Overcoming Obstacles with Group Strength

I was driving home yesterday as it was on the verge of storming. The temperature was warm for this time of year. There were real strong gusts of wind. I was almost home when I ran into an obstacle. A tree had fallen, completely blocking the road. After doing a few reality checks, I drove around to see if there was another way. There wasn't, so I went back to see if there was anything I could do. Here's a picture of the road. The tree was laying across it, with the top of the tree resting where you see the branches near the sidewalk.

When I got out, there was a man standing near the top of the tree. He also needed to use the road. He was ripping off tree branches. He explained that if we could cut off enough branches from the top, we would be able to drive up onto the curb and drive around the tree. In this picture below, you can see more clearly where the top of the tree was. We needed to clear enough space between it and that brick wall to get our cars through. It sounded like a good idea to me, there were only two of us and we couldn't move the tree.

Well, this took a while because the tree was very much alive still and the branches didn't break off easily. Here's a picture of the products of our work:

But then, some more people stopped. Four guys tried to move the tree. They laughed loudly when the tree didn't budge. Then a few more people stopped and there were more of us breaking off the top branches to try to make a passageway. More people came to help as they drove up to find the same obstacle. A few more failed attempts to move the tree left me thinking that there was no way. But then, before we knew it, there were about 20 of us out there. We started to get organized and decided to try to move the tree again. One person counted to three before each time we pushed the tree so that we could maximize our efforts. As we all came together, we were able to move the tree. It took several trials, but we did it. It was a really great experience to come together with others and move a common obstacle.

When I went out there today, someone had chopped up the tree, but here are some pictures of it: