Mmmmm... deadly sour-egg-fart smelll... mmm...; or, Chetwynd, mark 1

Chetwynd is a small-ish town about 350km North-east of PG - not too far from the Alberta border. This was to be our home for just under three weeks now, then another month or so at the end of the season. And a suitably lovely home it was too. Ou rmotel was a nice set-up. The "town centre" (so obviously that there's actually a sign telling you that you're there) had a grocery store and dollar store and was in walking distance, and there was a 7/11, dominoes and subway just down the street - life doesn't get any better, obviously... Incidently, these are not my usual haunts in 'normal' life, but pretty much indispensible as a hungry planter.

And now an interlude. Chetwynd has a chainsaw carving competition every year, and so there are soe fantastic carvings around every where - a selection follows (although is lacking my favourite - a preying mantis, because i can't find the picture):

Planting-wise, this contract was good; decent prices for good land and short commutes. Excellent. I guess the theme of the next few weeks was our daily paranoia that we could drop dead from poisonous gas.  Mmmm. A number of our blocks were in close range of a large local gas plant.

Days off spent chilling at a lake

Of course, all precautions are taken, and our foreman, Paul, carried a h2s (hydrogen sulphide) detector at all times, but it's hard not to be paranoid at this particular gas. The main issue is that sour gas REALLY stinks - basically like sulphur (obvs...), so a lot of the time you can smell its residue in the air. However, if you are being poisoned by it, the first thing that it does to you is kill your sense of smell (then you faint, then you die). So if you get a nice waft of it, and then the wind changes direction, obviously the next sensible step is to fear immediate death...  And while i like planting trees and think it's a worthy cause, it's not worth death. Not that this was ever likely... but you can see how one might get paranoid...

Our local friendly fox (NB Canadians get inexplicable excited about foxes, but this one was particularly cute)

Anywayz, as you can see tell, this is clearly not a ghost-writtten blog (in the more literal sense) ; neither i, nor anyone else perished in our noble endevour. Excellent. Another day's work well done. As if we weren't paranoid enough, however, they also insisted upon testing their, "DOOOOOM! Poisonous gas! You're all going to die!"-siren every week, and it makes the *creepiest*, wibbliest rising doom noise I have ever heard. It echos across the whole valley, spreading doom to every corner.  I'll be quite happy never to hear that noise ever again...

'Friday' outfits - amusing clothing combinations to be worn at the end of every shift - a visit to the thrift store is a must

Chetwynd came to a close with a second tree sacrifice of the season (to the tree gods who give us good land and good prices), which is a risky business, because last year we messed up our second sacrifice and that wasn't good for anyone involved. However, this one seemed to go well, and we moved out of Chetwynd to a place called Tumbler Ridge, where lo, the land was good, if not extremely mountainous, and the bush camp was beautiful...

A taste of things to come...