The tree had been dead for many years. What remained was a twisted corkscrew of a snag — some 25 or 30 feet high, with a two-foot diameter trunk that forked into two upwardly angled branches about 15 feet above the ground. One of these branches forked again about 12 feet higher up. In all, it was ungainly, unbalanced and could fall in any direction. It hung precariously over a stone wall that divides our property from a neighbor, and threatened to fall across the property line into our neighbor's woods.
Suddenly, a couple of years ago, the neighbor appeared on his side of the wall, erecting fence posts every 10 feet or so, then constructing a new four-foot fence along the property line. This was a dire development. Now, if the tree were to fall, it would crush the fence.
Jack took to walking the fence line, studying the dead tree from every angle. He unpacked his digital camera and took photographs. He mused. If the tree were to fall unexpectedly, he wanted the neighbor to understand he had been trying to solve the problem. It was his responsibility to keep his tree in check, just as one would have a responsibility to prevent unruly children from creating a neighborhood nuisance. Felling the tree took on a new urgency. But how? The back woods is across a stream bed, and it would be tough to get heavy equipment over there. Besides, Jack likes to solve these problems himself.
In the past, one technique had worked well for some (more straightforward) tall snags that the power company had left standing elsewhere on the property: get a line around the tree, then use a come-along to slowly coax the tree in the desired direction. But the line had to be high enough to give the needed leverage. How to get a line to that altitude on this tree?
Dave Epstein, a local gardening guru, has a website called Growing Wisdom that recently suggested some garden projects using electrical conduit. We had a couple of extra 10-foot sections left over from our project, and Jack decided to create a long, flexible pole to raise a line up there. He started with a lightweight line, tied around a short, heavy weight. Working together, we managed to lift the end of this line up through the lowest notch in the tree and let it fall back to the ground. Then we tied the lightweight line to a length of heavy braided nylon rope, and used the lighter line to pull the heavier rope into place. It took some doing — we had to free it from some stumps of small, rotting braches as we worked. But finally the heavy line was in place.
Then the fun began. Often you can hitch a come-along to a nearby tree, which provides a strong and secure base for pulling another tree down. In this case, we had little wiggle room. To one side was a small backyard pond with a fragile liner, and on the other was a small planting of epimedium, lamium, and impatiens, with a serene stone Buddha perched on an old tree stump. We could remove the statue, but removing all the plants would be a large project and traumatize them at least for this season. Jack thought he could drop the tree safely in the narrow space between the two areas.
He went to the hardware store and bought two six-foot long sections of stout two-inch iron pipe. He pounded them into the earth in the direction he wanted the tree to fall. To one pipe he attached the come-along chain assembly. At the junction of the braided rope and the come-along, he added a second, parallel rope, which he attached to the second pipe.
Then, in stages, he ratcheted the come-along to "persuade" the tree to move in the desired direction. As he did, the second rope slackened, and he needed to pause periodically to retie it in a tauter position. Methodically, he alternated between the two (and paused to reset the pipes, which were pulled forward in the ground by the weight of the tree).
While all this was going on, the tree snapped and crackled in protest. Sections of bark came flying off, and small branches showered around us. It was scary. My job at this point was to worry as I watched the tree sway in protest. Jack, of course, did not need to hear my fears. I did convince him to stop occasionally and wait for the tree to 'show what it planned to do.' I'm a great fan of J.R.R. Tolkein, and have the highest respect for the feelings and the volition of trees. Jack isn't such an animist. But I had seen surprising things in earlier lumber-Jacking projects — like an enormous maple tree that suddenly leapt two feet into the air and landed six feet away from its stump in an acrobatic adventure that I'll remember for years.
As Jack continued to ratchet, we planned our escape routes — where he would run when the deciding moment came. We were tense, trying to be thoughtful and cautious. I kept imagining the worst. And when the moment finally came, I watched as time separated into two film speeds: in the first, Jack was running toward me, away from the falling tree, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion. In the other sequence, I could see the heavy, spiraling tree in fast forward, rolling and twisting unpredictably as it fell toward him.
It was all over in seconds. Miraculously, the tree fell just as he had planned. When dropping a tree it's always worth spending a long time to consider all the angles you can think of, and it paid off this time. The tree he had fretted about for years was docile, defanged. We celebrated, returned the Buddha to his perch, and called it a night. Tomorrow, there would be time to chop and cart away the fallen menace.
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