There's just no chance that I could tell all of the stories that I want to tell. There's not enough time, you'd get sick of reading, and first hand accounts are way more fun for everyone. So I'll go with a bare minimum. First and foremost, Dad is here now! He arrived on Sunday morning and I flew up to Auckland to meet him. We've been staying with Gilly and Greg, who have been the most generous hosts imaginable and Gilly has spent the last two days taking us through the highlights of Waitakere scenery. It's great to be back here, and I know that I'll have to spend a quality amount of time here before I leave. I started here and it only makes sense to finish here. Dad brought me some bags of dark chocolate reeses, one of which Tansy promptly disposed of, tin foil and all. This is the second dog-attack I've faced with imported dark chocolate reeses and you'd better believe it's not going to happen again. I can't believe I'd be so negligent of something I care about so deeply. It's fun to be around Ron again. Did I ever talk about how Ron has cancer? He found out soon after we left the last time that he has cancer of the esophagus and the doctors estimate six months more to live. He's already past three, but he just bought his sons tickets to visit him for Christmas and Ron is the epitome of determination, so I fully expect him to be around for a long while. In the meantime he is just doing his thing. Laughing, working constantly, mocking me. He bought a tractor while he was in the hospital finding out that he is sick. A brand new, hard working tractor. You can't get more Ron than that.

So I went logging. Whoa. That's one hell of a leap from Greenpeace. The thing is, it is heavily managed logging that is monitored by the Department of Forestry and harvested with the idea of renewability. We're not going all swidden over here. I think it is great for me to take part in that kind of work. The kind where liberal, idealistic Robin who loves living in world peace fantasy land has to toughen up and do things that people have to do and will keep doing. I can't pretend I don't use wood. Even when I'm not I wish was. For instance, right now I'm writing on a blog instead of on paper. But those of you have been with me since day one may remember how I feel about blogs. I hate them. I wish I was using trees right now and writing you all letters about my life. Instead I've sucked away all the "pure romance," as dad would say, and smeared my thoughts on this blog. My point is, trees are a great resource that I love using, so it's about time I took some responsibility for my resource use.

I started the job as a "poleman." We changed the spelling to "polemyn" to make it more lady-friendly, but really there is nothing about this industry that makes a point to appeal to women. This job as poleman involves unhooking chains from the trees once they are pulled up the hill and safely onto the skid site. Basically I stand near the hauler, the big machine pulling them up the hill, wait for the load to get there, get the go ahead, unhook the trees (takes an average of about 30 seconds), get out of the way, give a go ahead, and stay away until the next load gets there. That's the job. It would be wholly uneventful if I weren't working in the Marlborough Sounds. But fortunately for me I was working in the Sounds, in one of the most beautiful landscapes I can imagine, watching the sun rise and the sea wake up every single day. That kept it interesting. This picture is of the town closest to the Sounds, but doesn't at all do it justice or show the heart of the area. It's just all I have because I'd lose street cred if I brought my camera to work. Wayne (Carolyn's husband and owner of the business) and Katy (the one girl who works there) were supposed to be my safety net in my first days; however, Katy left because she was sick and Wayne hurt his foot before morning tea on my first day, so they were both out for the count. That meant meant that my first day I was taking my breaks in the tiny, dark, metal shed called "the container," sitting on oil buckets with my 8 bushmen co-workers sipping tea and talking about pig hunting. What? I'm sure they were all wondering how that American girl in the corner got there. Though they look tough, they all turned out to be so nice. The first few days a few of them sheepishly apologized for cursing in front of me and by my second week they accepted my presence without much ado.

After two days my career as poleman was cut short when Wayne announced that we were headed down the hill. I swung my boot up on a tire while he knelt down and strapped crampons on my feet, and away we went. I felt like a twisted sort of Cinderella. Modern day, working girl Cinderella getting Bushman Charming to strap the perfect spikes on her feet and lead her away down the muddy hillside. You know, this is my second experience with crampons in New Zealand? I'd never even heard of them before and now I've actually be required to wear them on more than one occasion. Before I came here if someone had asked what size crampon I wore I would have thought them very crude. Anyway. Thus began my career "breaking out." This job is the part of logging that makes it one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. It is also the part that hones super human strength. So the breaker outers work on the hillsides where trees have already been felled, hooking chains to the trees and directing the hauler to pull them up. Time is of the essence, so you do it all as fast as you possibly can, which means a lot of running straight up mountain sides. The chains come down the hill, you race to untangle them, figure out how to get them around a tree or two, race to a safe distance, and call the hauler to pull them up. You just move down the hill till the bottom, move the ropes, then walk back to the top and start the next line down. It's completely hard physically, but it is kind of fun because each time is like a little timed puzzle. It is so dangerous because if I log slips or chains or ropes break, your survival is only a matter of luck because you couldn't possibly get away from a falling log fast enough. That part makes it scary, and probably not worth it, even though I liked it and want to take on a whole season of it and see if I can get really good. It tore me up. I am covered in bruises, scrapes and cuts over muscles (or places where muscles should be) that won't stop being sore. Oh, but at the end of the day you feel so accomplished. Like you won a big race, every day.

Women don't typically have this job. It is highly unusual, which makes it all the more awesome that I was doing the job with a woman. I worked with Katy, a woman who is seriously not five feet tall and who weighs approximately as much as one of my legs. She smokes like a chimney and speaks like a sailor. On more than one occasion she was rolling a cigarette while racing down the mountain or dragging along chains. Breathing was a constant struggle for me doing that job and I've never smoked a single cigarette, so I can't understand how she does it. But she does it, and she's good at it, and she reckons that we are the only two women breaker outers in the whole of the South Island. Wayne worked with us most of the time, too, which was really nice because I got some quality time Wayne time. We took our lunch and snacks down the hill with us each day because it would take your whole break to walk all the way to the top of the hill, and I swear to you that Wayne accidentally made his instant soup in his tea thermos instead of his hot water thermos everyday. And everyday he said, "oh, I've done it again" and ate it up. Love that guy.

During the week most of the crew lives in a little cabin in the forest we work in, so I'd go home early each day and make dinner for everyone and then we would sit around talking or reading until bed time, then get up at 5:30 each morning and do it again. We don't have a TV, but I told them about those DVDs at home of fireplaces burning and so now we pretend that our real fire is a DVD that we are watching. It makes us feel more modern, less isolated. One night this conversation happened after a silent few minutes of fire-watching:
Katy: I wonder what's people are watching on TV right now.
Gavin: I think Underbelly is on right now.
Roydon: Oh, how is that show? I hear it's good.
Gavin: Don't know, never seen it.
All of us: Yeah, neither.
Silence continued.
Don't let the word "cabin" fool you into a false sense of rustic-quaint. Remember that this house is occupied by six lumberjacks, who co-habitate remarkably well with rodents and spiders of all shapes and sizes. One night early on I was horrified to wake up to find my head actually touching the pillow. It was meant to stay fully encased in my sleeping bag at all times. Then I got over myself and embraced the grime, making me a much easier, if not happier, camper.

After all of that it might sound like I didn't like that experience at all, but I actually sort of loved it. I hope I can do it more in August. It was so different from the life I generally imagine for myself, it felt sort of like I was reinventing my whole persona. Like Halloween, but real life. Real, lucky life.

On to the next adventure with Papa Fail on board. And so it goes!