MAY 4, 2025 – Everyone who knows our younger son Byron is familiar with his thoughtfulness. This attribute is manifest in all avenues of his life, but it’s most predictable on occasions accompanied by gift-giving. For Christmas last year, for example, he gave me a professional forester’s planting carrier. Coincidentally, in a YouTube forestry video I watched a week before his gift arrived, I’d seen the apparatus for the very first-time. I marveled at its design and versatility and thought it would be nice to own one. I’d never said a word about it to Byron, however. He’d discovered it entirely on his own. He’s well acquainted, of course, with my affinity for trees and my efforts to cultivate them in the tree garden of Björnholm adjacent to the Red Cabin and elsewhere on our family’s property.
The outfit consists of two large soft but sturdy canvas cylindrical bags, each for holding up to 150 – 200 nursery-cultivated tree seedlings. These “bags,” in turn, are attached to a harness system that one wears in the manner of a high-end backpack. The idea is that instead of having to lug a seedling container along or backtrack constantly to a stationary container, the forester involved in high-volume planting can easily carry the planting inventory anywhere. In the past, I’ve relied on two-gallon pails filled with inventory that I then had to carry long distances from the Red Cabin—my base of operations—to the “tree garden,” where most of the planting has occurred over the past eight years. The professional’s seedling transport outfit is far more efficient and comfortable.
Ironically, knowing how much effort is involved in manually planting a few hundred seedlings, for this spring I’d planned to put only a dozen or two hemlocks in the ground. Byron’s gift, however, designed for a much higher volume operation, stirred me to do better. I wound up ordering 300 seedlings from the Wisconsin DNR—the minimum volume that can be purchased.
Last Friday I picked up my order at the Hayward (WI) DNR nursery, a 20-minute drive from the Red Cabin. The bare root two- and three-year white spruce and red pine seedlings came packed in bunches of 25, wrapped in plastic and stored in a large wax-coated cardboard box. The cheerful nursery attendant had me sign for the order, then wished me good luck with my project.
I was heartened to meet two other citizens in line to pick up their orders and do the same as I—make the planet a little bit greener. They happened to share my political views, and part of their motivation for planting hundreds of trees, I learned, was the same as mine: to “do something positive” in response to the new regime’s assault on the environment.[1]
I reached the Red Cabin at four o’clock and changed from street clothes to work duds—including what I call my “tick suit,” a white, one piece zippered outfit resembling a very light flight suit and work boots. I then collected the items on my checklist: the 10-pound steel planting bar (a tapered rectangular piece of heavy steel welded to a four-foot long handle); a flat wooden paint stick for teasing seedling roots into the wedge-shaped holes I’d be making with the planting bar; a gardener’s kneeling pad; waterproof gloves; a spray-bottle for keeping the seedling roots moist; a set of hand-held clippers both for cutting away other vegetation occupying or encroaching on a desired planting spot or for snipping seedling roots that are excessively long (roots that are too long can wind up as “J-roots” (pushed upward as the seedling is placed into the planting hole), which can be fatal to the seedling); safety eyes for protection against sharp twigs/branches of ground vegetation around planting sites; my phone; and, of course, the first bunch of white spruce seedlings. I then strapped on the carrier and filled one side with the seedlings and the other with my other gear, except for phone and clippers, which I stowed in a contractor’s apron tied to my waist.
Looking quite the part of a forester, I grabbed the planting bar and set out down the woodland path to the formal entrance to the tree garden. I felt that same rush of excitement I used to experience when at long last my skis were on and I was heading for the high-speed quad that would take me to the summit of Big Mountain in Montana—after weeks of planning, 22 hours aboard the “ski train” from St. Paul, the Empire Builder, and the ride from the train station to our lodge at the base of the mountain. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Notably, on my drive back to the Twin Cities this afternoon, I encountered a sizable demonstration on the bridge crossing the St. Croix River from Wisconsin to Minnesota at the small rural town of Taylors Falls. Vociferous protesters holding a forest of anti-Musk and anti-Trump signs and a few large American flags lined both sides of the bridge. I honked and gave the “thumbs up” through my open sunroof. I was not alone in my support—I heard lots of honking and shouts of encouragement among the dozen or so vehicles backed up at the red traffic light just beyond the Minnesota end of the bridge. Not in a million years—or at least 10,700 since the end of most recent Ice Age—has there been nor would I have expected such a spectacle at that location.
