What’s behind Door Number 3?

Three aspen standing close to our power line died last year. I couldn’t leave them to fall naturally or we’d almost certainly see the power line taken out. So last fall I picked up a sturdy rope and a come-along to help them fall the right way and went down the hill to take on the job.

I dropped the equipment by one of the trees and stepped up to tie one end of the rope around it, when WHAM! It felt like something hit me on the back with a baseball bat. And before I could complete a WTF?? thought, I was being beaten silly. I ran.

Wasps. By the time I escaped I had four or five stings already. I hadn’t been stung like that for years, and never in Alaska. (The last time was cutting a path between mist net lanes in Belize.) I put on a head net and a heavy jacket and gloves and went back down to look things over. There was a big nest nearby and well over a hundred angry wasps buzzing around looking for a big dude to sting. I picked up my stuff and retreated. And that’s where I left things, figuring that I’d let the coming cold deal with the wasps and take care of the trees in the winter.

But then winter quickly dealt us a heavy snowfall that made tromping around in the woods more arduous than nimble, so I waited some more. Then, with fresh spring breezes, one of the trees broke halfway up and leaned against its living neighbor. While it had started to fall away from the power line, it was going to need some help to be sure that what remained didn’t take out the line. And it was an indicator that the next wind could cause all three to go. So back I went to finally finish the job.

I waited to do it until Rose was home in case I screwed up in some way and a phone call was needed. I was particularly leery of that upper half of a tree hanging up there waiting to fall. It was a perfect widowmaker. So I was extremely careful with how I cut it down. I put a rope on it, payed out a length greater than the tree’s height in the direction I wanted it to fall, then hooked onto a sturdy birch with the come-along and tightened it up. In cranking the come-along, I made sure to do it vigorously enough to shake the tree a bit, giving that top a chance to fall without me underneath it. No deal.

The widowmaker is down.

So I went back to the tree and carefully checked out the ground and the best paths to retreat along when I eventually got the tree to start to go. Then I fired up the chain saw and smoothly and gingerly cut a notch out in the direction the rope was pulling. Then I went back to the come-along and made sure it was really pulling hard. Then back to the tree to start the felling cut on the back side of the notch. Then back to the come-along hoping to get it to fall from there. No deal. Then back to the cut again to make it a little deeper. Then back to the come-along. Still no deal. Okay. No more messing around: cut and run – a quick stroke, then dance backward out of the way, and down it all came with a resounding crash. That top piece hit particularly hard. A phone call wouldn’t have helped. If I’d been under that, I would have been jelly.

The next one came down like a dream, and, tied off to the same birch, it fell alongside the first. The third one was leaning toward the power line and proved the most stubborn. Thanks to the come-along, it began its fall away from the power line, but it got stuck against a nearby live tree and hung up on it. I couldn’t winch it off, so had to do it the hard way, by taking off four-foot lengths from the bottom and keeping it from falling back towards me and the power line. Rose said it looked like a drunk being held up by a friendly neighbor, staggering down four feet at a time until, twelve feet shorter, I could finally crank it off and bring it to the ground.

Staggering the drunk

So, yes. I choose Door Number 3.