Tree planting, if you are unfamiliar, is seasonal work in which crews of mostly young people replant forests after the loggers have gone through, and sometimes also after forest fires. (I have the sense that tree planting, as I experienced it, is a distinctly Canadian job, though I could be wrong.) My Dad, two uncles, and an aunt all planted while in university, and so once I was university-bound, it felt natural and somewhat like a rite of passage for me to also go planting. In the interior of British Columbia, where I planted and where my Dad’s family is from, the planting season typically runs from the beginning of May to the end of July, which fits well with the university calendar. Planting can also be an excellent way to earn a lot of money quickly—I earned enough to cover tuition and living expenses for the year—provided you work hard, are willing to tolerate rough living and working conditions, and, most importantly, can learn how to plant fast. 

Tree planting is piece work, with the price, at least twenty years ago, averaging 9 to 11 cents per tree, sometimes a little more or less. Given how grueling the work is, spending all day outdoors on a clearcut, miles down a logging road in the middle of nowhere, while living in a tent in a camp with 60-80 other tree planters, it only feels worthwhile if you can earn more than a job in-town. My goal was to earn at least $200 per day, which meant planting at least 2000 trees per day.

The thing with planting and speed, though, is that it takes time to learn proper technique. To some extent the rookie year is a write-off, with the real money made when you return.

The procedure for planting a tree is as follows:

• Load up planting bags with 300 to 400 seedlings, a mix of pine and spruce. The bags are attached to a belt, strapped around the waist, one bag on each side with a third bouncing in the back. (I didn’t like how the weight felt in the back, so I loaded trees on my right and left sides, with my back pouch reserved for my water bottle.)
• Find the line on your piece of land assigned by the foreman. 
• Take three to five steps, scanning the ground for a good planting spot. Look for a high spot, well drained, ideally with creamy soil or red rot. Next to a stump is usually a good option.
• While stepping forward, reach into your bag with your tree hand and pull out a seedling by the root plug. 
• Also while stepping forward, raise shovel, with your other hand, and, when ready, throw it into the ground blade-first. (We would throw the shovel—precisely aimed—and release at the last moment to minimize impact on our hand and wrist.)
• In one fluid motion, open the whole using a curved stroke; insert the seedling, making sure that the root plug and tree are standing straight; and close the hole, either with a fist or a gentle kick. 
• Take three to five steps and repeat. 
• Oh, and well doing all of that, also occasionally rip off and drop pieces of flagging tape so you can see where you previously planted.

Easy, right?

Ideally, it takes ten seconds or less to plant a tree. Which is fast. You need to be in constant motion. Stopping to take a break or meandering across the block costs you money. But speed is only part of the equation.

The secret to planting quickly is to have no wasted movement. The eyes, hands, and feet all need to work in sync. While the eyes are looking ahead for where to plant next—while also watching out for branches, logs, and stumps, which are simultaneously tripping hazards, obstacles to maneuver around, and potential clues for where to plant—the hands and arms are already in motion, one hand selecting and preparing a seedling, all by feel, while the other arm is swinging and throwing the shovel. Bend over and both hands need to work together to open the hole, insert the tree, and close the hole.

It is tempting to move fast before the technique is locked in. After all, speed is money and we all wanted money. But my foreman, Hank, insisted that us rookies first learned proper technique. Yes, this meant that we would be slower in the short term. But an extra stroke or two with the shovel, multiplied 1500 or 2000 times over the course of a day, adds up. Fumbling for a tree, 1500 or 2000 times a day, adds up. Learn to plant efficiently and correctly, and more trees will get into the ground with less effort. 

(Not only was wasted movement costly in terms of time, but poor technique could also lead to poorly planted trees. If the checkers found too many problems—j-roots, too shallow, too deep, leaning, too close together, too widely spaced, poor locations—you were sent back to replant, which meant planting the same tree twice but only paid once.)

Hank also taught speed, once he was satisfied with your technique. Hank would either plant alongside me or walk in front, pointing out good planting spots. These sessions were usually short, maybe 10 or 20 minutes, but they left me scrambling to keep up and they gave me a taste for the pace I needed to aim for. Until Hank pushed me, I had no idea my body could move that fast over a chewed up cut block while carrying 400 seedlings. 

That first summer, I hit the 2000 tree mark only three or four times. By the time summer plant rolled around, in July, my technique was getting pretty good, but the terrain and planting conditions got more difficult and I was burning out. My second season, though, I hit 2000 trees within my first few days back and consistently pounded in 2000+ trees every day for the rest of the summer. I was officially a vet, no longer a rookie.

(To put this in perspective, consistently planting 2000 trees per day is a good benchmark for separating vets from rookies, though the real highballers in camp would consistently plant 3000+ trees per day. I never did crack that milestone, and I retired from planting after two summers to focus on less lucrative but more relevant summer employment, which eventually led to me learning how to index.)

Bringing this back to indexing, I still think in terms of technique first, speed second. Or, better yet, as an iterative cycle. Start with technique, add in speed, then go back to technique to see if anything can be adjusted in light of the new speed, and on and on. 

