29, August 2024 Impending Doom

 

Over a trail in our woods I discovered a treetop had broke and fallen against a tree on the opposite side creating a scene of impending doom for passersby. The trunk end looked ready to fall off with any wind coming through the trees. The several times I passed under it on the four-wheeler, I began feeling my luck was going to run out one of those times and then I'd be sorry for not doing something about it; then too, what if it happened to one of the family or a visitor? 

So, finally I decided to take it down, but how was I to to do it safely? Cutting either tree down would be risky, I figured. So I decided to sleep on it and see if a solution would come to me just before I woke up. It did. "That'll work," I thought to myself. "I did that a few years ago when couldn't find someone to hire to repair a roof vent for me."

 First, I had to gather a few tools: a bow, an arrow, a hundred feet of strong string, and a hundred feet of strong light-weight rope

Tying the string onto the arrow, I shot it over the broken trunk. Tying a loop on one end of the rope, I tied the string to the rope, and pulled it over the tree's trunk overhead where I could grab it and thread the loose end of the rope through the loop, theoretically....

As simple as the idea was, I didn't think to free the rope from its wrapped state before I pulled it up, so before I knew it, I had pulled it almost over the tree trunk in this state. Argh!

What the hell?

 

I had to spend a couple minutes whipping it free of the trunk and lowering it so I could unravel it on the ground. After I got it loosened I strung it out its full length and tried to pull the tree down, by hand, thinking it would be easy, the way it looked an inch from the edge. I tried from the other side too, also rocking it side to side to no avail. It was stronger than I anticipated. I decided to just pull it down using my truck, since it was being so stubborn. I tied it good to the receiver hitch on the truck then set to pull it slowly and see if it would do the trick.

And it did.

https://youtu.be/pVaG7TbvMrE