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[timhandelman]

These were new when I started this season. Home safe and sound. 20th tour of duty done. Til’ next year. ?

[timhandelman]

Was thinking about fire:

There was a time, not all that long ago, when human culture put much more emphasis on fire. The gathering of wood, cutting, storing, drying, building, etc. fire was (is) integral to our survival. Warmth, cooking, but more than that: fire seems to touch us on an instinctual level. People are warmed, mentally. Fire is mesmerizing, fire is comforting, fire is raw and real. There is a strong connection to fire, one that we are losing our connection with. The average citizen of the planet no longer has a relationship with fire. Some have a fireplace, true. Some (like me) burn natural gas emulating a crackling fire. What will be the impact on us, now that we are disconnected from the flame?

It was a cold, gray, rainy morning on the block yesterday. After a 45 minute muddy ride on a quad to the block, through a steady downpour, the planters had to steal themselves to now work all day in this. They were (rightly) miserable. I started a box fire ( the tree boxes are coated with wax: they burn explosively). The planters’ demeanor changed immediately. Their faces immediately brightened. Ya, it was actual heat, but there was something more: a morale thing, a connection with an elemental that has been part of our culture for over 100,000 years.

Only recently (relatively speaking), have we replaced fire with technology. The impact, the subliminal loss of our kinship with the flame is unknown to me, but it must have an impact.

Technology is great, it has converged with who we are, who we will be. Hunting, gathering, fire, water…survival, it has shifted. Money, and consumerism: that is the new hunting and gathering.

Fire will make its comeback someday, I fear. Until then, the Yule log channel is just a click away.

[timhandelman]

Selfie at the laundry matt, Fairview alberta

Last shift of my season: my 20th season. Not much to say… it’s Alberta. Alberta ranch lands, oil field, pickup trucks, country music, and cow (red neck) boys. Trump fans to boot.

Anyway: tough work out here compared to BC. More mud, muskeg, and rain. Not to mention slippery roads, and bugs. It’s nice to end my season here though, it reminds me of my 20’s. All those years in and around this area. As tough as it was, I loved it. I no longer love it, but I like it. Well, I don’t really like it: more of an understanding I have with this area, and it’s connection to my 20’s. I’m not the same guy, this is not the same Fairview. To ponder visiting oneself in their youth, and objectively observing yourself. Do you cringe? Laugh? Shake your head in disgust? All of that I guess.

This time of year, this place: it does it to me every time.

Home on Sunday

[timhandelman]

In Alberta now

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Dawson creek

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Youth is wasted on the young

Driving all day brought to me a realization:

So you’re driving along the highway (97 North in this case), a two lane, curvy, hilly road. Speed limit is 100km in most stretches, varies around the corners. Inevitably there are those that are flying by you when we hit a straight stretch, or the occasional passing lane. Then there are those plugging along at 80km. The line of impatient tailgaters ensue. Pumping their gas in outward irritation at being denied their preferred speed. It is irritating though: baring those that are incapable of doing 100km-large RV’s, old hippie vans, and logging trucks. So, you finally find yourself in the que to pass: pressure mounting as the line of cars behind you exude a sense of ‘hurry the fuck up and pass’. I relish those moments. Such a waste of energy: blind irritation at something that you cannot control. Where does that get you? It’s like taking poison, and hoping the other person dies. So finally I pass, and there, everytime, is a white knuckled, two-hand-death-grip on the wheel, old old man. His old old wife, wearing a pleasant yellow, flower patterned shower curtain, sits stoically, and mute, beside him. His unmoving gaze, and tightly clentched jaw projects clearly his stance on the situation, ‘I’m going a safe speed, you should all do this speed, this is the correct speed to go, I’m going the proper speed for these conditions, you should all just slow down’.

You fly by and catch all of this in a split second. His baseball hat, his green John Deere button down shirt, his Levi jeans that droop at the waste because he has no ass. What you really notice, is the fear.

