The Old Man and the Tree

 The stately hemlock tree had likely stood guard for longer than the age of the old man. But unfortunately, its prior owner had topped it and this led to internal rot and death of the tree. It was this condition that forced the old man to make the decision to have the tree removed. Since the old man didn't climb trees, he hired a tree service to take the tree down.

On the appointed day, the logger and his assistant showed up and concurred that the tree needed to come down. His plan was to bring it down in sections as there wasn't enough room to drop the tree in one piece. Besides, the probable only value of the tree was now in its use as firewood. So, after climbing the tree and removing the dead branches from this forest giant, he cut the tree in sections and dropped them into the old man's back yard. Piece by piece, down it came until there was only about a twenty foot section left. The logger then dropped that one section with a single cut of his mighty chainsaw. He then cut all of the pieces into firewood lengths and left them for the old man to deal with along with all of the limbs.

With the tree now down and in pieces and the mess of branches scattered in his backyard, the old man surveyed the task. He had a small chainsaw and could saw up the branches. But there were over fifty round pieces of the former eighty foot tall hemlock to deal with. What would the old man do with such a daunting task? His friends urged him to rent or purchase a log splitter. But that would be expensive and couldn't be correctly positioned. Plus the old man would have to maneuver each of the rounds to the splitter and each of them weighed several hundred pounds and were not in easily moveable locations.

But the old man had a plan. It wasn't a popular plan to others. But it was a plan and the old man set his sights on executing that plan. That plan was to split each of the rounds with a steel wedge and a splitting mall. And so it began. The old man surveyed the first round and then grasped the heavy steel wedge and thrust it into end grain of that round. The old man had done this many years ago before he was considered an old man. But he wanted to prove to himself that he still had it in him to tackle this daunting task. With the wedge imbedded in the first round, the old man picked up his splitting mall and began to tap, tap, tap on the wedge driving it further into the round. Slowly a crack appeared and then there was the unmistakable "pop" of the thirty inch round splitting in half and the wedge fell to the ground. The tension in the round had been released. The old man picked up the wedge and drove it into the half round in order to make it into two pieces or quarters. With the familiar tap, tap, tap of the mall on the wedge, the half round became two quarter rounds. And the old man repeated the process on the other half. Then quarters became eighths, and the splitting mall was swung to reduce those pieces into smaller pieces.

With the first round being split, the old man began to stack the pieces. You see, the old man liked things orderly and they would be for a while. That first day, the old man split four rounds and stacked them. Yes, his pulse went up, but the old man had time. So he rested from the splitting, allowed his pulse to reduce, and contemplated the enormity of the task ahead of him. How many rounds could he split per day? Would he have the endurance to finish the task? Were his friends correct in suggesting a log splitter was the answer?

While the old man had many other things that required his attention, for the following three weeks, he went out to his backyard, positioned a round, dropped the wedge into position, and went tap, tap, tap with his mall until each round gave up against the pressure of the mall and opened up with a pop. And the old man repositioned the wedge, and went tap, tap, tap, until the round was in firewood sized pieces. Some days it was only two rounds split. Other days found the old man splitting four rounds. One day, the old man even split five rounds. With each tap of the mall on the wedge, the old man knew he was closer to the end. And the stacked wood got higher and higher as well as longer. One stack lead to a second stack. But as more wood got split, it led to the old man just throwing it up onto a a pile. It was a pile that eventually became taller than the old man.

Splitting the rounds was not the only thing the old man had to do. Months ago, he and his wife had booked a trip that would take them out of the country for three weeks. That day finally came that they departed on the trip. While gone, the old man dreamed of the wood that was yet there to split. It seemed that the task consumed the old man for he loved the exercise and the sound of the tap, tap, tap, crack of the split round and the fresh fragrance of the split wood. So upon returning, one of his first desires was to return to splitting the remaining rounds. And so he did. And he would split an average of four rounds per day. And finally on Good Friday, 2025, he surveyed the remaining rounds and counted eight. The old man dispatched four of those rounds in quick fashion before taking a lunch break. But the old man couldn't wait any longer to see the task completed so he went out into the backyard and split the remaining four rounds making a record this day by splitting eight rounds.

With the last round having been split, the old man felt an emptiness. This seemingly difficult task had been completed by one old man, a wedge, and a splitting mall. There was no more to be split. What did the old man learn?

As he pondered this question, it came to him that difficult tasks can be completed with the right tools (often as simple as a wedge and a mall), the right attitude (this is doable), and the willingness to pursue a difficult task one tap at a time. Not all tasks are difficult, but the difficult ones tend to be avoided.