One might argue that an excellent training seminar for investment bankers would be studying trees.  I am currently, and have been for more than a decade, working on a sugar maple grove above Julie’s Pond.  When I started thinning saplings, they were so dense you could not have ridden a horse through the area and all were about an inch in diameter and fifteen to twenty feet in height.  Today, one section is almost thinned as far as I dare (considering the young trees stand beneath 100 foot giants that periodically fall in an uncontrolled fashion).  Those left measure 4-6 inches in diameter and are heading to forty and more feet.  No whippy saplings, but solid trees. 

This has been an exercise in close observation, which tree is growing well and why.  Sometimes, there are hard choices: two quality trees that are simply too close together, you flip a coin and hope.  It has also been a lesson on time and patience.  Had the thinning started twenty years earlier, they would be that much larger; had it not started, they would still be scrawny poles.  What takes a decade in nature, will take a decade.  To try to force the growth would result in poor quality, to have not done the work would also result in poor quality.  In a century, God willing, those skinny saplings will be the giants.