Treeplanting Sagas Chapter 6

In our last bush camp, we drove 3 hours from Upsala Ontario I was planting a lot of old plantation ground. This means there had previously been planted spruce and pine or it was aerially seeded, and we are supposed to space apart from them. Treeplanting has a lot of requirements in order to mimic nature. I decided to take these last 5 days quite lightly on my body, since I had been in it for 63 days already. During one precarious day, I ended up having my most serene and memorable  moment as a planter. After being given a piece of bracken bush land to hack out on my own all day, and getting ravaged hundreds of times by deer flies and horse flies, I finished my piece and cut through the bush down into what opened a lush moray of small islands. The sandy shore had imprints of moose and bear and jutted out with rocky boulders and sedge. I swam out to one of the islands and lay on the hot rocks meditating while the sun wrapped its warm cloak around me. I performed the Laguz stada and galdr for the land wights, and hallowed this special place. The clean, and sparse vegetation that sprouted on the stoney islands decorated the entire lake. On the ride home to camp, I had the privelage to see a young wild lynx running into the forest. I finished the day in some fine company, and had a deep restful sleep. The last two days were spent engaging in just slowing down and enjoying the planting to full, plunging into some deep conversation with a friend all the while. The last day of the shift was the night for people to be acknowledge for their traits throughout the season. I was given the title of ‘most unsuited for contemporary society’ by our tree runner Nij. The aurora borealis also streamed over the sky, first appearing in the shape of an eagle, and then each band shifting and dissipating back to space, in hues of green and light red. It was a perfect ending in my opinion to the treeplanting season, as I had been at it for 68 days. From all it’s worth I planted 86,916 trees.

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