Fear and Tree Planting

Hello Everyone,

I’ve often heard that tree planting is a rite of passage in Canada. When I was in high school and university it was talked about as an option for a summer job. Specifically, it was talked about by the cool, adventurous people, instead of the usual retail or farm work options that were common in my area.

But I never did it, and of the regrets I have, it ranks surprisingly high. It’s not so much that I missed out on something that in retrospect looks pretty fun and rewarding. I regret it because I was too scared to try it. 

I chickened out. 

I was scared it would be too hard and uncomfortable. It’s not like I had never done physical labour. Most of the summer jobs I had were putting up hay, picking rocks, or working in a machine shop. But I had heard the stories of how hard tree planting is, that it’s both very hot and very cold, that the bugs are murder. And that was enough to deter me. I never pursued it much beyond talking to some people with a bit of experience or knowledge. 

It haunts me because I missed out on an experience and it haunts me because I didn’t try. I was scared of it. I was scared of how much work it might be.  

Ironically, and this seems to karmically happen a lot, I ended up doing plenty of hard work during my summers in high school and university anyway. And often in jobs that I hated and that weren’t nearly as much fun as tree planting looks. And by all accounts, I would have done well at tree planting.

But those things are less important. The shame is in not having tried. For a little while, I tried to convince myself that I had made the right choice. That tree planting really is hard, but that became untenable pretty quickly. The only redeeming quality to the experience is to look failure in the eye, so to speak. I’m not sure failure has eyes. 

Recognizing that failure, I hope, means I’ve not been dissuaded from other adventures that were also potentially hard and uncomfortable. Like the fear of missing out, the fear of chickening out is not the best motivators, but it’ll do. 

Wes