Removing a hemlock that crushed a woodshed
Sometimes things of a heavy nature crash down on us and need to be removed. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now that’s a funny one – woken up by one heavy shoe crashing down, and just lying there, waiting for the other shoe to drop. In any case when they happen to drop on us they need first to be de-limbed and then surgically chopped into rounds. Split with a maul. Put in wheelbarrows and stacked. To dry and then eventually heat our fragile bodies over a long winter.
It is a good thing to do such a job with friends, especially if the thing of a heavy nature is not metaphorical.
Our friend’s thing of heavy nature in this case was a western hemlock that buckled her woodshed, out on an island off of town, during that 87-MPH storm of which I spoke came down upon her from the Southeast. So we piled into the skiff yesterday morning to give her a hand making things better. With chainsaws and handtools and come-alongs we went out and set to work, eight of us, in an effort to beat the tide which ran hard beneath a bridge leading up to her house perched on a cliff. A genius welder in town had designed a lift which brought supplies up to the house.
In the rain and with the flood hard on our heels albeit a low one eight feet or so we set to work.I remembered my friend in Kentucky and clearing a hillside of 80 oaks alongside him with the idea that the wood we toppled and limbed and dragged up with a tractor would be used to build me a log home on the back 40. Writing on the butt ends the measure, and coding them for whether they would be used for floor joists or framing or what. Chaining up the heavy white oak dragging it through the mud with a tractor then piking it into groups to prepare it for adzing.
That was about as far as that got. But nice to know how to run a chainsaw and be able to give a hand when needed without chopping your hand off in the process. We worked hard for the morning putting our heads together to figure out how the tree was resting. Eventually we needed to make the cut to buckle it. Rick’s chainsaw got pinched but luckily we had a large rusted pry on hand and down the tree fell to the rocks.
And so the work continued with Rick’s kids giving a good hand stacking wood and working the lift. Darcie and Rick working hard, everyone working hard until all the wood from the shed was up and stacked by the house and the hemlock was cut up. And afterward a soup of smoked black cod and potatoes and cheese and cilantro and a beer which we all took turns swigging. Talk about the hot tub but alas I had to do one of these Hot Havana Nights at the Larkspur that eve for Cuban Salsa.
Who knows why we end up where we do. At a young age I remember flying into Montana and staying with my mother and sister in some motel with a heavy shag rug and going next door to look at the dark rodeo stadium and walking up the sloped hill in Billings toward – the rental car place? We rented a car and the brakes went out in Yellowstone National Park after we crossed Bear Pass. Anyways she said she could see herself living out west. Indeed she had lived out west – in New Mexico, and then Denver – before returning to Philadelphia.
Thinking back to that phrase waiting for the other shoe to drop – doesn’t it usually mean that things are going pretty well and you’re waiting for the downside? What is going to happen to make up for all the wonderful things that are coming to you? Your come-uppance.
Took advantage of the string of nice weather to repair and muck the roof. Cleaned out the bilge. Fixed the laundry room door. Finished the carpentry job out the road. 72k on the manuscript. People so good – so good! – walking into my life, allowing me to walk into theirs. Quite humbling.
Me I keep on waiting for the other shoe to drop.
