Treed

Last time a tree fell across my driveway, it didn't take long to fix: smallish tree, pleasant weather, no rush. One man with a chainsaw and a tractor opened the driveway to traffic within an hour.

This time it's different. I need to get to campus for a meeting with the provost this morning, and it's cold enough outside to chill your toes pretty quickly but not cold enough to freeze the sodden ground. I don't dare drive down into the meadow to get around the tree or I'm sure to get stuck in the mud.

And it's a really big tree. Until my car learns to levitate, all I can do is wait.

On the plus side, that tree has been on the removal list for quite some time. It's thoroughly dead and close enough to the garage to cause damage if it fell that way. In fact, the resident woodsman had taken preliminary steps toward removing the tree, attaching a ladder to the tree so he could climb up and tie a stout rope around the trunk fairly high up there. The next step would be borrowing a bigger chainsaw to cut through the trunk, but not before attaching the rope to the tractor to pull the tree in an appropriate direction. (Not on the garage or the driveway.)

Well it missed the garage. The rope and ladder are still attached, utterly undamaged by the fall, but the tree took down two smaller trees along the way. A tree that takes itself down certainly saves wear and tear on the chainsaw, but that chainsaw is still to small to cut through a trunk that size, so I'm stuck.

The irony is that the resident woodsman spent much of yesterday cutting down trees. Several trees up the hill behind the house were knocked over during a summer windstorm, and yesterday he went up there and chopped sufficiently to serve as firewood. One of the trees was wedged against another tree at about a 45-degree angle, and when the woodsman cut off the top of the tree, the root ball started shifting and the trunk rose up to a standing position once again. A tree resurrected! But not for long. It will heat our house nicely this winter.

I don't know where the big tree sat on the tree removal list, but this morning it rose to the top. It successfully brought itself down--now if only we can persuade it to move out of my way...