Recently, out at the Mount Pisgah Arboretum, I was part of a volunteer group spreading mulch. I was shoveling it into wheelbarrows until I got tired of turning to my left. Then I switched to moving wheelbarrows, dumping their loads on an area of trail needing mulch. Then I returned to shovel some more, and not for me surprising, I 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.
Lunch time on the trail, and I am likely to sit on the ground. Not always, for 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 and lunchtime I will be on the ground.
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 examined the legs of patients, I knelt on the floor on both knees 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 for some 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. 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 and saw. It’s quite 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 most of them aren’t grounded the way I am. I neither criticize nor try to correct them. I am grounded. It’s not a coincidence. This it is more likely due to my personality type, which from the book Human Dynamics, was a “Physical-emotional,” 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.
“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 a rather immediate summary of some trail issues I had. A day later, I had changed the wording. Two days later, I switched to human factors, which had been the original concern and shortened the letter about 1000 words. It still wasn’t finished but a lot better. Two more days, and I sent it, getting an immediate positive reply.
Boreal B[l]og 
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