where to start?
reading Steves post brought up emotions and memories so I started thinking about my strong feelings about trees and tree work.
your enthusiasm and passion got me to evaluating the last ten years.
I started this job because I was out of work and had a mortgage to pay on land I had purchased in the adelaide hills,
20 acres with a winter creek and two dams on a dead end road one of the last properties. ( see photos on google plus)
more important to me was the magnificent River red gums some two to three hundred years old and so much space to plant many other trees that could in their maturity be as big as they wanted.
this was before I became an arborist.
I was offered a job at a place by my best friend where he worked for a landscaper and arborist - Mondy.
The first rule at Lamonds was there are no tears at Lamonds.
the second rule was refer to the first rule
the third rule was must drink beer - I was granted a exemption based on medical grounds.
Mondys motto was " it is better to prune a tree three times than to cut it down once"
under the team mond crew I spent the first year on the ground learning the ropes quite literally , how to correctly prune and use a chainsaw what knots to tie , I sat in the middle seat of the truck going from job to job tying knots and getting checked/corrected.
I had come from a factory job at 30 having just done 3 1/2 years of night shift following of 4 years of afternoon shift at a printing firm who had refused to apprentice me so I became the first person in the state to apprentice themselves.
I worked from three in the afternoon to 12 or 1am in the morning then either stayed back or went home and did my studies
got up at 6am and drove to class at seven till 1 in the afternoon then drove to work and started at three - repeat .......
I finished 6 weeks ahead of every other apprentice that year - I am dyslexic.
at work I was known as the overtime king.
So at 30 out of shape and known as the grey ghost for how white I was I started doing tree work
I would go around to my fellow workers homes on weekends so I could get practice in setting climbing lines and tying prussic , footlocking friction control flipping the pole strap with out removing your own teeth,
because I wanted to climb. the years pass.
Later I am a qualified Arborist after another stint back at trade school on saturdays - every saturday for the next two years after climbing all week and yes you guessed it more homework.
now I am a contract climber and the tree protection laws change - they are relaxed and the big wonderful trees that used to be protected are now no longer safe and my wonderful friends I stood before all the state and proclaimed the doom about to befall this beautiful city of mine and none listened.
and so it began and as the tears roll down my cheeks I tell you my brothers and sisters of the terrible things we did .............
what once was my love was swept away in the blur of the chain and the roar of the chipper,
I told them it would be open season out there and for three long years so it was.
and my heart darkened my hatred for these people grew, my pleas fell on deaf ears and my hatred turned to anger. and the trees paid for my anger for my hatred of these people who did not appreciate what they were the custodians of and would not listen and my anger led to the dark side.
The pendulum had swung too far and now the flood gates were open there was no stopping the slaughter that unfurled its terrible wings and so the trees they paid.
I hardened my heart and sharpened my saw and closed my eyes and so became Death,
my new name was maddog and I liked it.
I called myself stihlmadd
I consoled myself with thoughts about the trees I was protecting and the seedling now that I would plant to address the inbalance, the horror I had participated in.
The time past and with it the numbers thinned my work changed and I was allowed to start pruning again.
I went back to the trees I had known who had weathered the storm and to the people who loved their trees ,
trees I had climbed before and remembered fondly who were still undergoing long term pruning programs I had participated in years ago and were now further along , some customers would ring up my employers and tell them about how happy they were with the tree a year later and could they please let me know, they would send christmas cards and tell their friends about my work.
I finished a program we had started ten long years ago and seven prunes later the tree was where we had discussed it to be with the customer how with the wisdom had spent the time and money instead of just cutting it down.
And I had discovered youtube - first just about showing my killing but it soon changed I was able to learn better climbing skills off other arborists a talent pool previously unavailable to me.
so with a change of customers and a new desire to climb my heart softened again and I remembered why I loved this job so much why I used to go on rec climbs on the weekends and my passion for the trees was more than just the beauty to be found in their destruction.
I now here I find myself explaining partly through guilt and partly through shame what has befallen me,
your honest enthusiasm whether for climbing or life and
really made me take stock, so there it is young Johnny no malice no games and as reasonably short as I can make it.
please watch my video 'sugur'
Ben.
here is the link to my youtube channel.
