Greenstorm's Journal

Well

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 23:33:35 GMT

What if I did go back to timber cruising? Or managing a group of timber cruisers for a contractor or licensee, doing internal QA etc?

I just saw an ad for $20k more than I currently make cruising in PG. Granted, I don't think I could ever do production, but I do think I can do QA.

It would mean divorcing myself from the making-decisions thinking-about-things part of forestry, but also the politics part, and re-immersing in fieldwork. That... is probably more appealing than I think it is on the surface of it.

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Field Day

Tue, 17 May 2022 04:22:47 GMT

Today was the first field day of the summer at work. It was nominally a training day, but in practice it was kind of a diplomatic/relationship-building exercise with some folks. I liked some of them a lot, it was a nice day, but I am also exhausted. I also send three more piglets to new homes (and three yesterday) and worked out a place for the currently-house-piglet to stay for awhile.

I need to can a ton of stuff. I need to make soap: bear soap, elk soap, and a lot of lard soap. Instead I watched an exquisite episode of Elementary with Tucker that had some incredible relationship-building between men, incredible nonsexual partnership work between a man and a woman, great characters that were weird but not treated poorly nor pedestalized or exceptionalized, a very good hook in the beginning, and a serviceable mystery. Now I'm trying to get together energy to figure out what to eat, to shower, and to get myself to sleep.

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Field Season

Tue, 10 May 2022 18:08:36 GMT

Today is a sauna and jump in the lake at work, for ice-off. My work counterpart has been running the sauna and polar bear swim at ice-off for a number of years so all I have to do is show up. This is one of those situations I struggle with: I've been told by multiple people that my lunch shouldn't exceed however many minutes, but everyone is encouraging me to do this.

I swear, NT people make rules and only apply them where they feel like, not to friends or enemies or whatever, while NT people make rules and never bend them in any situation even if it's extreme. I dislike it all. Guidelines and check-ins rather than rules are nice, but they have to be explicitly set up that way. It's one reason I liked my old boss so much: what he said was actually what was supposed to be happening. Oh well.

So today is sauna and jump in the lake. Next week is some field training. Two of my blocks are snow-free so I can start my fieldwork -- and I have a lot -- any time really. My laser is MIA, which is a problem: it means I need to measure tree heights and log lengths the old fashioned way, and that slows me down. Work has implemented a thing about check-ins where if you're one minute late they'll count it as an incident, and need to file an incident report.

Actually, one of the interesting bits about working in a resource (dangerous) field is that there's a very strong safety focus. It's true in forestry, it's true in mining, I'd be surprised if it wasn't true in oil & gas etc. So it's second nature for folks who work in these fields to consider near-misses (someone may have been hurt or something damaged, but through luck it didn't happen) and report those, as well as reporting actual safety incidents. The purpose of reporting is to follow the chain of causes up to see if something could have been done to prevent the incident: if it was a near-miss on a dusty road do we need to give everyone training driving in dust? Do we need to water or calcium the roads more? Do we need to try to avoid driving in dust season? Do we need to enforce radio calling on the roads more? I mean, obviously sometimes it's done badly ("there's a tripping hazard in the forest; be careful") but it's generally the culture and I appreciate it deeply. I also realize that it's not the culture in other types of workplaces nor is it ingrained in many people outside this context. If we're working alone in the bush we need to do check-ins every two hours or so; I'm safer in the field at work than I am camping. It's a bit of a pain since it's hard to communicate in some cases, since we're often outside range of radio, cell service, etc, but I appreciate where it comes from. The old guys tell stories of being dropped off by helicopter and told the helicopter would be back in a week or so, left with no radio or anything. That would not fly today, so to speak.

But anyhow, any rule that's created needs a bit of grace, and a zero-minute late window on checkins only makes sense if the response to a missed checkin is measured in minutes rather than half-hours. As is, it seems like they're just looking for something to pick at, and it's a disincentive to go out.

But go out I will. I have a lot of field work to get done this summer, I'm thoroughly sick of the office contract stuff I'm doing, and I cannot wait to be out there and away from all this.

And out I will be. Soon.

