Home on the range...

I am bushed. I was in the bush, which is how I came to be bushed. The bush is my back yard. The pine beetles have killed some pine trees and with a strong wind, the dead standing trees fell into, guess??? Yep, two trees fell into two more dead pine trees. I had a dangerous problem. The trees were leaning over a trail. That was dangerous enough to demand a response, but "leaners" are dangerous problems. When cutting the othe dead standing trees, a "leaner" can shift, and fall onto the cutter below...which would be me. Not good.

So, I put on my safety equipment, like eye protection, gloves, and my orange Husquavarna hard hat, grabbed the chain saw and went to the tree problem. I back cut a notch half way through the standing tree, and then began cutting the other side. When I saw the saw cut begin to widen, I jumped back to watch the whole thing fall over. Nothing happened.
I quietly sneaked up to the tree, glancing up to make sure the leaner had not shifted, and began to cut again. The cut widened some more, so I jumped back. Nothing. The tree stopped tipping, even though less than one inch of wood was supporting the leaner. They say the third time is the charm, and whoever "they" are, they were right. The third cut removed enough wood and the whole mess fell over...into another dead standing pine tree! I was not amused!!

I started to repeat the process with the new leaner problem and then stopped. "Hey, I better see where this mess is going to fall," I said to myself. I looked down range, and guess what? Yep, another dead standing tree, just waiting to catch the next tree and make another leaner problem. "Oh yeah...I don't think so," I told myself.

I went to the dead standing tree five yards away and deeply cut it. Then I went back to the leaner trees and did my cut, jump away, cut, jump away, and finally success. The mess fell over into the standing tree, which then snapped off and fell over, too. The problems with the leaners was finally over. Then came the work of bucking up the wood from five trees, and hauling away the branches. I still have a couple of hours of work to do in bucking up the trees, but such is life. Firewood is a twice warming fuel. It warms you up as you cut and split it, and it warms as it burns. I am grateful to have a wood burning stove in the work shop area. Now I have plenty of wood to heat that area in the winter, too.