When in a
radically new situation it is natural to draw comparisons to past
experiences. I seems like it'd be natural for me to compare my
current situation with my experience teaching in Vietnam. After all,
it is my only other teaching experience, it was teaching to second
language learners in a foreign culture, far from home. Yet Vietnam
mostly comes to mind as a contrast, as the life most different from
the one I'm living right now. For some reason my mind drifts back
continually to treeplanting.
The few
direct parallels between teaching in Inukjuak and my time
treeplanting in BC fall away under a little scrutiny. They are both
in “the north”. But it depends on north of what. Inukjuak is much
farther north in a much less temperate part of the country.
Treeplanting is always in the summer, and north in the winter and
north in the summer are different worlds. There I am planting trees,
here I'm above the treeline.
Treeplanting
is isolated. Treeplanting you may be 100km down a logging road from
the nearest town, but to get here you need to fly. The isolation is
of a very different nature as well. While planting you're spending
long stretches of the work day totally alone, and during your free
time you're spending with the same 30-50 people. Your social world is
limited to those people. Here I am working with people all day and I
have a theoretical pool of nearly 2000 people to choose from for my
social life. But I have found the sense of isolation is more
pervasive here. While I never had as many people to potentially
relate to treeplanting as I do here, it is easier to relate because
treeplanters mostly belong to a very narrow demographic. Nearly
everyone in a planting camp is the same age range, nearly everyone
has the same job. Most planters are white and middle class, most are
left wing and atheists. While there are obviously a range of
individuals and everyone is special unique and ect, people who plant
are almost exclusively a) college students b) artists or c) ski bums.
I find each of those lives easily relatable (I have never really been
one for skiing but I appreciate being able to just bum around).
Planting also has an added social advantage: everybody is in the same
position.
There are many divides between people in Inukjuak, and while there is a lot of good work to form bridges across those divides (the community here is in many ways very warm and welcoming, more on that in another post), I also think that its important to respect the reasons they exist. Aside from the obvious sources of division, class, culture, heritage, and age (I have met very few people who are plus or minus 5 years of my age) there is a division is in how we are experiencing time. For me everything is new, the most mundane is the most fascinating. Since, every thought I have about this place feels like a brand new thought, its hard for me to know what's original and what's being rehashed (most of it is, of course, rehashed). This separates me from the Inuit who must see me as part of never ending cycle of short term teachers (I am told that the community becomes more trusting of you when you return after Christmas). It also separates me from the other Qalllant (non-Inuit, I've been told it literally means “bushy eyebrows”) who have been here for a year, since they now see the mundane as mundane.
Another
distinction between me and most others is that I have an end date in
mind. I need to return to school next September so I do not have the
option of renewing my contract. I do have the desire to to return
here after I graduate, but knowing how way leads onto way...it is
impossible to tell. Knowing that I will return to my normal life in
June gives a very different feel to being here. It has the feeling of
a separate life, detached from the life in Montreal. I picture life
in Montreal as being rather static, I am told the fall colors are out
now, but that just bares memories of the distant past. When I try to
picture Montreal today I still see summer, its hard to picture my
friends wearing the extra layer they must have on by now.
When I
treeplanted I also had the sense that I was living a separate life
from my primary life in Montreal (especially in my first few
seasons), yet this feeling didn't isolate me because it was common
among most treeplanters to some degree or another. They are putting a
pause on their life to have this other experience (and to make
money). In my first year treeplanting this detachment manifested
itself sometimes when I closed my eyes before going to sleep. I would
picture a map of the world and I would zoom in on the spot that I
was. As I approached northern BC, in my mind, it became more and more
strange to me. There was a strange sort of cognitive dissonance... It
felt like it couldn't be right, my mind couldn't except the fact of
me so suddenly being in this strange piece of earth so far from all
of the places I'd imagined going to. Now, six years later again I
find myself picturing a map: no that can't be right—but it must be.