Dealing With Obstacles

As I sat at my desk yesterday morning, out of the corner of my eye I caught the movement of a dead tree falling.  The exclamation point of the reverberating crash swept across me as I looked to see just what happened.

The driveway on our small acreage is long and winds around a small pond and through the trees which surround it.  The deadfall occurred about one hundred yards from the house at the edge of the thickest part of the small, wooded area.  It completely blocked the driveway, which is our only way to exit the property.  It had to be dealt with before we could even go into town.

After completing what I had been working on, I loaded up my chainsaw and headed down to begin the process of clearing it.  The upper end of the old dead tree was all that crossed the drive, but it varied in diameter from well over a foot to about ten inches at the narrowest point.

I was reminded of how unexpected obstacles sometimes affect us, creating barriers that must be handled before we can continue our way.  It occurs in business and it occurs in life in general.  There are always reasons for their occurrence.  Sometimes those reasons are obvious and at other times we never understand why they happened.  In this case, as in most cases related to business, the reason was obvious.  It was neglect.

We almost always ask why.  Why did this happen?  In this case it was due to a higher-than-normal wind and a long-dead tree. 

I noticed the tree standing in the small patch of woods a few weeks ago.  We recently bought this place and there is a lot of work that needs to be done.  There are several dead trees that need to be removed, but their urgency is much lower than this one which created the barrier to our ingress and egress.  As I looked at the wooden barrier which lay across the road, I noticed that woodpeckers had been working on it.

The woodpecker damage is a symptom of a much deeper problem – wood-boring insects that likely killed the tree.  The woodpecker holes are obvious in the fallen trunk, but many of the exterior rings looked like the small piece of rotten wood lying in the foreground.  Again, I am reminded of how we often notice symptoms of a problem – the woodpeckers avidly drilling into the tree – but sometimes fail to address the systemic problems that are truly causing damage to our lives and our business organizations.  Woodpeckers should alert us to the termites and beetles which are constantly burrowing into the trees just like symptoms such as a tire which frequently goes flat should alert us to the need for a new tire.  Usually, we deal with the symptoms but fail to pursue the root cause of the problem.

The first step is to remove the barrier to progress.  In this case, it was to remove the fallen tree from the road.  It required a little bit of work but was accomplished expeditiously.

Once the obstacle is removed it is a matter of figuring out how to prevent the problem from occurring.  Fortunately, in our case, it is simply a matter of getting rid of all the dead trees that might fall.  It is going to require some work, but it is certainly doable.

Even after spending the morning clearing the fallen tree, there was a significant portion of it left to deal with.  The tree was well over sixty feet tall and we only cleared the top half of it which was blocking the road.  The bottom half – the largest half – which is over two feet in diameter at the base, has yet to be cut up. 

It will be a task for another day.  Again, I am reminded of the business applications.  Once we remove a barrier and can continue operation, we still need to deal with the root causes which created the problem.

Now, there is plenty of firewood for the fire pit.  It’s still going to require some work to transport it to where it is needed and to split the large pieces into usable sizes, but at least something good can come out of it.

Maybe it’s time to do a little campfire cooking!