Tree Planting: Season 1 (2016).

This section of my portfolio is all of the film prints from my first season tree planting in Northern Ontario. This summer was spent with new friends and introduced me to a world that would change me forever. Up until this point, I had never done a job so hard in my life. I always tell people that tree planting was the best, and worst thing I have ever done in my life. “Digging holes builds character.” When I first went planting, I could hardly imagine how much Louis Sachar’s words from the book Holes would resonate. Although we weren’t being forcible held in a desert campground surrounded by poisonous lizards, being told to dig 5ft by 7ft holes in search of someone’s grandpa’s buried treasure, the work at times felt all the same. After planting 1000’s of trees daily—repeatedly thrusting my hands into the earth over the course of 60 days— the truth behind those words became unmistakably clear. There was a grit I had never accessed before. A wild eyed determination that carried me through the tears, blood, sweat, and dirt.