Alter Ego

Well, it's that time of year again. I have to sort through my hockey equipment; throw away what has rotted to rags, wash what can be washed and try to improve the smell of the rest. I'm almost in tears to think that I won't get to skate for at least another five months.

Crying, however, will not get me into a summer hockey league. Yes, I know that D. DeVries told you that Peterborough has ice year round, but I don't think it will be ideal for hockey. Even if it were possible to play all summer here in Peterborough, I will not be here.

I've decided to head back up north to Thunder Bay and plant trees this spring. I did it in undergrad and so enjoyed the experience that I begged Laura to let me go again. Really, the options are limitless once I get north of Chapleau. The ailments that hide, waiting to spring on the unsuspecting planter are virtually limited only by the imagination.

Trench foot, a common affliction for planters who have their feet in wet boots for upwards of 13 hours a day.

Twisted knees, the outcome of climbing over a deadfall and slipping with an added 70-80 pounds of trees strapped to your waist.

Frequent impact pain in the shoulder and elbow from attempting to plant a tree the correct depth in granite.

Hands with cracks in them deep enough that they bleed for a few days, compliments of cold weather and several weeks of blisters combined.

Beaver fever, compliments of badly filtered water.

Incessantly dripping nose, caused by living in permanently wet clothes (rain, dew, snow, hail, sweat, swamps, etc.)

A physique vaguely resembling a hunched skeleton, thanks to a negative calorie count and being forced to stoop all day to plant trees.

Permanently itchy skin, caused by bites from black flies, deer flies, horse flies, bees or bears...usually a combination of several of these at any given moment.

Whew, I can hardly wait to get up there. Oh, I almost forgot forest fires, twisters and floods.

I even knew a guy who had been attacked by a bush chicken and a killdeer on the same day.

The truth is, planting trees is an experience that is likely only duplicated by a few other jobs in the world. I think that King Crab crews on the West Coast must have a similar experience. The army is probably another, although I ran into some forestry guys one year who told us that planting trees was so bad that they did a stint in the army in order to get out of it. They said that in the military you had to carry hundred pound packs and a gun through the bush, but at least you didn't have to do that and plant trees at the same time. The other career is forest fire fighting, which is a pretty crazy vocation.

So what is this experience that is so unforgettable? Extremes. When people say that they hate life, they never mean it the way a treeplanter does. When treeplanters say that they love dinner, treeplanters actually love dinner.

A good day tree planting is an amazing thing. It is even more obvious when starkly contrasted with the ever-present bad day tree planting.

A warmish, mostly dry bed is an amazing thing to crawl into after a day of climbing over slash, waist deep in mud in the middle of a hailstorm.

A bus, broken down or mired in quicksand, fifteen kilometers in on a logging road is a bad day. Truck headlights coming over a hill that hasn't seen a vehicle in hours, just in time to get you back to a camp where a cook, conscious of how precariously her life is situated, has prepared hot food, and a lot of it, can instantly make it a good day.

Philip Yancey, after interviewing Paul Brand (the surgeon who isolated the cause of leprosy's deadliness) concludes that humans only experience good as an opposite of bad. That is why language is full of such binaries as good/bad, joy/sorrow, love/hate. The degree to which we experience the negative is the degree to which we are able to experience the positive.

That's why I always loved pan-fried bass on the shore of Pine Lake after I had gotten a soaker on the way in, lost a set of lures and burnt my hand on a pan trying to start dinner. It's like Dad always said as he laughed at one of my brothers pulling themselves out of the knee-deep mud that inevitably surrounded every beaver dam on any trail he had ever led us down, "A bad day fishing is better than a good day in the office."

Well, it's something to look forward to, I guess.

Tot ziens

Stealing Travallion's Corn

An interesting thing happened in my tutorial this past Wednesday. We were discussing identity in a reference to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and a student mentioned that as a member of the Irish Diaspora he still identified himself by his heritage and his last name. At the end of the class the student handed me his essay that is due this coming week and said, "I'm Irish, you don't want to see me at seven p.m. next week, so here's my essay."

