Land + Trees = $$$

A scarifier carving "rips" into the land for planters to follow

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I bagged up my last box of trees to finish what was left of my piece and it had 17 bundles of 15 trees each in it. A few leftover trees from my last bag-up made the count 18 in my head. I left 2 bundles by the road to take care of the very front corner of the piece and to lighten my load for my trip to the back. I planted in, following a rip in to the back where there was a small area of open land to finish planting. As I planted along I estimated how many trees would fit in that small area. 10 bundles? 12? I would need at least 2 bundles to be able to plant back to the front corner when I was done. After the 2 bundles in the front corner, I knew I was to plant down the side of the road to where there was more open land and trees. Would I have enough trees leftover from my piece to plant to where I was going next without having to dead-walk? Walking somewhere instead of planting your way there means you're not making any money along the way.

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When I'm planting trees, I spend a lot of my time doing math. To be as efficient as possible - to not be carrying any more trees than necessary, but to still have enough to cover your land - requires a good deal of thought and planning. Tree planting math is useful for figuring out how to ration out however many trees you have over however much available land. The number of available trees can be divided by the number of empty rips between boxes to figure out what sort of spacing to plant your trees. I also do math to figure out how many trees I'm planting per hour so I can give my crew boss an estimate of what kind of set-up I need for the day. Tree planting math serves a valuable purpose, but in some situations it isn't really necessary. Sometimes the auto-pilot mathematics that constantly run through my head serve no purpose but to occupy precious brain power, something that can be difficult to muster by the end of a long day.

In the above situation, there was a small, finite amount of land and a small, finite amount of trees. Whatever was leftover would get me as close as possible to where I needed to be next. The math I was doing didn't change the reality of the situation: I could only go as far as my trees could take me.

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Sometimes when we're faced with a situation or a problem in our lives, we perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to think our way out of it. But when an unchangeable factor, say, the number of trees you have available, is what limits your progress, the gymnastics are unnecessary. Why waste energy over-contemplating an issue that's out of your control? It's better to just plant the trees you have and see where they take you.