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Arboreal bear dens

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 17:06:50 GMT

There is some neat stuff happening in my work right now; forestry is really changing.

Besides, how often are arboreal bear dens part of someone's dayjob?

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Change

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 18:29:28 GMT

Forestry conference last week. I learned a bunch. Things I learned:

Blueberry River First Nation Decision: Indigenous rights in Canada tend to be advanced by the courts, with court decisions prodding the slow-lumbering beast of the government forward and public opinion hanging around, in front in some areas and behind in others. In our constitution "the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed" and the concept of "aboriginal rights" is slowly being delineated. Very long story short, the Blueberry River decision is that the treaty didn't include an agreement that settlers would change the landscape enough to preclude the Indigenous folks' way of life. Cumulative effects from all the different activities (forestry, agriculture, oil and gas) are now significantly impacting Blueberry River First Nation's way of life, so the government is failing to uphold its end of the agreement. The government won't appeal. This decision is specifically applied to Treaty 8, which is a limited area, but it's likely also going to apply to underlying "aboriginal rights" of folks wo haven't made treaties and that has some significant ramifications. It doesn't let the government off on "we haven't measured it so we didn't know" or "we've consulted on each individual project so we don't have responsibility for the landscape as a whole" (which is the current way business operates). The test is basically, are the indigenous peoples able to continue their lifestyle? And obviously there are indigenous peoples in heavily populated areas down south who absolutely cannot continue their way of life because almost their entire area is paved over and the salmon they depended on are severely depleted, let alone wetlands etc. Almost certainly the decision will be applied to government land instead of private land, and to places where there's still room to salvage those lifestyles, but there's room for it to mean that Vancouver and the lower mainland needs to look very, very different.

There was a panel on conflict management that more-or-less said that foresters' first and highest job was to build relationships with folks in their area. I had some trouble swallowing all of this one -- it was mostly conflict-management folks and one forester, I think, and when folks brought up questions about people not believing good science the conflict management folks said basically, it doesn't matter what the science was. Honestly I found this an unsatisfying workshop, though the following day really operationalized a bit of it in ways that were useful to me.

That following day was a case-study of the Sea-to-Sky area. This is a place that sees huge high volumes of visitors all the time, international and otherwise, and they did a really good process with the (Squamish? Lil'wat?) Nation that led with values, worked out a vision statement, and then worked from there to implementation. The process built a tremendous amount of trust with everyone involved and is considered by both the Nation and the government to be a success; it was built on the values and needs of all parties; it used what I consider to be permaculture principles that use humans' natural tendencies, like building tourist areas in one place to draw folks away from other, more sensitive areas that can't take the tremendous traffic this area gets. The presentation was incredibly moving and it does seem like the way forward for me; it helped me feel hopeful after the previous day's conflict management panel where I felt basically like washing my hands of the whole business.

So here's the thing. Forestry is super extensive land management; we touch more of the land than anyone. There are plenty of other players. Land management absolutely needs to be done with consideration to the impact of all parties - legally, now, as well as morally. Deciding who gets to do what, and what will be done overall, therefore needs to be done either by all parties together or by a hierarchical body, or some combination of both I guess. This is all pretty simple stuff conceptually, though of course hard to put into practice.

All parties has been contentious for awhile, though. I want to say: the land is for folks who touch it, and who are touched by it. The remaining Nations are shaped by their land and they've sacrificed a great deal to maintain their connection to it; I have great faith that they put serious consideration into agreements about the land. Government trails behind social license but nonetheless is there as an entity and can be held to its agreements. Users of the land can be moved to learn about it because the land itself is powerful and people who access it tend to love it. But so much of our population is transient and disconnected nowadays; how do you sit down at a table and agree to values and goals with a set of people who have never seen the place, who are just passing through, who heard that there's a petition going around? How do you include people who don't have the wherewithal to focus themselves, who won't communicate unless something is happening they don't like? Forestry is coming to understand that the time to include people isn't after the planning has happened, because then you can only get a yes or no, but instead before planning has happened so it shapes the whole direction. Of course I think everyone has the responsibility to do this work but of course not everyone has the desire or bandwidth and I do accept that other people are busy handling economics or labour issues or whatever, or just surviving. So how do we do it, as a society?

