I had that feeling, too, especially when the author talks about climbing up to the endpoint to check the equipment. He knew it was a line of sight microwave link, so the first thing to check is obstruction or reflection by things that can move a little. I was thinking that it might only work when someone had a big flat-sided truck or RV in the right place to reflect the signal around something.
I've had trouble with tree growth in other contexts. A tree once slowly grew tall enough to break the neutral wire on the drop from the power pole to the house. This put overvoltages on some 110V circuits. Computers were fine. Washing machine emitted a burning smell. More recently, tree growth broke a fiber line coming into my house. AT&T lineman came out and restrung fiber for three poles (I'm a ways back from the main road). He saw me running a desktop computer, slowly, tethered to a phone, and once fiber was reconnected, said "Now you're back in 2023".
(Now to get rid of the dead cable. I have dead DirectTV coax, dead cable TV coax from whoever was before Comcast, and dead Pacific Bell copper, all abandoned in place and some of it sagging.)
I've had trouble with tree growth in other contexts. A tree once slowly grew tall enough to break the neutral wire on the drop from the power pole to the house. This put overvoltages on some 110V circuits. Computers were fine. Washing machine emitted a burning smell. More recently, tree growth broke a fiber line coming into my house. AT&T lineman came out and restrung fiber for three poles (I'm a ways back from the main road). He saw me running a desktop computer, slowly, tethered to a phone, and once fiber was reconnected, said "Now you're back in 2023".
(Now to get rid of the dead cable. I have dead DirectTV coax, dead cable TV coax from whoever was before Comcast, and dead Pacific Bell copper, all abandoned in place and some of it sagging.)