This is Part 1 of Impossible Things - The Garden. Part 2 is called Impossible Things Waltz.

On Doing Impossible Things

One year ago I drove to a remote work camp outside Prince George BC and began my first season as a tree-planter.

I think it’s fair to say I surprised myself as much as any of you by this decision. I had just completed a songwriting residency at the Banff Centre and had an album’s worth of new material to record, but no money to do it yet. I had met another musician there, Graham (Devarrow) who was running a crew. He gave me a long spiel about the pros and cons of planting, how rewarding it could be and how incredibly hard and potentially dangerous. Some part of me must be a little masochistic, because I said I’d think about it... It’s a fairly unanimous assessment by most planters I’ve spoken with that it’s the best-worst job on the planet. The conditions could be punishing. Some company practices could be - let’s say - somewhat short-sighted or questionable. The land could be nearly impossible to plant at times. Injuries are incredibly common, and you only get paid for as many trees as you can physically plant. And of course there are the bears and falling trees and clouds of insects dive-bombing your face constantly, all of it so that you can plant toilet-paper and cheap furniture for future generations. Sounds appealing, right?

The wackiness of this decision was compounded by a couple facts - I would be basically the oldest person (not to mention rookie) at the camp, and for more than two months prior to starting the job I had been experiencing debilitating lower back pain that at times made it difficult to do simple tasks like bending over to wash my face or put on socks and shoes, drive, or lift my little Fender guitar amp onstage. Doctors and physio hadn’t helped. I was popping Advil and lying on my back on the floor for a lot of the day just to feel a moment’s relief. In early April 2019 my friend Leona casually mentioned a book she had heard about, Healing Back Pain by Dr. Sarno (I realize this is a polarizing subject but we can leave that discussion for now and acknowledge this as a personal anecdote.) It is no exaggeration to say that this was a turning point and my whole world shifted because of what came next.

I discovered my pain was totally psychosomatic. I feel the need to clarify - this doesn’t mean the pain didn’t exist. It was very real to me. It’s just that once I accepted it was psychosomatic, and did some of the inner-work to understand why it was happening, I could have a conversation with the pain and tell it that I heard its message and that I didn’t need the reminder anymore. And it would go away, just like that. Within a couple days I had accepted the tree-planting position and started training exercises and preparations in earnest.

Planting requires split-second decision making if you want to be efficient, and simultaneously tuning in to the terrain surrounding you and tuning out all other distractions (like your aching, exhausted, hail-pelted, bite-welted body, and your resentment over being given a shitty piece of land again, and your overwhelming desire to tear off your sticky, filthy planting clothes and jump in a lake). Over those months I became more and more decisive. I started to recognize and intuit where the good soil would be. Slowly (much slower than most of my co-workers, I admit) I found a rhythm. At the best of times I felt like a worker bee, floating across a field - just an animal on the land, going about my business in the circle of life.

It’s hard to put into words what I learned about myself during that planting season, because I learned SO MUCH*. I tested my limits physically, mentally and emotionally like I never had before, discovering that I’m way stronger than I had thought, on all counts. Sometimes by midday I would mentally quit altogether, and by the end of the shift I’d be elated, thinking about how I was going to improve the next.

Planting attracts a diversity of personalities - interesting and beautiful humans with whom I had many vibrant and challenging conversations and experiences. These people make me think that truly, every new generation will eclipse the previous one, and we have so much to learn from each other, past and future generations. I've thought about how a 20-year old version of myself doing the same work would have fared, and I feel pretty confident that she would not have a lasted a single week. If the fear of bears hadn’t kept her away, the sprained ankle/ripped achilles, numbed fingers, torn intercostals or any number of other lesser injuries surely would have ended the season.

It’s fascinating to understand that in my life I have gathered or weathered all manner of experiences - the inevitable heartbreaks and humiliations alongside some truly unique and exciting musical experiences and those ego-inflating accomplishments that can be nearly as treacherous (tongue in cheek yes, but only partly). When you live a big life, a life on the outside of ‘normal’ you expose yourself to the extremity of experience. And it can be really scary at times. But you also feel so very ALIVE. And frankly, I don’t know any other way to be. I guess that’s who I am now.

I made the difficult decision not to go back this season (I decided the continuing function and agility of my digits was more important than the other considerations.) I’m finishing the album whose work I began a year ago, and I am growing a garden and observing the beginnings of some kind of human (r)evolution from my tiny inner-city isolation zone.

I yearn to feel the way I felt back then - if only in my mind’s eye, gliding over that choppy land - though I may never go back. What I think I am really missing is actually quite achievable from where I'm currently stationed. What I require, and what I think all humans require to some degree - is to look at some incredibly difficult and seemingly impossible task and to say to ourselves, together - well, here we are, and here is the work. Let’s get to it.

We may not agree on how to get this job done, but the realization of a massive shift is in all of us right now. And I know we will grow from it. That is our imperative. To tune in to what the earth is telling us, what this situation is telling us, tune out all the negative distractions, and decide that we’re up to the challenge.

<3
cb

*I feel like a bad infomercial for Healing Back Pain and Treeplanting a lot of the time haha. I’m sure you’ll be subjected to further musings as I metabolize all of these inputs…