There are definitely ways to become more efficient and fast while indexing, including utilizing software, keyboard shortcuts, and creating macros, but while having their place, a macro, for example, can’t fix a poor understanding of index structure. Or, rapidly picking up and then deleting irrelevant entries is probably going to take more time than accurately assessing from the start what is indexable. 

If you want to be a quick indexer, start with learning and internalizing indexing fundamentals and best practices. Learn how to make better decisions and cleaner drafts. It may feel like slowing down in order to think through decisions, but these are decisions that will hopefully set you up for a strong finish. And yes, also add in macros and other shortcuts, and experiment with your process, but keep coming back to technique. What makes for a good index? How can you refine your process to support writing a good index? Start with quality, and speed, to some extent, will take care of itself.

Experience can be tricky to define and gauge. As a freelancer, what standard do you compare yourself to? When are you no longer a “newbie”? Some professional societies, such as the UK’s Society of Indexers or Editors Canada, offer certification, which can be helpful. Many others do not offer these external standards by which we can gauge ourselves. Is it a matter of, “I know it when I see it”?

I returned home a couple of days ago from the Indexing Society of Canada’s annual conference, held this year in Winnipeg. It was the fifth indexing conference I have attended. Unexpectedly, I came away feeling like I was truly an experienced indexer. I do not say this to brag or to say that I have finally arrived, whatever that means. There has been a shift, though—a subtle, unlooked for, shift, perhaps—in how I view myself, and perhaps in how I perceive how my colleagues view me. 

I have been trying to think about what happened at the conference that might have contributed to this shift. I did announce our new mentorship program, which I helped to write the proposal for and for which I am now one of the two coordinators tasked with turning the proposal into a functioning program. I know that indexing experience is not strictly necessary to put together a mentorship program, but I am still feeling the weight of this responsibility. I did feel like I recognized more colleagues than I have in the past, and in turn was recognized by them. I have been around long enough that colleagues are starting to turn into friends. I did talk to a number of newer indexers, compared to whom I am, I realize, more experienced, while there are others who have been indexing far longer. I suppose you could say that in my sixth year as a freelancer I am somewhere in the middle of my career. The beginning is now past.

I often think about the two seasons I planted trees in northern British Columbia, when I think about the acquisition and progression of experience. I turned nineteen and twenty those two summers. Tree planting is seasonal work in Canada, to replace the trees cut down by logging. First year planters are called rookies, and you remain a rookie until the last day of the season. If you come back for a second year, you are a vet. The demarcation is clear.

Experience is what differentiates rookies from vets. The first season is dedicated to learning proper technique, how to read the ground, and how to add speed, once technique is ingrained. I only hit the two thousand tree mark three, maybe four days that first summer. For me, much of that first season was also the mental struggle to stay engaged in a repetitious, physically demanding task and environment. Especially in the third month, I am pretty sure I was burning out. One afternoon I literally threw my shovel away and cried, alone in the middle of the clearcut. I felt numb and exhausted. All I wanted to do was to sit and be somewhere else. But, I was in the middle of the wilderness with a bag of seedlings strapped to my waist. At the very least I needed to walk back to the truck, which I think was at least a ten minute walk. So after sitting for a bit I found my shovel and dragged myself back to work.

In contrast, my second season got off to a flying start. I hit two thousand trees within the first few days and maintained that pace for the rest of the summer. I would often plant upwards to 2,200 trees a day, occasionally more, with my personal best being about 2,650, on trenched ground, with a sore knee. I was refreshed from nine months away, and all of that experience from my first year—all that I was trying to achieve my first year—suddenly became possible. I was clearly no longer a rookie. That said, there were a few vets on our crew who had been planting for five or more years. They would routinely plant three thousand trees a day, sometimes going up to four or five thousand if the ground was creamy. Experience exists on a continuum. 

Bringing this back to indexing, I think there are a few markers for experience. One is simply putting in the work, measured both in time and in indexes completed. Indexing, like tree planting, is inherently hands-on. While knowledge about technique can inform practice, that knowledge will never replace practice. The best way to gain experience is to just do the work. 

A second aspect is self-reflection. I think it is possible for someone to index poorly for a long time, because they have never thought about how they index or how they can improve. I think when someone is described as an experienced indexer, quality is often implied, which requires attention to craft. The other side of this is that even experienced indexers can get better. There is always room to learn. 

I think that mindset is a third aspect. I see this in myself, in that somewhere along the way I have come to recognize that I have completed a significant body of work, that my work processes and skills have changed over time (hopefully for the better), and that I am better able to deal with challenges as they arise. I also have a changing sense of myself in relation to my colleagues, whether those are colleagues ahead of me, with me, or behind me on this continuum of experience. I am coming to see that I am experienced, while also seeing that there is still more that I can learn. 

Maybe I am premature to consider myself experienced. Maybe I will look back on this post ten years from now and think, “What is that idiot talking about?” And maybe I will think the same again twenty years from now. I don’t know. Either way, the work continues. I trust that you and I, if we keep chipping away at our craft, will find experience, one way or another. And there is always another indexing conference next year to look forward to.

I wasn’t able to find a stock photo of tree planting, but check this article out on Vice for some stunning photos. There is nothing quite like pounding trees. It is as much a lifestyle as it is a job.