It’s 5:15 a.m., and the alarm is blaring again. I awkwardly reach across my partner as he stirs, yanking my dirt-stained clothes from the edge of our two-inch foam mattress. Getting dressed in a tent has been easier than I anticipated; plus, having no standing room means I can stay warm under the cover for an extra three minutes.
By 6 a.m., we’re hauling our gear into the crew trucks. Planting bags and shovels are tossed haphazardly in front of boxes of tiny coniferous trees.
For the next 10 or so hours, we’ll carry them on our backs by the hundreds. For each one we plant, we’ll make about 17 cents.
I had a million reasons to be terrified.
I’d never seen myself as athletic, and I was facing four months of gruelling manual labour. I’d never been “outdoorsy,” but I’d be living out of a tent. And then there were the grizzly bears.
But perhaps what scared me most was the idea of living communally. Because, despite genuinely loving people, I tend to panic when subjected to prolonged social interaction. And if I decided to go, there would be no escape route. I’d be living with 60 strangers in a bush camp in the middle of nowhere.
But I was also at a point where my life felt painfully stagnant. So when my partner — a seven-year tree-planting veteran — invited me along, I quit my job and sublet my apartment. And almost exactly two years ago, we set off on the two-week drive to Loon Lake, B.C.
The first time I thought “I can’t do this,” I was drowning in a sea of what tree-planters call “shnarb.” I thought I was there to put trees in the ground, but that ground turned out to be buried under layers of tangled sticks and debris.
Every insecurity felt as sharp as the thorns ripping holes in my leggings. And it got infinitely worse when the inspector came by. With a look that appeared to be a mix of annoyance and pity, she told me the trees I'd managed to plant were “shallows.” I’d have to dig them up and shove them all back in, deeper.
But even on the worst days, something magical happened on our arrival back at camp. Hordes of ravenous planters would descend on the kitchen trailer, where our camp cook, Stephane, doled out serving-platter portions of dinner. In the mess tent, I’d inevitably find myself across from someone who’d had a day just as miserable as mine.
Things never seemed quite so dire by bedtime.
As these stories go, I wasn’t as hopeless as I feared. The first weeks felt liberating, my trepidation melting into a budding sense of adventure. Then I’d hit a wall and feel completely incompetent. Until something clicked and I was finding my way again.
And so it went, one day to the next, unpredictable as the weather. Indeed, we got our first snow day and first heatwave within a few days of each other.
Eventually, I topped 1,000 trees in a day. To a planting vet, that’s child’s play, but for a rookie like me, it was truly exhilarating. But what struck me even more was the enthusiasm of another planter. We were scrubbing our dinner plates at the trough behind the mess tent, and this planter I barely knew was genuinely thrilled when I shared the news — even though he could plant twice as much as I in his sleep.
It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced much before then: the unselfish camaraderie of being on a team.
Of course, the best days didn’t always involve doing “well.” One rainy morning, months in, my crew simply decided we weren’t going to plant. We built a makeshift shelter out of empty tree boxes and sat by the side of bush road all day, doing absolutely nothing while crew leaders whizzed by on four-wheelers with puzzled looks.
I got to know my crew more that day than in all the weeks prior. And there it was again: the feeling of community.
It was so much better than making money.
As the season turned plains of frozen dirt into overgrown green mazes, my favourite moments were often these in-between spaces. Brushing my teeth next to a stranger at the communal taps. Trying to guess the voice on the other side of the shower curtain, hearing someone else crack a beer a few stalls down.
And of course, swapping stories over dinner in the mess tent, sitting down to a new table of faces each night — all of them, like mine, unapologetically smeared with dirt.
At some point, I realized this was actually the best part. Living communally was what I'd feared most, but I had no idea before going what that would actually look like.
It wasn’t necessarily that I was making lifelong friends; it was simpler than that. I was experiencing what it’s like to live as part of a network, to almost forget what it’s like to truly be alone.
I didn’t think I was built for that. But I guess that’s why I needed to go.
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