Customer Reviews

Handmade Forests: The Treeplanter's Experience

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My brother Jeffrey has worked in the planting world of western Canada for several years, and this book has finally given me a real insight into what his days are like for four or six or eights months a year. I ask myself, at once, why he would choose to do something so horrible to himself, and why I have not given up the mundane and trivial things that fill my own life to confront something so challenging and rewarding, so filled with sights and experiences which, if Cyr's pictures and the accompanying text are any indication, border on the sublime. Of course, it is all made the more powerful when we consider the gigantic favor these laborers are doing for us and the people who will come after us. I am envious of all those whose capacity for physical and mental anguish allows them to reap this kind of reward. Whenever we think we cannot possibly deal with the real world, we would do well to consider the surreal world presented in these pages.

Helene Cyr is right on about treeplanting - she knows the heaven and hell of that life. This is a book I wish my treeplanting buddies and I had put together, so thank you Helene for doing what we'd always talked about. So wonderful to see treeplanting honoured in such an excellent way.

I think every treeplanter can relate to how difficult it is to share their experiences with one who has never gone planting. Words do not suffice. Yet there is a universal understanding among those who have been out there. Helene has captured the experience perfectly with her photographs. Handmade Forests is a beautiful, truthful, nessesary book, and I thank her for sharing it with us.