when you do this every 3 steps... la dolce vita...
Besides the edible, the hot weather brought beautiful clear skies at night and hence more stars than I have seen in years, and even better, it was mainly too hot for the bugs :D Yay!!! The excellent thing about being in Fort St James at this point is that the town rests on the edge of a huuuge and very beautiful lake, so at the end of a hot day we would strip down to our underwear and jump straight in on our way back from work. Bliss.
This was also how we chose to spend our one, final day off in FSJ. An idyllic day started with the best waffles and breakfast in the world (as i mentioned earlier) and was followed by reading, sun bathing and cribbage on the beach, with some quick forays into the water to swim. Later on we followed this up with pizza and an intimate showing of the last Harry Potter movie ever in the town's tiny (but very nice, I must say) movie theatre. Ah, the end of an era. That was a beautiful day, twinged only with a little bit of um, sadness/angst for the whole Harry Potter thing, combined with the fact that, as my last day off, I was now actually gonna have to work out what to do with myself... alas...
a long 7 (i think... maybe it was 8) day shift later and it was all done. There's nothing quite so sweet as the sight of 3 completely empty shade tents and the knowledge that you needn't plant another tree that season (or ever if you don't want to...). All that was left to do then was pack up and head back to Vancouver and appreciate the absolutely stunning drive down.
All the prettiest pictures courtesty of Neil and the only ones of me by the lovely Amy...
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