OLD PICS
Peter, as a young boy, viewing his destiny...
Actually, that's little Jonah the Russian.
A grassy field that has rejected the efforts of two prior treeplanting seasons, not sure if the third time was charmed.
This is JUST a bit easier. Underneath the topsoil is sand. A planter's paradise.
And where to find this sand? Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Or just north of it, I should say. These are the Oilsands, a good section of the province that is being dug up because it contains five times the petroleum of Saudi Arabia. Just a little tougher to extract, is all.
This is a Catterpillar 797 (pretend you don't see the 793 stamped on the front). It's the biggest truck on the planet, and we came across them on a daily basis out on the oilsands. With tires 12 feet high that cost fifty thousand dollars a piece, carrying a load of almost 400 tonnes, it looks like a large house barreling towards you. Impressive.
(not my photo)
This is more like it. British Columbia. Beautiful and green, with beautiful treacherous slopes and all the green cover predators need to pick off innocent humans. Like this guy, Mike (I think that was his name). Would make some mountain lion a nice meal.
And although this province is gorgeous, and people do need lumber to build their homes, the result is like taking a chisel to some grand work of art and ripping the canvas.
If you get past the scenery for a second, and look carefully at the front of the picture, you'll notice that it's a LONG ways down. This is the edge of a very steep block (the lingo for a clearcut, or any other section of land that we must fill with tiny trees). Treacherous, but enjoyable.
(photo by Laura)
Once again, if you can manage to get past the scenery, you'll see trees, and logs, and... ha ha... bad joke. It's just me of course. Struggling with what appears to be only a very slight slope. This is somewhere near Revelstoke I think.
Waking up just before dawn, a couple of minutes before the peace is going to be shattered by a loud horn, resulting in a zombie-like horde of planters stumbling towards the breakfast tent.
Jeff gets dropped off a at his tree "cache" a couple of hours later that chilly Spring morning, ready to pound.
Steph "Miller Time" Mills, supervisor extroirdenaire.
Sometimes.. ergh, most of the time... a quad breaks down.
Occasionally we'd take a ferry first. And then get the quads stuck.
At the end of a productive day, Julio stares confidently in my direction.
Bears and wolverines and mountain lions aren't the most dangerous animals one could run across in the wilds of Canada... this guy is. The moose. Especially when with its young. But all of these usually leave people alone, planting here doesn't seem nearly as deadly as it does, say, in Australia. With the venemous snakes and spiders and Tasmanian devils. (sorry for the lack of bear photos, I'll dig some up yet)
Disco queen?
Relaxing after a hard day's work. What, no guitars, no bongos, no didgeridoo? What kind of hippie treeplanting camp is this??
Vassilli, Slava, and Sasha. The Russians. One of many companies I've worked for, and one of the best.
The Russian kids. Doing foreman duties adequately before they reach their teens. The only company I know of where you can have a 15 year old planting 3000 trees right next to you.
The world through the eyes of a person standing perpendicular to a hill.
One more mountain and planter smiling for the camera.
Please don't touch me you dirty hippy.
That's all folks!