Creative and Practical Problem Solver

This morning my friend and I were talking about everyone’s current crisis, which is: what in the world is going to happen with school. Pretty much if you have a child in the school system, you are in down right panic mode for one reason or another. A common trend in our conversation was about people’s general inability to solve problems and they’re constantly looking to someone else to solve them. Complaining for the sake of complaining without any proposed solution makes me down right nuts. I got the very rare opportunity for some quiet time while I drove today and my baby slept. I kept the radio off and allowed my brain to actually think and ponder. It is not something I allow myself to do often, but I quite enjoy it so perhaps I should make it a habit! I was thinking about our conversation and it flashed me back to my sophomore year in high school. We had to create a core portfolio with six guiding principles. In the portfolio we had to describe how we demonstrated progress towards those principles. Throughout the conversation with my friend I kept thinking… people need to learn how to be ‘creative and practical problem solvers’ as it is a crucial part of life! “Creative and Practical Problem Solver” was guiding principle #3. Apparently it stuck with me because I refer to its lesson a lot.

I think you could say that woodsmen are expert problem solvers. Never is there a day where they don’t have to depend on past experiences, creative solutions, and practical use of resources available to solve the problems of the day. They figure out ways to get trucks and giant equipment onto a landing not fit for anything bigger than a Prius. They figure out how to maintain water quality. They create webs of roads through the forest that are efficient and best for the land. They repair and maintain millions of dollars worth of equipment with only the tools that fit in the back of a pickup truck. They always find what they need and do what is necessary to keep the wood rolling. Creative, absolutely. Practical, mostly. Problem solvers, always. The number of uncontrollable issues is endless. Mills will be wide open but the rain won’t stop. You have plenty of clients and tons of wood to cut, but not a whole crew of employees. You’ve got a qualified, reliable, and full crew but a mill blows up. You succeeded in getting clients lined up to harvest pine logs and a pandemic shuts down the world and building all but comes to a halt. It is constant, yet the people of the woods keep showing up and going to work and face the day of problems. Of course we are whining right now. We are all whining a little bit, some more than others but there isn’t a soul that’s going to save us. It is up to us.

I am constantly inspired by the logger’s determination and refusal to give up. Being the mom and manager of all things that happen outside of the woods, the chaos of school during Covid has fallen squarely on my lap. When faced with this school situation I decided to draw from that inspiration, remember my high school lessons and solve the problem for myself. Randy inspires me every day to make no excuses. He has to remind me a lot, but I listen and I watch because never once have I heard him make an excuse for his responsibilities as a logger. Never once has he said “its too hard”, or “I can’t”, or “well I would have, but”…. He just plain solves the problem, creatively and practically.

There is no shortage of news articles recently describing the literal crisis our industry is facing and we have even spoken of it publicly. It is true. It feels like a pretty bad prognosis right now. I don’t know the exact right medicine to solve the problem, nor do I think it will be a quick and easy solution. What I do know is that woodsmen are the grittiest, most determined, patient, creative and practical problem solvers I’ve ever met and that was a lesson they certainly didn’t learn in a brick building called school.