Reason for a Change-Mitch’s Blog

June 7

The winds were about 35-40 mph this afternoon, and I got a call from Eileen about 4:30pm, our largest tree, the black walnut behind our house had blown down. It took out the electric lines in the alley, and snapped the electrice pole in the yard next door. Ronnie Norris was there, we worked together when I was contracting for IU Real Estate, and he has been working on IU’s rental houses for at about 20 years. Fred Simic from Risk Management came by and took pictures. We got lucky as nothing on the IU house behind us was damaged, even the electric drop was fine, and all I had to do was remove the tops from the deck, only an old hammock was damaged. I went to Jojo’s and borrowed his chain saw and went to work with it till the Duke energy guys came and started working on the pole and wires. They brought a tree crew, and they were at first concerned to see me and my ground crew working on this giant tree. So we stopped while they worked on setting a new pole, it took a long time to get it out of the ground, and they were using lights before they were done stringing wires. The tree crew did nothing, and they all left when they got the last wire attached the fuse in place.

My 2nd job out of high school and before college was as a tree trimmer for Bartlett Tree Services in Cleveland, Ohio. (The first was as a ditch digger, we installed sewers and fire hydrants.) Before long (like a week), I was climbing trees with a rope and harness, carrying a 10 foot lopper, a curved limb saw, and a pot with brush to paint tar over the spots where we cut limbs. I ruined some good shirts with that tar, and years later it was learned through research, that this is not good for trees, and no one now paints the cuts, as they cause rather than prevent rot. Oh, and I did I mention the chain saws. Your ground guy ties it on to the end of your rope, you pull it up and go to work on the larger limbs.

This can get exciting as the limbs rarely fall exactly as you are hoping, so you can end 40 feet in the air on the end of a rope with a running chain saw, and a limb moving swiftly in your direction. This is even more likely when you have to rope the limb and let it down slowly so to not damage the lawn, it will usually want to swing towards the trunk of the tree. So what do you do? Well, what I did was to shut off the saw as I pushed out and away from the trunk with my legs as the the limb crashed into the spot I had just occupied.

There are few feelings like the one you get knowing can just let go swing freely from limb to limb in a large tree, for me it brings out some deep tendancies, I feel so safe and at home in a tree. As a kid, I climbed trees for just about any reason, I read books in my favorite trees, took naps and climbed just for fun. Is it genetics? Recent research shows the possibility that modern humans evolved to an upright walking position by living in trees, not by leaving the forests and roaming the African savannah as is the classical view, with knuckle walking as being a transitional phase.

So to continue, Jojo came over the next morning, and we worked till it rained, cutting all the small and medium stuff. I went back to work till about five, came home and decided to cut more. I was able to cut everything but the main trunk by moving slowly, and I kept it from rolling on me in the process by using this Y-crutch setup that Jojo suggested.