Why do old old people feel so much fear? I mean, floor it man! What do you got to lose. Old old people should be flying down the highway. They should be flying through the rest of their lives. Give it! You’re old old, why all the caution? Why the fear?

Easy, I guess, for me to say, here at the doorstep of old. I still have working hips. Although I get the wisdom of the statement, ‘youth is wasted on the young’. I’d like to add a bookend to that: ‘old age is wasted on the elderly’.

[timhandelman]

Re-taking stock

Finished our last day at Tatla lake. Off to Fairview Alberta tomorrow. It’s about 1300km north East of here. We’ll do it in two days: stop for the night in Prince George BC.

Who was this Prince George anyway? There was a King George. I think Victoria had a cousin by that name. He must have had quite the impact on this isolated, ugly, sprawling city in nowhere BC. Who gets to name towns anyway? Maybe somebody, back in the late 1800’s, pointed randomly to a headline in the local paper, and said, ‘can anybody here read?’

Thus the new town was given a name: Indian Horse Thief Hung British Columbia. Later changed to Prince George, for political reasons.

Oh, home in two weeks!

[timhandelman]

Our block this morning

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Got my ‘this day is over’ face on

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View from the block

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End of day two bbq

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Taking stock

Just laid down in the first bed I’ve been in for about 5 week. It’s awesome. I can see the mountains from my lodge room window: feel the breeze. Watching the Food network channel on the television (You Gotta eat here), and digesting a smoking hot curry I made tonight.

Not all is well: my toe hurts. My big one. I think I have a sliver.

The Quesnel crew split in half for the next week. I’m running a 20 planter crew out here, Dom is finishing Quesnel. Was a 9 hour drive today, covering about 575km. Slow km’s: lots of switch-back roads and steep climbs. We drove right through the area that burned down 2 summers ago: it’s still beautiful out here. Reminds me of old western movies: riding the range in Utah- badlands, mountains, sweeping ranges of tan brush sprinkled with jagged outcrops of granite. I dream of being an early pioneer out here, a rancher. Riding the range on a donkey, Irish wolfhound at my side. Not your stereotypical cowboy, but a happy one. Cowboys, traditionally, are not happy, well, not outwardly anyway.

So, I sleep in my first bed in weeks. I sleep at the foot of the Coastals, a cool breeze, and images of a terrible restaurant in Cape Breton on the tv.

[timhandelman]

View from my room in Tatla Lake

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Been driving west all day. 2.5 hours from our next contract in Tatla Lake BC. I’ll be running this one, as half the crew is still back in Quesnel for another shift. Should take about 4 days, then the long drive to Alberta. I’ve never been to Tatla Lake, but it’s in the coastal mountains, and on a lake. I’ll post in greater detail tonight

[timhandelman]

New cub. We pass this guy, it’s sibling, and mother every day on the ride to the block. Always by the road, always very curious of the trucks.

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Camp Nazko

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Block 7. We use an app called Avenza. It is geo–referenced, meaning, you don’t need data coverage or WiFi for it to work. It’s gps based, which is always activated. I’m the blue dot. The pins represent planter box caches, and lines are flagged sections that I set up. With this app one always know where they are. For most of my years out here this technology didn’t exist. We had paper maps of the area and a compass. We would spend hours, on occasion, hunting down seismic lines looking for our blocks. Looking at tree lines and lakes to orientate our location on the map… now… follow the blue dot.

I use it to section off the block into even chunks (it can measure square meters): planters plant at 2.5 meter spacing per tree. 1800 trees a hectare. I can plan out pieces based on planter production. I run 11 planters on my crew: the highballers plant upwards of 3000 trees a day, at 18 cents a tree , the low ballers are at about 1000 trees a day– $180 to $540 / day. The camp average is around 1500 trees a day. My day: setting up caches, cleaning caches, flagging land, moving planters, running trees on the quad, checking quality, plots, psychologist. I figure that any person that has left this planet, any astronaut, who looked back at earth, must have been quite struck. They must have been impressed with a new perspective: so fragile, so solitary, so beautiful...I don’t profess to have that same perspective, but out here, I have an inkling.