Recently, out at the Arboretum, I was part of a group spreading mulch. I was shoveling it into wheelbarrows until I got tired of turning to my left. I then switched to moving wheelbarrows, dumping their loads on an area of trail needing mulch. Then I returned to shovel some more, and not surprising for me, knelt on the ground on both knees to shovel the last of the mulch into a wheelbarrow. I could have stood to do it, but there wasn’t much mulch left; it was at ground level. I like the ground. I put as much of myself into contact with the ground as I can.
I spent three consecutive trail work days, the first in town, digging out hemlock, the other two out in Fall Creek, recovering trails by digging out the grass and organics on top. The last, nine days after the second, two of us were digging out the grass on yet another trail. All of the other workers on both days in both places stood up to do the digging. I was on my knees, in the first sliding a shovel along the ground to get under the taproot; in the second using a Travis tool to dig. With a shorter distance to the ground, I produced less force, but I didn’t need much and was far more comfortable where I was. The third time I used a Rinehart tool, and while it was wet and I didn’t have ideal knee protection from the wetness. I still was on the ground. It’s uncanny.
Lunch time on the trail, and I am likely to sit or even lie on the ground. Occasionally, I will sit on a log or a rock, the latter still technically the ground. Rarely, I may eat standing up, but I would say at least 90% of the lunches I will be on the ground, eating.
I have a special relationship with the ground, be it the forest or a floor. I sit on it, kneel on it, lie on it. When I practiced medicine and had to examine a patient’s legs, I knelt on the floor to do so. I had two chairs in the exam room, and if the patient and family member sat in them, I sat on the step stool used to get on the exam table. I was closer to the ground and had eye-to-eye near horizontal contact. If I left the stool to look closer at a patient, I knelt on the carpet itself. When I did spinal taps I knelt on the floor, almost invariably. I didn’t try to talk down to my patients, figuratively or literally.
Camping is great for ground time. I sleep on the ground, eat sitting on the ground, or lean up against a tree. I often watch the water or distant hills, sitting on the ground, of course. Sure, I could stand, but I usually don’t. Even in a canoe, I am more likely to kneel than to sit.
It carries over to sawing as well. If the log is the right size and location, I can stand and rock back and forth on my legs to saw. It’s efficient and not difficult. I like doing that. Otherwise, however, I am looking for a way to be in contact with the ground with either one knee or both, occasionally pulling the saw towards me between my legs. People say it is strange, but they aren’t grounded. I am. It’s not a coincidence. This it is likely due to my personality type, which from the book Human Dynamics, is a “Physical,” an uncommon (5%) personality type that fits me. I am well grounded, in touch with the land around me, literally and figuratively, “a slow processor who requires time to gather large amounts of data to understand a situation.” That is so me.
Slow processor. At the end of the third day, the Crew leader mentioned a future trip I would run, my thirty-fifth as a crew leader. He said we wouldn’t need a large crew, looking at me.
I didn’t agree, but I didn’t have an exact number of the people I would need, but it was 7-9.
“Can’t hear me?”said the crew leader.
“I can hear you fine,” I replied. “I’m trying to figure out how many we need.” I am a slow processor. I had another interaction that day where I wish I had expressed my unhappy feelings better, but I just didn’t know how…until about 18 hours later.
“Physical…people typically have a prodigious capacity to remember data. They can recollect events from even the distant past in which they were fully engaged in extraordinary sensory detail… and they often convey information through detailed stories.” Check.
”[T]hey gather and assimilate large amounts of data, and think in terms of the interconnections that make up whole systems of functioning. Because of their affinity for the systemic, they may be fascinated by the patterns they observe in the flow of events across time.” Yessir.
The Human Dynamics model had a huge impression on me. It allowed me to understand my slow processing and to treat it as a virtue, a blessing, something to be cherished and developed. It got me through graduate school, when numerous times difficult mathematical concepts became clear after a night’s sleep, and seemingly impossible matrix or integral problems could be solved in a matter of minutes the following morning. Major writing requires my setting something aside for a period of time regardless of how well I think I have explained it. A recent “major ah hah moment” led to an immediate summary of some trail issues I had. A day later, I changed the wording. Two days later, I switched to human factors, which had been the original idea, shortening the letter about 1000 words. It still wasn’t finished but much better. Two more days, and I sent it, getting an immediate positive reply. I learned recently that this human factors paper will be a template for a Code of Conduct for crew leaders, then going to the annual conference of trail leaders and so will become a very big deal.
Boreal B[l]og 
Leave a comment