Reading this thread reminded me of the "
truck stuck in the tunnel" story . . .
pulled from the recollections of A Grandfather's Blog of Lessons Learned by Harry ParkhurstAn eighteen-wheeler tank truck was stuck in a tunnel under the river between New Jersey and New York City. As you can imagine traffic backed up for miles in the busy tunnel and a normal half hour trip to the city ended being three hours long. It didn't take long for tempers to flare and angry words to pass back and forth between drivers.
Expert engineers and traffic officials rushed to the scene to solve the problem. Try as they might no one could think of a solution and engineers and traffic officials felt baffled. The long truck couldn't be backed out and cutting down the truck wouldn't work either because the truck carried flammable chemicals.
A single lane of slow moving traffic passed the wedged truck and the frustrated officials and engineers. Dozens of officers directed irate drivers around the truck and the swirling lights on the police and emergency cars strobed and flashed incessantly. At the same time two-way radios blared and squawked creating an awful din. As an old rusted pick-up truck inched by a little girl of eight or nine leaned out the truck's window.
"Let the air out of the tires," she yelled in a loud voice. "Let the air out of the tires." And then she sat back as the old truck putted away.
One of the engineers heard her and with the help of several traffic officials let the air out of the truck's tires. Fifteen minutes later the truck made its slow way through the tunnel and out the other side. A seemingly impossible situation found a solution because someone listened to a young person.
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Young people are often dismissed because they are assumed to know very little, just as people who do not have credentials, or dozens of years of experience are discounted too . . . As a parent, I often find that young children can have some of the clearest perspectives of all . . . so why wouldn't young (i.e., Newer) growers not have the same going for them???
Those of us here make up the HON and by merely taking the personal oath to delve deeper into the holistic world to be had in our orchards automatically makes each and everyone of us the potential finder (and sharer) of the seemingly impossible to another one (or many) of us . . . just like the young girl in the rusted old pickup truck in the story above, we each have remarkable and clear insight that comes to us from time to time in our seasonal connections . . . sometimes on the very first try at something new in our orchards . . . now we just need to share some of it, when the opportunity presents itself,
perhaps with just a quick and helpful shout out as you are driving byI have had some amazing things come to mind, from time to time, while working with my trees and I have more than once taken a quick look around for someone to share it with . . . only to realize that I am alone at that moment, but I also need to remember that with the HON none of us are truly alone . . . cause we are proudly in this holistic alliance together and a virtual friend is never far away
Cheers to future contributions!
Gopher Hill ApplesZone 8 in California