Zestful Blog Post #139
Big-ass storms sweep over Washington’s Olympic Peninsula a
lot. They like to knock down trees. Back when Marcia and I were living in the
deep woods there, we had to make shift without electricity many times, once for
a whole winter week. (A woodstove and well-stocked shed solve many problems.) During one such outage, I hiked into our neighbors’ woods to
watch a work crew, whose truck I’d heard rumble up the rough road we shared.
The guys’ problem was a large dead hemlock that had fallen
across the power line, which stretched from the lower road straight up through
a steep, thickly forested hillside. The tree hadn’t ripped the line down; it
was hanging on it, fifty yards from the road. No way could the guys get their cherry-picker
truck down there to lift the tree off; they’d have to wallow down the slope with
their chainsaws. Having felled trees myself, I knew the perils of hanging
timber, and wondered how the hell they were going to cut up that tree safely.
It seemed impossible.
[A different large hemlock, but you get the idea. This one didn't pause, but just ripped down the electric and phone lines on its way to block our garage, along with a fragrant cedar.]
They solved the dangerous problem in less than a minute. They
eased the truck next to the pole that supported the line as it crossed the road.
One guy went up in the basket, reached up with a jaws-of-life-looking tool, and
simply cut the line. It whanged, and the tree crashed to the ground. The other
guy scampered down the slope and retrieved the line. They had the son of a
bitch spliced and back on the pole in five more minutes. They rumbled down the
road, flipped the circuit at the main pole, and left. I just stood there absorbing the brilliant work-around that
for them was routine.
My New Year’s resolution is to figure out as many
work-arounds as possible, in my own life and work, so as to save time and be
brilliant. Gotta look beyond obvious solutions; I think the key will be to
first BELIEVE that more than one solution might exist.
p.s. Thanks to my buddy Steve for prompting my thoughts on
this. Here’s hoping for better weather up there soon.
And here’s hoping for a happy New Year for everyone.
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