I Cut Down a Tree

It was August in Florida.

The thermometer was melting.

I keep a boat nearby incase the humidity rises a bit more.

The humidity gauge read: “Caution: High risk of drowning.”

My mission was simple: Turn three towering trees into firewood.

That was, at least, what I believed the mission to be. I had no idea how wrong I was.

The chainsaw was fueled, the axe was sharpened. The old Dodge truck idled in the driveway. Its driver's side door swung open, and an old man clambered out. He shuffled over to me, eyeing the trees as he approached. We stood side by side, devising a plan of attack against our arboreal adversaries.

It was in that moment that it dawned on me: I had misunderstood the mission.

The size of the trees had tricked me into believing they were at the center of this job. But it was not about the trees. It was also not about the dull thud of the axe against their trunks. It was not about the roaring chainsaw, nor the taming of its voracious appetite – regardless of how much I loved it.

No, these were merely pretexts – important only because of the greater cause they served.

The trees gave us something to do. The real work was happening between the old man and me.

It was in our conversations.

It was in the wisdom he passed on and in the strength I contributed.

It was in the bridge being built between two generations.

We felled and processed all three trees that day. The chainsaw hurled wood chips and the axe split logs. By the end, a growing pile of firewood lay where the trees had once stood. But that day's success did not lie in the promise of a warm winter. It was, instead, buried in the time the old man and I spent together.

It was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the chainsaw.

The firewood was not the important part.

That day, I learned that in every goal and every action, the greatest purpose is not its completion but the people it involves.

The trees duped me into believing that the mission was simply to cut them down. But they were only the pretext.

The real mission was the old man and me.

It was always about the people.

***

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