Back to the game!
Last Sunday was a reminder that life is a game to be played.
Noel and I were hanging about in the van, parked up by a popular dog-walking pond in the Galloway Forest, southwest Scotland. Over the last weeks, we’d been watching our cash dwindle away. Now, finally, we were down to our last — about £70 between us.
Altho this could be considered a pretty dire situation, we were both feeling quite calm about it all. Ei stressiä, no stress.
We had been enquiring about and applying for various jobs — which for me had been quite fun, despite the lack of call-backs. After my jobseeking time in Finland, it was a thrill to browse job ads in English!
Anyway, no joy on the jobs so far. But now our need was quite imminent…
I put on a pot of coffee while Noel drew up a “work wanted” sign, to slap on the side of the van. Maybe one of the dog-walkers had something for us?
We were drinking our cuppas, the sign still on the table inside, when the universe came knocking.
A passerby paused for a yarn. He led a crew of tree-planters in the forests nearby. Our ears perked up — tree-planting was a gig that we’d been trying to get since before Christmas, but all our leads had fizzled out.
This particular bloke wasn’t hiring, but he knew who was. He gave us a name to look up on Facebook: we found Derek no hassle. First public post on Dezza’s page called for tree-planters. Aww yiss.
A message sent, and we soon received a number to call; next thing ya know, we’ve got a motherfucking job, starting Tuesday. There was some high-fiving in the van.
On Monday we spent our last pennies on fuel to get into the woods, and food to last us the week.
On Tuesday we were handed a shovel and a few bags of tiny trees and pointed out into a boggy and soggy, brashy and branchy, hilly and dippy, rough ole field.
A snow-capped peak loomed up from beyond the forests. Stunning.
Over the next few hours we were snowed on, rained on, basked in sunshine, got wind-burn, nearly lost gumboots in monster puddles, had such sniffly leaky noses in the chilly weather that we both stopped bothering to wipe…. just free-snottered our way up and down the lines.
We met the rest of the team in the afternoon, and spent the next days planting alongside them.
On Friday we got our first pay, and it was a sweet sweet moment.
Perks of the job include:
being able to park and camp in the forest, right next to work…. great commute!!
free exercise
time in nature (and all kinds of weather)
working alongside my man and the hound
wishing every tree good luck as you plant 💚 (“you can do it little tree, I believe in you little tree”)
Back to work tomorrow.
Hope the weather is nice.
But even if my toes, nose and fingers end up wet and freezing, my soul will be warm with the belief that I’ll always receive what I need, when I need it. I don’t know the rules of this game, but maybe that’s what makes the wins even more exciting.
Cheers universe!
Update
Woke up to proper snow today. I guess we need a day off!