The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People
It’s the small talk at the dentist’s office or perhaps the hair dressers, “Are you a student? Are you visiting? Where do you normally live?” Our lives don’t fit these questions. Our lives are not of the conventional type. There’s no 9-5 job. There are no car payments. There are no student loans, followed by student debt. And we don’t ‘live’ anywhere.
Society makes it difficult to be nomadic. Everything requires an address. Try getting a phone number without an address. Try opening a bank account. Try getting a driver’s license. Try getting paid for any job, anywhere. The structure of society is based around people staying in one place, working the same job, paying their taxes to the same city, same province, same country. Governments go to lengths, to ensure nomadic lifestyles are not possible.
It’s no wonder people romanticize the life of the traveler. Longing for this kind of imagined freedom that comes with not being rooted. People spend loads of money back packing South America, exploring South East Asia, flying to Hawaii, for a mere two-week getaway, and then, back to the everyday grind. I get asked often, “How do you afford to travel?” I get told, “I wish I could do that. You’re so lucky.”
Tree planting is an odd ball job that only a select few Canadians have heard about, and pretty much no one in the rest of the world has heard about. Planters come from across the country to work the summer months. We live in tents in our bush camps, and work away, saving every penny. It’s hard work. “You don’t know cold, and you don’t know bugs.” I remember telling a friend who was asking about the job. And we do it all for $0.14 a tree. This sounds like little pay, but 2500 trees is a $350 day. If you work hard, 2500 is easy.
We say it’s as mental as it is physical. The work is hard on the body yes, but it’s mostly in the mind. It takes a lot of self-motivation to push yourself through a rain day. Imagine it’s pouring rain from the moment you wake up at 6:00 am. Imagine getting in the truck after 10 hours of work in that same rain. Every layer you’re bundled up in is soaked. Your rain jacket did nothing. You get back to camp where you’re only dry space is your tent (if you set it up right). All you want to do it take a hot shower, but it’s three dirty showers shared between 45 other people. It takes a lot of self-motivation to keep yourself going through the wasp stings and stinging nettle. But we do it, I guess, because of what the rest of the year has to offer.
See tree planting draws out all kinds of misfits. Generally a young crowd, kids who didn’t end up going to university, or kids trying to pay their way through it without going awfully in debt. Artists, and festival goers, wanderers, and modern-day hippies. Come August, the season’s over, and with bank accounts looking healthy, we take off on our adventures. We travel. We ski bum. We try to make the money last until the next season.
It’s a little taste of freedom that’s hard to find in any other job, and hard to give up once you’ve tasted it. Are we students? Some of us. Do we work? Some of the time. Where do we live? No where and everywhere.