This is the first time that I have had an assignment handed in early. For those of you who do not have a calendar handy or are having a little difficulty with the math on this one, next Wednesday is the 17th: the date that the Irish drink away their troubles and the non-Irish help them by dressing as Leprechauns and attempting to master the Irish lilt.

If you haven't been paying attention in the past, I draw my ancestry from the three of four parts of the British Isles that were pounded into submission by the Brits in centuries past. My Irish heritage (I'm told) is drawn from County Antrim (Rosboroughs-post Kelso exosus) in the north and Cork (Kings-might have been Bulls also) in the south.

It is often difficult to guess a person's heritage just by looking at them if they are wearing the same Americanized clothes that everyone seems to wear these days.  There are some ways to tell if a person, like myself who could just as easily be Dutch or a variation of Norse (I won't even get into the viking pillaging that may have led to this), is of Celtic heritage.

An affinity for Bowler or Newsboy style hats, adding 'boy' to anyone named Daniel, one's voice picking up a lilt when around other Irish Diaspora are all good ways to identify a Paddy.

The only true way to tell if someone is of Celtic descent is to fire up the old bagpipes. The folks who are dancing a jig are Celtic. The ones who are covering their ears are not.

After that the sorting is a simple matter of checking if they prefer their cabbage with peas and bacon or in a coleslaw next to their fish. Either way they will likely offer you some, because that is what they are like.

On a more serious note, this month also marks a year since the two shootings in Northern Ireland that threatened to end the peace process that has been underway since the good Friday Agreement in 1998. For the first time in centuries, Irish people, Orange and Green, Union and Republican, Catholic and Protestant all chose to join in unison. Their statement was that Ireland will not be thrown back into the dark ages of the 20th century when terror was a way of life.

This St. Patrick's day I pray that although Ireland cannot be united under one government, they will be united in their search for peace.

Go gcoinní Dia i mbois a láimhe thú.

Fractured Fairytales

Winter has finally relinquished its hold on Peterborough. The temperature has been above zero for a week and patches of grass (actually more mud than grass) and garbage are starting to show through the snow.

Laura and I have been opening our windows to air out the apartment. It is amazing what a difference air makes when it is carrying a subtle scent of spring. We are by no means expecting to see buds on the trees in the next week or so, and yet, there is still a different feel and smell to the air. It`s almost as if Peterborough is poised, waiting, ready for the arrival of spring.

I can`t help but be reminded of the opening chapter of `The wind in the willows`when I catch a whiff of spring in the air and like Mole I can`t help but want to shout `hang spring cleaning`and rush out without even putting on a coat.

Peterborough becomes a lovely town when the first breeze of the spring is carried through on the Otonabee. The wind carries an inviting promise of the lilacs and wild strawberries. Children begin to sneak out the back door of their homes in the morning in order to get away with wearing shorts to school in the middle of March.

The combination of Scottish-Irish heritage in the area that I grew up in has created an interesting mixture of foolhardy and cheap children. As a result, instead of packing away shorts, t-shirts and sandals during the nine and a half to ten months of winter weather (what a waste of hard-earned money), the people in this area have simply adapted to having blueish appendages for the months of March-June and October-December. In fact, you could crop a photo of student in the Peterborough area walking to school in December and photoshop it into a background from Bermuda and no one would even notice that the student was out of place.

A friend and I once had a competition in high school to see who could get the closest to Christmas wearing just sandals on his feet (obviously we would not be wearing socks, fashion does matter people!). Talk about sophisticated diversion tactics that were used to avoid walking directly in front of Mom as I headed out the door to the bus.

Right, spring. So I am considering heading out for a walk...anything really that is better than whitewashing or writing papers will do.

I think that I will hold off on the shorts until I can do a bit of discreet tanning. The other issue with Scottish-Irish heritage is that, in the four months or so when people are wearing vacation apparel without seeing a UV rating high enough to bother an Albino is that their legs and feet the glare from their legs has a tendency to harm people`s vision.

The other issue is that with only one real exit in our apartment, Laura is sure to notice the white flash as I crawl out of the bedroom window with my shorts on.

Tot Ziens.