It was a dark and stormy night . . .
Or at least it was incredibly windy as the porch light illuminated a rain of leaves being blown about like flat slices of snow during a blizzard. It seemed as if the peak of leaf season and their escape from perches high on maples, birches, ashes and oaks would combine in this one day. It was not a good night to be out and peering out the front door after calling in our dog, Daisy, all of our surrounding trees still fat with leaves were undulating with the wind seemly to the breaking point like crazed possessed dancers.
Except for one.
There is often little warning or even understanding when a tree snaps. It usually occurs during times of weather-related stress but not always. A few years back I was speaking to a client from my office desk, which faces the back of our tree-filled property. It was a bright summer day, with not even a breadth of wind disturbing the highest of leaves. All of a sudden a 90-foot red oak toppled from its base and started to fall toward my window. A discussion on some arcane technological feature was halted by my yelling, “Holy crap! There is a tree falling right toward my house!” It came to rest 40 feet away, the victim of a carpenter-ant nest. I exaggerated. Prior to its fall, there was only the visual cue of its pivoting from its rotted base and toppling down with the slightest of sound. Even its thump on the soil was muted by its passing though adjacent trees whose thin branches acted as ineffective arms trying to slow its descent.
At night there are no such cues. Instead, beginning to prepare for dinner, we heard a pop, crackle, snap and then a whoosh followed by a gentle thump. Walking out the back door I was greeted by the top of a maple tree, which used to be at least 70 feet away by earth and 80 feet or more in the air. It was now 10 feet in front of me. I tried to investigate but there was little to do except wait for the morning light.
Looking at the tree this morning I remembered one of my favorite sayings: “Better to be lucky than good.” The tree used to have a single trunk with two large leaders splitting at around 20 feet above the ground into an exaggerated V. The nearest leader separated itself last night falling neatly between two fence posts, brushing a rhododendron, sitting above two stone benches, bending an heirloom rose and resting between a Japanese maple and a rose arbor. Only two boards on the fence were knocked down (not broken) and would be easy to nail back into place.
The call last night to my tree guy elicited a quick response with his inspection of the site this morning followed up by Joe (an associate) coming by with his chain saw a few hours ago to cut up the felled leader branch. My role was simple: stay out of the way until he was done or at least out of range so I could stack wood that would be split in years to come. As we partially heat our house with wood, more wood is not a bad thing though I have at least four cords of ash to split before I get to this newly felled maple. Time to throw another log on the fire.
