My yearly treeplanting nostalgia

Ahhh, spring. A few years ago, I would have been preparing to head up to Northern Ontario to plant some trees. The smell of thawing earth and new vegetation always reminds me of the trek up there. I miss being so constantly in the forest - far away from the city and cars and noise. There's something really great about hard physical work outdoors - feeling truly tired is part of it, but I think that it allowed me to make a real connection with nature - hokey as that sounds.

Aside from learning how to really work hard, physically (something that I thought I knew how to do but really didn't - I'd say that I kept getting better at driving myself each year) - I also met and became very close to a lot of people I would never have otherwise spoken to.

And it was one of the few situations in my life where I was frequantly the lone woman in a group of men - and feeling comfortable and equal in that setting has probably empowered me immensely.

Ok, I'll stop being all warm and fuzzy about it now and pine for my treeplanting days on my own.

Pine for my treeplanting days. Haha.

Thanks to New North Greenhouses for the photo of baby jackpines