Timber!

Last week when Paul Bunyan and friends chopped down the big old oak tree threatening the garage, they found that it was hollow--but not empty.

There was no doubt that the tree needed to come down: a few limbs were still producing leaves, but most of it looked pretty dead and if it were to fall the wrong way, it would neatly bisect the new garage and guest room. The problem was finding the time and the tools to get it done: ropes, chains, tractor, and a chain saw sturdy enough to cut through a trunk nearly four feet across.

And helpers, of course. Even Paul Bunyan needs a hand sometime, so in the absence of Babe the Blue Ox, the resident woodsman arranged to have some helpers come out on his day off--and if you're ever in need of someone crazy enough to climb a nearly-dead tree in subfreezing temperatures, let me recommend an English major. The one we called works at the climbing wall in the rec center and was pretty excited about getting up into that tree to attach the chains so the tractor could pull the tree away from the garage when it fell.

I wasn't here to watch the process, but the woodsmen caught it all on videotape. The resident woodsman mans the tractor, ready to pull as soon as the tree starts tilting; the notches have been cut and there's nothing left but to knock out the last remaining bit of wood with a wedge and axe. Helper 1 runs the camera while Helper 2 swings the axe: swing, clunk, nothing; swing, clunk, CRACK--and suddenly everything is moving. Helper 2 scampers up the bank clumsily ("Why didn't I drop the axe?" he wonders later), but he needn't worry: the tree is falling the other way, right down toward the meadow, knocking a limb or two off another tree along the way but otherwise causing no real damage. When you watch the tape in slow-motion, you see one huge limb come tumbling down out of the sky long after the rest of the tree has landed with a FWUMP.

Afterward, we looked inside. The tree was hollow from the ground to about 10 feet up, and the stump still standing could easily shelter a full-grown bear, but that's not what we found inside. To judge from the many rusted bits of metal we found inside the hollow, sometime in the distant past that tree must have absorbed a section of fence. No wonder it was dying! You can't feed an oak tree wire and chain and expect it to keep standing for centuries.