Years ago, when I trained in neurology, I spent time at the Tucson VA Hospital. I remember a radiologist there, a pleasant man 30 years my senior, who once tried to get rid of extra chairs in his department. I don’t know how he ended up with so many chairs, but he wanted to get them removed and had no success.
Then one day, an edict came down from the fire safety manager saying the halls were unsafe in many departments because of furniture. If anything not fixed in place was left in the hall, it would be removed. The radiologist was thrilled. He told his secretary to start leaving chairs out in the hallway. Problem solved.
The Crew was working Rockpile Trail from the trailhead on Pioneer Gulch to Rockpile Lake junction, about two and a half miles. The trail was mostly in the 208MF fire last year and had been badly burned over. We had to hike almost a mile where we had already cleared and logged out the trail before we got to the rest needing work. We had three saw groups and I led a fourth group to work on restoring the trail, which needed to be found in some places, have holes filled with rocks and soil, and dug out in other places so people could follow it.
At the trailhead, 600 vertical feet below where we needed to start, we lay all the tools out on the ground that we would need. Everybody takes at least one tool and maybe two. Not sawing that day, I left my axe, wedges, and hand saws out of my pack and off the ground. That was 10 pounds less right there. The last tool remaining was a Rogue Hoe/Rake, which is fine, although I prefer a Rinehart with a better hoe with no rake. I had reached a certain degree of competence in trail work and had used many different tools. An experienced crew member told me a couple years back he liked the Rinehart the most, and with time I agreed with him. But a new person to the crew took it. I could have pulled rank and taken it from him, but I can work with a Rogue Hoe. Both it and the Rinehart are light; I can use either as a walking stick, shovel, or a root cutter, especially in a burn, where roots are easy to pull out, or if not that, to cut with a hard whack. The tool is stable enough vertically that I can use it to pull myself up after kneeling.
Starting the climb, I was slow, in part because of plantar fasciitis, which had me trying different sock combinations in addition to a boot insert. I found something that worked, but it was additionally humid with a chance of thunderstorms, and that slowed me down, too. Eventually passing the new person but staying well behind another, I made it to the junction, where we regrouped. We planned to leapfrog each other up the trail. The saw groups were ahead of us. I used the rake part of the hoe to break up the soil and move it, either to fill a hole, to uncover the tread, or to make a place for flowing water to drain off in order to limit trail erosion. There had been some recent rain, so there was almost no dust; the last time we did trail work even hiking left dust in the air, quite typical in Oregon this time of year.
About a hundred yards past the junction, I caught up to the new person, who asked me whether a gully on the side of the trail could be left as is. I preferred not to do that, so I used my rake to break up some dirt to put in the gully to fill it and uncover the tread where I thought it should be.
“Wow,” the newbie said. “I should have taken your tool.”
Music to my ears.
Quietly, I replied, “Want to trade?”
I got a look like really? You are going to let me use that?
We traded tools.
The rest of the day went well. Why not? I just traded away a tool I didn’t prefer to somebody who wanted it and had the tool I wanted. We were both happier and he might think I was really nice to work with. Or not. I had put the chairs I didn’t want in the hall. Win-win.
See you on the trail.
Boreal B[l]og 
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