Boreal B[l]og

I hit the throttle and the brusher motor died.

Again.

I had cached the brusher four days earlier, but it hadn’t rained, nobody had touched it, and it had started fine. I just couldn’t get it to run. I started it again, hit the throttle again, and it died again. Jeff and Carol (not her real name), first timer to the crew, looked at me. If I couldn’t get the brusher going, we were going to have an incomplete, ruined day, Four others using two brushers were coming our way, and we needed to do at least a third of the trail. The others could not complete the whole trail.

A half hour earlier, when I addressed the other 6 in the brushing crew at Crale Creek Rd., I was ready for this day. It was my eighth time on the South Willamette trail (SWT) this year. Two days earlier, I had brushed 0.7 miles of it with Caroline, another new person, competent with a brusher, willing to take a shortcut to the trail, even going by an illegally parked trailer with a couple of dogs. We got the trail brushed, and we had fun doing it.

Today I had sent two teams of two west from where we were standing. I took Jeff and Carol and drove back to Hardesty trailhead to our west, hiked up 0.6 miles to the western terminus of the SWT, where four days earlier I had briefly brushed about 75 yards before caching the brusher. We were 1.5 miles from the other four and would work towards each other, assuming I could get the brusher going. 

I opened the fuel tank, which I had filled before I left. The fuel looked a little brownish. Maybe there had been water contamination. I took a chance and dumped the fuel. I refilled the brusher and pulled the starter cord. The motor started. I hit the throttle.

Success. We were in business, I was off and moving, taking long swings back and forth as I moved down the trail. About 15 minutes later, I motioned for Carol, who had never brushed before, to come up and take over. She put on the vest which would attach herself to the brusher, and pulled the starter cord. Nothing happened. I had her put her foot on the brusher and then pull, but nothing happened. I pulled the cord and it started right up.

“Oh,” she said, “I need to pull straight up and a little further.” She did, and the brusher started. She was the third woman I have taught how to start a brusher. Caroline was the second, and Jean, at the far end of the trail, was the first. Each of them loved being able to do it, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them do it.

In this way, with Jeff’s solid help, we moved steadily east fast enough that a few times, I actually sat down on the side of the trail to rest. Once, I told Carol not to swing the brusher too far off the trail, but now she was perfect, and I made sure I told her that, too. I yelled “YO!” at her, and when she turned around, snapped her picture. People like to know they are doing things right and like to be photographed. I had given her instructions that to stop any time she thought she had had enough. 

I took the last long pull before lunch and where I ran out of gas, we had lunch. We could hear the other two brushers now, but we were at least half way, and our share was only a third. We were flying.

After lunch, Carol stood up,”Do you want to take another turn brushing?” I asked. For some reason, 12 feet away, she didn’t look eager. Maybe it was a second sense, but I cultivate my second sense. Carol thought about it and said, “I could do that.” The rest of the conversation comes from her letter to me.

“That was an honest answer. 

 “How I remember your next (perceptive) question was something along the lines of, ‘Would you be happier if you DIDN’T brush more right now!?’ and the answer, if I paid attention to my dear body, was that my forearms and hands would be happier to be doing something else. 

“I did appreciate your reframe of the question, because I would have tried and done some more, but, at least for me, it was a big win to honor the messages from my body rather than to try to prove anything to you and Jeff. 

“I have been working over the last few years to retrain that familiar pattern of self-abandonment or self-betrayal in order to get someone else’s approval. And it was a step forward for me to pause in that moment and not say an instant, “Yes!” and when you asked the second question, it gave me permission and encouragement to really examine what was most true for me in that moment, even if part of me REALLY wanted to pull my weight and do as much as you were doing.

“Your example of the story you tell below and your explicit statements about the value of resting when we need it and about pacing ourselves were super helpful, Mike. You made me feel welcome to be there with whatever I was able to bring. Hopefully I’ll get stronger, and there won’t be as much recovery necessary, but today would have been a memorable day for other, more painful, reasons if I didn’t have that support. Instead, it’s a day to celebrate a small victory in self-care!  Thank you for your part in this progress.

“Gratefully, 

“Carol””  

With 3 people and a brusher, we completed nearly two-thirds of the trail ourselves. I told Carol that we would be silent about our contribution and be glad the others did what they did, hoping they had a good time out there. That seemed to be the case.

I don’t know why I said the words I said, but I have been talking and writing for weeks now about how we trail crew leaders needed to respect the need for breaks, for rest, and we needed to couch questions about work in a way that did not show a bias towards more work is better and less is bad.

We three did a great job brushing, but the real triumph of the day was Carol’s words, and the person who was blown away by it all was me.

First day back to trail work after a 3 month hiatus due to 45 radiation treatments to my pelvis, and I’m grubbing trail in a spot where I dug almost exactly 6 years ago, just before the pandemic. Much of what I did back then, including carrying planks for a puncheon, or type of bridge, would be repeated on my second and third days out here as well.

We’re working at Fall Creek, where most of my work there in the past was required after a fire or later destroyed by a fire. ”Most” is actually an understatement. It would be all.

During this day, which I survived just fine, and the next, where I did more trail digging to make it free of organic material on top, I thought of the other tasks I did out here. I am not the best in any of them, but with the exception of power brushing, or weed whacking, I’m perhaps no better than average. I’m terrible with tools, horrible with hammers, can’t deal with chisels, ignorant about impact drivers, dumb with drills, sloppy with saws, and rough with a Reinhart. I do the best I can, which is showing up now nearly four hundred times to do the work. Last year, I was second in the crew in hours worked, and I had only nine months’ data before I had to leave for radiation. I have been first or second for five years, not remembering which, and not really caring, except I want to at least emphasize that I show up, and success is purportedly 90% showing up.

But something happened on the second day, a really difficult day for me, as two of us did the unglamorous work of digging out seven hundred feet of trail. Somebody had to do it, and we volunteered. In a crew, we support each other. The first 300 feet were worse as the plant life did not yield to our tools easily.

Later that morning, I saw the crew boss return to his truck, and from my vantage point of digging, having recently been given some information from one of the other sub-crews working nearby, I hiked down the hill we were on to his truck and relayed the message. He got it, paused, and then looked at me.

“I’m going to be away for two weeks at the end of the month. Can you take the crews for those two days? You have scouted the trails that need to be worked on.” Indeed, I had.

Wow, the foggy day suddenly became brighter. As already mentioned, I didn’t feel too competent doing a given task out on the trail. But when it comes to actually organizing a crew, making sure information gets online properly, knowing and getting all the equipment I need, ensuring everyone and the tools get there, function properly, and back safely, I am the go-to person for the crew boss. I have led the crew 33 times. I can’t do the job the boss can, but I am not a stranger to responsibility and organizing, know the strengths of crew members, where they should be working, and how to get the job done. The crew may not consider me the full deal, but they all know that I can handle the job, was asked to do so, and everything will be fine.

I had to deal with cancer, and while I am not the same as I once was, I can still work and still lead. I may not be good with individual tasks, but leading a crew is not a task. It is responsibility, serious work, an honor, absolutely necessary to do the job. I can do that competently. Knowing that day the boss still trusts me to run the crew in his absence made my day, and I have not had many days like this one in a long time.