156 chApter fIveto it. If the clear- cut is itself devastation, so too are human bodies devastated
within it. And if the clear- cut—despite its ruin—insists on life and beauty
after its willed destruction, the damaged bodies of human planters and their
solidarities likewise continue to vibrate and echo with utopian promise.
Tree- planting was my first experience of communal life, my first time
being in an environment in which nudity was mundane, in which the taboo
practices of urination and defecation became—often out of necessity—a
public affair, and in which filth, wounds, and the body’s return to uncul-
tivated states were badges of extraordinary honor. The hardest work, the
wildest parties, the closest to nature, the most intimate moments of collec-
tive life unfurled alongside—and because of—environmental devastation.
If planting culture holds a radical social promise in its act of collective envi-
ronmental repair, it is also haunted by those other socialities at the expense
of which planting culture emerges. Clear- cut logging is very often—and
often unbeknownst to planters—undertaken on unceded indigenous terri-
tory, with indigenous communities having scarce (if any) input about or5.3 The illusion of bountiful Canadian forests demystified through an aerial
representation of the clear- cut. Sarah Anne Johnson, The Buffer Zone, 2003.
Chromogenic print, 20 × 24 in. Printed with permission of the artist.