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.
Boreal B[l]og 
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