« 042: Staggering Under the Weight of Memory | Main | 044: What Familiarity Breeds... » May 19, 2003

043: Breaking the Logjam

I've got a head full of logs. They've all come down from the foothills where they've been harvested and have jammed up the river right above the sawmill. I've got a full crew at the mill, ready to work. The equipment has been oiled and refurbished and sits, gleaming with carnivorous glee. The crew stands around on the dock beside the expectant mill, smoking endless cigarettes and glancing up river at the logjam at the mouth of the bay.

The lumberjacks, either oblivious to the plug in the river or uncaring about the stoppage, continue to harvest trees. Their saws and axes continue day and night to pull down trees. They have quotas to fill: this slope by the end of May, the southern slope by early summer.

Some of the logs in the river bump against each other, the hollow knock of their contact a persistent foreign sound in the wilderness. Down at the base of the jam, the logs are pressed too tightly together to move and all you can hear is the wood groaning from the incessant pressure of water and wood.

The foreman is out on the pile with a specialist who has flown in from Corporate. They've strapped spike strips to their boots and are clambering across the wet logs. The foreman is trying to explain to the man from Corporate the problem with the logjam. "Too many logs," he says, waving his arms across the expanse of water-logged wood. "This is a choke point," he explains, nodding towards the swerve of shore which juts out into the channel. "Always has been. But, as long as we've kept the logs moving, it has never been a problem. As long as we had a rhythm..."

The man from Corporate nods. He understands about rhythm, about the ebb and flow of materials through a channel. He is the troubleshooter for the company; it is his job to analyze blockages -- logs, paperwork, network traffic, lines of communication -- his expertise lies in removing obstructions.

He walks along the rim of the jam, his feet sticking and pulling in the ridged edges of the logs. The foreman follows, nervously waiting to hear the prognosis from the man from Corporate. The stranger stops, looks down at a particular log near the base of the dam, and says, "This one."

"What about it?" asks the foreman.

"Take this one out and it will all flow free," the man from Corporate says. "It won't be an easy flow -- not at first -- but give it some time and it'll find its rhythm again." He climbs down and lays his hand on the long log in question. "But this one has to go."

The foreman squints down from the top of the dam and, as he follows the course of the log across the bottom of the jam, he can see how it is jammed against the bank. As he stares at the log, the problem becomes obvoius to him. "Yes," he agrees, lending a hand to the man from Corporate as the stranger climbs back up to the top, "I can see it now." The foreman shakes his head. "I don't know how I missed that."

"You're too close," the stranger says, "You've been staring at them too long. You needed a different perspective. You needed to show the problem to someone else."

Posted by Teppo at May 19, 2003 04:32 PM

Comments