I do think we'd probably feel better as individuals if we spent more of our time in this kind of engagement, in deliberately constructing how our society would work. Building things feels good, right? Hearing people out and feeling heard feels good. But how do we make a society like this?

Anyhow, that's not the kind of question that gets answered easily, but at least that one workshop had one good answer for one issue (visitor management) and one place. And it's part of the foundation of my actual job to do a tiny part of that, to measure and communicate about one thing that's happening out there to all folks involved. That's not nothing.

And of course there were panels and presentations on wildfire, which touches all aspects of Forestry. Wildfire is getting added to the legally-mandated considerations for foresters working on the landscape, where it will join Visual Quality, Wildlife, Biodiversity, Cultural Heritage, Fish/Riparian, Forage and associated plant communities, Recreation, Resource Features, Soils, Timber, and Water. There was talk about how fire suppression and lack of cultural burning has led to much higher densities of trees in many areas, which means the fires that do occur get Very Big instead of just passing through (I love the photos of a hundred years ago and now, showing how much ingress there's been, because I love data). There was talk about how climate change is going to change species composition. There was talk about how not to let dry forests flip into grasslands with climate change. There was talk (for the first time, I think) of how drought and not just temperature will factor into species change. There was a lot of talk of wildland urban interface areas, which are the forests close to populations, and how those should be managed, and case studies about how those had changed the trajectory of fires last year.

All-in-all it was nice to pop up to higher level stuff and hear talk about it again. It's the same things that are always on the table, but the conversation evolves every year and it's good to remember I'm part of this. The bits of my job where I clean data and spend two weeks putting together a contract make it easy to forget.

Community, I guess, important in everything.

Edited to add: this is an update to my thinking on forestry, which had been that it was the government's job to figure out how to find values/consensus/goals and my job to operationalize the goals; now I think it's kind of on all of us. The "government should take minimal effort from most citizens/vote in an informed way once a year and that's your only social responsibility" mindset doesn't seem to be supported by current events.

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Closing

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 21:46:36 GMT

Probably one of the last field days of the year at work. Persistent warm rain. No leaves left on the deciduous. Roads mushy and slippery with mud, maybe this is our last unfreeze. This is a late winter; we had -9 without much snow. I'm hoping we get snow before we get much colder than that or it'll be hard on the plants. On the other hand I'm hoping not to get snow before Sat afternoon when I get snow tires on my truck.

I began listening to a delightful podcast known as "Future Ecologies" today and got through six episodes. Highly recommended.

Meanwhile my jurisdiction (British Columbia) is starting the concrete, public-facing steps of radically revising our forest policy. It's been coming, it's a bit overdue, and it's about to hit like an avalanche. The first step has been deferring (if in agreement with the relevant First Nations) an awful lot of cut for two years.

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Human

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 03:35:33 GMT

I often forget that something like a bush partner isn't part of everyone's working life. Doing outdoor work in landscaping or forestry you often end up paired off with a particular person for the duration of a job or a season. The two of you drive to site together, work together, drive home together. There's definitely technical talk and silence. There's also a very specific kind of companionship that comes from achieving shared goals, and lots of time for all kinds of conversation.

There's an art to these relationships. It's unbearable to be with someone who expects immediate constant responses for eight to ten hours every day. It's challenging to be with someone who doesn't talk at all. Low-level landscapers and foresters aren't known for their interpersonal skills but pretty much everyone I've been paired with has some way through what is essentially a very intimate relationship. Some people pour themselves out immediately and then can rest. Others barely dip their toes in with small-talk until they know it's safe and then inch in millimeter by millimeter. On any given day, depending on mood and energy and a million other things, "are you doing anything this weekend?" might lead to a discussion of instant pots, the place of old growth forests in society, hydraulics on mountain bikes, parental trauma, or just a shrug and a comfortable silence.

