The Tree Lot

12 . 2 . 11

I’m back now, enjoying a nice fire under a starlit sky... and after a nice meal I am free to relax and reflect on the days... the weeks blessings.

I am now going on my fourth day in a row working at a tree farm... literally, imagine a corn field, but instead of corn, trees... Thousands upon thousands of christmas trees. It’s nuts.

So me and about ten other craaaazy dudes strap up each day for ten hours plus of the most tiresome work I’ve ever done... right up there with shoveling bark all day. We drag, bail, throw, swamp, sort and load trees all day... nobles, firs, douglas, grand, all sorts and sizes.. It’s amazing. I think I probably threw somewhere around 500 trees myself today... thats just throwing. This company ships trees all over.. they even sent a container to Alaska!!?? Nuts. Working 10+ hr days I leave in the dark, come home in the dark, but work all day outside in the fresh northwest air which soaks the lungs like only it can. I drive home forty minutes on windy, wood laden roads for twenty miles journeying through the forest. Today as I bobbed up and down some roads I caught peeking glimpses of mt rainier adorned in purple, whisped with pink... beautiful. I can work as many hours as I want, and am making good money.. what a blessing.

See, for weeks I had been tirelessly looking for a job on a tree lot where trees are sold... one lot in particular had led me on and let me down time and time again until I just didn’t have a job with them.. and at the last minute - as a recommendation of my grandfather who was a frat boy with the owner of this farm and worked on a lot himself for 10+ yrs - I got this job. Faaaaar more difficult than what I had imagined doing, but with a handful of people who I know I am meant to spend time with. I’m not sure what will come of these relationships, but it is clear to me the providence of this work and I can each day look forward to getting my ass whooped and back wrenched if it means spending time with some grungy dudes who are good, broken people... and need good, broken people in their lives. I am blessed...

I can’t believe some of the characters I’m meeting here, true lumberjacks who seem to have been raised as orphans among the groves. Afflictions have soaked the soil of their lives, and the pain in their roots bears witness... mostly unspoken. some of the crazy things I’ve seen and heard have been hard at times, things I don’t really feel comfortable sharing, but things which have shown me a new fragment of the sorts of people we’re called to be near.. I felt it on the river, I felt it in Haiti, I felt it in Vail, and I feel it here... People who have very different stories from my own, but who share harmonious ingredients which blend to make for a tasty interaction, rising into a fruitful relationship.

Why spend so much time with people who are just like us?! And sure, within different social groups there are different breeds, but at the core with most groups i’ve felt a part of there are many basic similarities which make a person feel comfortable... right? I guess I’m realizing that even in the glaring light of these previously mentioned - out of box - life experiences, I don’t very often reach out to groups where I would be uncomfortable... and I guess I’m realizing how that’s exactly what Jesus came to preach... and the promise is that the Holy Spirit is there to comfort, to warm, to give strength, to lift up, and to pour out. What a beautiful promise.

I will say, my time in the word has been seriously cut because of this job, so if you find yourself with some unspent prayer energy, send it my way, my spirit could use it... I do take moments throughout the day to breathe deep and gather my spirit, because sometimes it can tend to slip away as I allow. Little moments like this I’m learning are very important...

Thank you all... and be blessed!