Porcupine Forest, again

I think the summer of 2004 was my first time here - treeplanting camp - and it rained every day for something like 70 days. I was the mediocre outlier in a camp of mostly “highballers,” and the mood was a little more serious than I was used to. The mud was sticky, heavy clay - it built up on our boots as we walked, making them become ridiculously heavy and weighed down with giant mud cakes. The trees were heavy - everything was muddy, wet, and heavy. And it was discovered the day that we left that there had been a dead deer decomposing in the source of our shower water all along.

It was an endurance test for sure and morale waned day by day. Someone wrote in the outhouse “Somme say we’ll be here for Weekes” , a play on nearby village names…it felt never-ending! When it was time to leave, all the vehicles were pulled out by the swamp buggy and we slid behind it in a long slippery chain of vehicles swaying precariously side to side.

But it was so beautiful. I have a photo somewhere, of the bright moon, a tent, deep blue dusk sky and the trees in silhouette, and that’s how I remember the overall feeling of the time. Mysterious and magical.

This painting is from a photo that I took years later, going back there on a day trip in the fall. I think it was 2014. The sun was shining and the yellows were so yellow.