Notes from the Field

by Robin Claire McCullough

Two springs ago – in May of 2009 – I left my shovel in the shed. For the first time in 14 years, I paid rent in the city, and neither reprised the dance of planting nor the crewbossing of the last nine seasons. Instead, silvicultural work became the spring and summer focus of my MA thesis which shifted me from fourteen seasons of ‘doing’ to one season of articulating the labour of implementing the forester’s prescriptions. The thesis traced the ways treeplanters, and treeplanting management staff, function as invisible transcribers on the map of reality of these paper and digital prescriptions. The thesis explores the point past which foresters are no longer able to implement – to actually make material – their prescribed renewal program. From this beginning point until the trees are in the ground, the thesis explores how the outcomes foresters prescribe are wholly in the hands of the silvicultural workers and so highlights the role of professional silviculture practitioners.

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