Depending on the availability of trees left over from the VM Land Trust sale, there will be one more planting session and maybe ten more conifers to plant this winter.  This year I shared my sale seedlings (I think seedling is the right word for these bare-root trees that have grown to one to two feet tall in the nursery in perhaps two years) with my partner in blackberry clearing.  So far we have set in the ground 10 Doug-fir, 5 Grand fir and 5 Red-cedar.  This is an average year for me.  My method is deliberate, inefficient, and (I suspect as viewed by folks who do this work at scale) borderline precious: a final combing of the selected 4 ft. diameter area for missed blackberry roods; digging a hole big enough for the roots to spread out comfortably in; forming a mound inside the hole; placing the tree on top of the mound (I am on my knees at this point), carefully spreading the roots in whatever directions they seem to want to go; and returning the soil to its hole, gently pressing it down to facilitate tree stability and root engagement.  There might also be a few words of encouragement or admiration, or a snippet of a song.  Later I will mulch generously with wood chips from the pile left for me by KC Parks at the end of the trail.  I usually frame the mulched area with Scotch Broom and other available branches.  I bring water to the trees suffering in high heat/dry summers.  In a year or two I will return to dig up returning blackberry, scrape back the encroaching grass and remulch.  There is direct evidence – comparing plantings I’ve done with plantings done by KC crews in adjacent areas – that my trees have better survival and growth rates, but even taking this into account, an hour of KC crew time produces more forest than an hour of mine.  Their approach to forest creation mimics in a way the trees’ approach: high production (e.g. thousands of seeds for a single plant) and not a lot of care, knowing that there will be a reliable percentage lucky and strong enough to survive. 

So I freely admit that most of what I do on the trail I am doing for my own benefit.  I am tempted to say that the tree planting and the work in the woods generally feels sacramental. I could make a case for this – it does involve kneeling, after all.  Also, my restoration mentor, Jim, says that planting a tree is a prayer to the future, which implicates the sacred.  And although it’s true that the church isn’t entirely out of this boy, I will contain my vanity to stating that the work is deeply satisfying.  The memories of many moments from a morning’s work are relished at day’s end: kneeling before a seedling, observing a fattening needle bud; finding myself surprised walking a section of the trail that for many years was a route through young trees but now, suddenly feels like a dark green corridor. I slip back into religious metaphor, saying that I am blessed beyond my merit.