Working for a forestry guy in BC. One part of the job was bagging pine cones at the tops of trees, so beetles wouldn't eat them. I'd climb over 100ft tall white pines, no ropes, no spikes. It was terrifying.
My buddy came with me, but I was significantly more terrified of heights than him. The thing is, the cones are at the top, which means climbing to the spindly floppy bit. I didn't like to get that high. So my boss, Rod, would say "just a little higher, Larry." And I would climb another whorl. "Nope, nothing here Rod". "Little higher, Larry, I can see them." One more whorl. The whole floppy bit starts leaning over on me and I’m sure this thing is going over any second and that’s the end of me. "Just about there, little higher!" Uggg, what the hell are these pine cones for anyways?
Rod was a crazy mother####er. He was up one tree, and climbing down and back up another tree was a good hour loop. So he had finished one tree, and saw another one about 10 feet away. He asks if there are cones in it. "Yup, Rod, that's a good one," my buddy says. So he's 100 feet up, and starts this tree sawing back and forth. Then he leaps through the air like a goddamned flying squirrel, and somehow doesn't die.
It was an incredibly physically challenging job, filthy, sticky sap, it could be cold and wet..I hated every single second of it. Rod said he never had a helper come back for another year but my buddy went back again. What a nut! I did not.
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