Amateur Lumberjacks

My neighbor mentioned a while back that he wanted to cut down the huge white pines next to his house. Well, Sunday was the day.

Normally I wouldn’t be too concerned about a guy cutting tress on his own land. However, these trees were so tall they could cross the road and do damage on my land. My boat was in range, as were my solar panels and my parking area.

I couldn’t move the boat as my tow vehicle is still waiting for the mechanic to have time work on it. Fortunately the parking area was free of cars. There wasn’t much I could do about the solar panels.

Right off the bat I could tell these were not professionals. They looked more like his drinking buddies. While they had a chainsaw, they didn’t have any protective gear like hard hats, Kevlar chaps, or eye and ear protection.

They tied an old frayed rope to one of the trees to keep it from falling in my direction, but it really didn’t look up to the task.

So the guy cuts about 75% of the way through the first tree. Then he turns the chainsaw off. He came to conclusion he should cut the second tree down at the same time as some of their branches were interwoven. While he was setting up for that the breeze was visibly opening and closing the cut in the first tree. There was no rope tied to the second tree.

Finally he went for it. Both trees came down exactly where they were supposed to. I was relieved, not sure how much of that was talent and how much was luck.

-Sixbears