In The World of Work…
Years ago, I was told that in the world of work, we all have to “be something.” At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. I was young, inexperienced, and still trying to understand what direction my life might take. So I did what seemed natural—I went out and tried different jobs, hoping that somewhere along the way I’d discover where I fit.
One of those early jobs was logging in the Queen Charlotte Islands, now Haida Gwaii—a place of staggering beauty and, at the time, staggering loss. I found myself on steep side hills, setting chokers, working with a crew that knew the land far better than I did. The terrain was unforgiving. The hillside felt almost vertical in places, slick with rain, mud, and loose soil. But what struck me most wasn’t the difficulty of the work—it was the silence, the emptiness where a forest had once stood.
As far as I could see, the landscape looked like a war zone. Massive trees—giants that had stood for centuries—now lay on their sides, torn from the earth, waiting for us to retrieve them. The scale of it was overwhelming. These weren’t just logs. They were the bones of an ancient forest, scattered across the ground like casualties. Even then, I felt something was deeply wrong. I didn’t know how to articulate it, but I sensed the imbalance—the taking without giving, the extraction without understanding.
We worked hard—dangerous, physical work that left my body aching at the end of each day. There was camaraderie among the crew, jokes, and stories shared to cut through the grimness of it all. But even in those moments, I remember looking around and thinking, What are we doing? Not just us, not just this crew, but all of us as a society. Why did the pressure to “be something” lead so many of us into industries that were taking so much from the land?
That job taught me more than any classroom ever had. It taught me about effort, risk, and the harsh reality of industrial logging. But it also opened my eyes to a more profound truth—the cost of progress, the fragility of the forests, and the quiet way destruction can become normalized when you’re standing so close to it every day.
I didn’t stay in logging. But the memories stayed with me. Those early experiences shaped how I see the land now, how I photograph it, how I speak about it, and why I no longer stay silent. They were my first lessons in understanding that the world of work isn’t only about what you become—it’s also about what you witness, what you carry forward, and what truths you choose to tell.