Your bush partner doesn't owe you much. They need to show up, be pretty well prepared ideally, and have or be able to learn or teach some skills. When you're using your body day after day there will always be slow days and fast days. There will always be days of conversation and days without and whether you read those as brooding or tired or lost in daydreams you may never get an explanation. Over time the two of you will develop your complementary skills, will settle into unspoken and efficient routines. Usually someone will lead some things and someone else will lead others: she usually puts music on, I usually call lunchtime. When we get to the worksite I automatically get these tools ready, you automatically go pee in the bushes then unload the quad.

I've been in the bush a couple days a week over the last little while and I didn't know how much I missed this kind of relationship. This is how I like humans: not rushed, using skills they've honed, working together, taking their time to learn each other, not trying to find a place to fit into each others' lives but just there for awhile and with the knowledge that there is a way out if needed. I like the daily things: tired today, doctor's appointment tomorrow, maybe I'll do this or that tonight. I like the deeper things to have the space of routine and alternate activities around them: you run that tape measure out fifteen meters or dodge those potholes while you think of an answer, there's no hurry at all. I like fitting skill-to-skill, problem solving together: I'll comb through the map and you drive through the dodgy road, I'll do the heavy work if you'll catch the details. I like not having to worry about interrupting heavy thought-work. I like having shared experiences, like rain or bugs or a particularly lovely view. I like it. I'd missed it.

It's letting me have positive regard for humans again. I think a lot of people lost that during covid and have still lost it. It's an important part of me. Being able to just be around someone without a relationship agenda of some kind really helps this (and I mean small-r relationship, that is, any interpersonal interaction of any kind is secondary to getting the work done).

Don't get me wrong, working in the bush is spectacular for so many reasons. It's great to be outside, to see things no one else gets to see, to do force-times-distance type work with my body, to experience ecosystems, to get information other folks don't have. But. It's also a good kind of getting to know someone that isn't fraught.

Things that aren't fraught are important right now.

This is something I'd lose doing remote-only work. I'm too slow in the bush to do production work -- that is, to do the basic and most common types of work out there. That leaves checking on the production folks or doing weird fringe things. Hm.

Well, it's still early evening but I'm very tired. Time to sleep. Be well.

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Regardless

Tue, 11 May 2021 22:59:16 GMT

I spent the last two days in the field for work. They were short days, and the drive in was only about an hour each way on easy roads. I was doing work that's new to me, basically wandering around a clearcut making sure that baby trees were planted back properly.

I work in forestry. My employer doesn't really allow me to comment on my job. My profession wants me to educate the public. I have a lot of thoughts about the western world's current emphasis on planting trees as an environmental solution to ...everything. It is not. Even if the right trees from the right genetics were planted, even if the ground those trees were planted into was protected in some way in the long term, even if that type of ground would do best as a forest, planting billions of baby trees is a minor part of a larger solution. Because it makes a great soundbite, because people like baby trees and simple solution, it's what's done.

Don't get me wrong, migrating trees to help adapt to global warming is probably super important.

It's just that the world we're going into with inconsistent climate, high likelihood of fire and even very warm/dry fire plus the requirement for carbon sequestration, and maybe some sort of breakdown of our huge unwieldy high-input agricultural system... that world really needs some proper grasslands. We need, not lawn, not monocultures, but deep-rooted prairie that keeps most of its biomass below ground for when fires or other climate artifacts sweep over, that feeds groups of ungulates that pass through, and that's quick to go from species movement to seed to more species movement as climate continues to shift, and that drives carbon/humus deep into the ground. We need wetlands. I mean, we need forests too. We need intact old forests, we need young forests.

But the thing folks have trouble with is specifically that diversity is great. People really like grasping onto a single solution and waving it around, instead of saying "that's great, but it's only a hundredth of a solution".

But still. I spent the day wandering around in the sunshine looking at baby trees. The block was gentle, not too steep and not too many branches and trunks and bits on the ground so the walking was ok. There was a nice cool wind. Four species were going back into an area where two were taken out, and a lot of what was taken out was dead pine, replaced with barely-visible green sprigs.

And any day spent outside, any day, is a good day. Any day spent in the bush, even if the bush has been cut down, is a good day.

These were good days.

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