A First

I can find some enjoyment in it. In the tranmission end of it, I enjoy the work in the woods, with no customers to talk to. It is peaceful in some ways. And on the roadside work, I enjoy the possibility of doing the job differtly thn anyone before me. I try to adjust the amount of pruning for the specific species I am working on. And, I try to do the best work possible and at the se rate or speed as someone who is not being as selective. That can actually be quite a challenge and can feel rewarding. Plus it is different than the everyday stuff, so I like the change. Sound funny?
 
Hey mrtree I agree with you that the economic system that we live in forces us to comprimise our values continuously. I love trees and I love climbing and I am very glad that I can do something for a living that I enjoy some of the time. But honestly, a good deal of the work that I do is not for the trees, it is for money. I think it is somewhat rare that trees need anything from us at all. Sometimes it is a curse that I have the ability to skillfully and effeciently destroy a living being.

I hate driving. I cant stand putting gas into trucks and putting gas in saws. If it were my property I would leave a dead snag in the yard. I would never elevate my trees.

I do work for other companies sometimes removing trees that I question the morality of.

The only thing that I can come up with is to just try and try to do what I think is right. Comprimise my morals as little as possible in order to survive in this boodthirsty economy.

The fundamental problem is that nature does not follow the rules of capitalism. The concepts of supply and demand are completly irrelevant to trees. This is true in agriculture as well. The result of trying to place trees and agriculture in the american style economic system is large companies rooted in massive machinery and copious amounts of chemicals, as well as factory produced food. Gross.

shoot I play the game too, I cant preach against others. But shoot sometimes its frustrating. I made up a poem about it one day while I was doing a sub-contract job removing an attractive silver maple that was being axed in favor of a swimming pool. Who is the bad guy in that case?

How come when I'm making money do I still feel like Im poor
a better description is that I feel like a whore
selling out my morality just so I can go to the store
and buy more and more and more and more and more
and more and more and more and more and more
and more and more
I'm sorry if im coming off a little bit sore
but this capitalist game is getting to be a bit of a bore
kind of like that point when your little and doing the hokey pokey starts to feel like a chore
sometimes I cant even remember what Im living for anymore
weve got to find a better way of keeping the score
we have to find a better way of keeping the score.


The only thing we can do is continuously try and try. My solution to working closer to what I believe is to try and force myself to not look at anything in the business as waste. NOTHING from a tree is trash. Everything obviously has value. It means that I am climbing less and spending more time picking through the remains of my victims. I love it though, it has made this work much more interesting although as of yet not as well paying.
 
mark, its rare for someone like you to be doing line clearance, specially over my way. line clearance guys for the most part are just guys with chainsaw tickets intent only on covering the biggest are possible to make up their money.
its not uncommon to see step cuts left unfinished on mature oak trees, and 1ft long tubs left....they;ve got their clearance, why bother cutting off another 1eft of wood just to make the tree look better?
 
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kind of like that point when your little and doing the hokey pokey starts to feel like a chore


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I have my own personal theory on why we are taught the 'hokey pokey'

It's to prepare us for that moment in life when we are older when we suddenly find ourselves asking, 'What's it all about?'

What's it all about?

you put your left foot in,

you put your left foot out

in, out, in, out and shake it all about

you do the hokey pokey and you turn around that's WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT, see?

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I agree with Mark, the challenge can be great and the work rewarding.
Let's not confuse the quality of work with the nature of the work.
There are hacks in every industry.
 
I want Mark to clear the lines in my community!

treebing, if you want to see trees well cared for, some large corporations' campuses are prime examples. If you want to see ecological devastation and random tree butchery, visit the formerly communist eastern Europe. I don't see the validity behind blaming politics or economics for poor practices. It's like a thief saying "The devil made me do it!", when the devil does not exist.

Greed is universal--to answer your poem, just buy less and less and less! Before my greatgrandmother died she literally asked the hokeypokey question--"What's it all about?" I said "It's about leaving the world a better place and your children strong enough to carry on, just like you did".

If you can't sail your ship in that direction, time to throw out some ballast, or get a new ship.
 
Its not a question about capitalism and communism. Your right. I have seen the eastern block countries pre 1990. To tell you the truth, it looked pretty similar to detroit. Different names for the same system.

Would love to buy less and less but thats not the way things work here. The things I do want to buy or trade are sometimes illegal such as fresh cows milk and homeade cheese. Economics demand at the moment that I must consume petroleum products in order to compete although I attempt to do a good bit of my business on bicycle.

Its not always about greed either. Sometimes its about taking care of you and your own till the next day. I think a lot of arborists end the morality discussion of their work at the topping issue and feel that since they do not spur and they do not top then they are being true.

One example that I have been amazed at is the current practice of chipping wood, hauling it across the country, painting it with some dye, and then shipping it back. How much sense does that make?
My gripe against our current system, I wont call it capitalism and I think I will remove that word from my tree written poem, Is that it leads us to do so many things that just do not make any sense.

I think the predominant food system is a prime example of our system gone wrong. Its not hard to do the math to find that we in this system puts way more energy into getting our food than we get out of it. As a whole.
That is a system that is bound for collapse. there is going to be some hungry people in this country. We cant feed ourselves food grown and distributed this way.

At the same time, we are pumping petroleum products and chemical weapons across vast areas of our arable landscape growing lawns. Something is broke, we need to fix that.

I have to participate in this system because I live here. but I do everything i can to fight it. I attempt to grow my own food, goats chickens and rabbits for protein, garden for food. I try not to buy gas, but I end up buying a lot of it. Everytime i do, i feel my money going into the hands of killers. But I can turn myself off to that because I got to get a new static line and a shiny new pulley. If i could get a pair of aluminum gaffs. That hitch climber pulley is sweet, maybe oneday i could get that treemotion saddle that everyone is raving about. Oh yeah, I have to get that ACL surgery done too. I better get to work, its almost 9:00 on a monday, Removing a big limb over someones house.
 
Dude- I hope you have a wicked good reason for removing that limb. Wouldn't lightening it or sturdying up the roof a better alternative to injuring that tree :).
 
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Dude- I hope you have a wicked good reason for removing that limb. Wouldn't lightening it or sturdying up the roof a better alternative to injuring that tree :).

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The cheekiness of your response is not lost on me, Skew.
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Dude- I hope you have a wicked good reason for removing that limb. Wouldn't lightening it or sturdying up the roof a better alternative to injuring that tree :)...Cheeky my arse

[/ QUOTE ]You're right; there are two of them back there.
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Today I was called to do a risk assessment on a big maple near the front door of a $1m home. A nearby maple had failed in a windstorm the other day, and the owner found mush where it broke instead of wood. He asked me to inspect a cavity ~20 ft high where the previous owner had an 8" branch pruned years before.

The hole was 6" deep and wide and ~20" long. I called it low to moderate risk and prescribed root therapy and crown thinning and cleaning. None of that would have been necessary if that limb had been reduced instead of removed.
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I run into a few of those cases every week, exposed heartwood leading to instability. Arborists make no cut without a reason, treecudders give tree biology all the thought that a cow gives its cud, and ask questions (such as "You want that rotten tree cut, maam?") later.

What's in YOUR toolbox?
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agree with you completly. Stupid job. Speculators from out of state are buying houses in detroit. Flipping them. At this particular house they wanted maximum clearance before tackling the roof. The tree happens to on an empty lot next door.

Beautiful old silver maple, Makes the lot. 5 foot DBH. The kicker is they bought the lot too and plan to build a house on it. The tree is doomed anyway. Lightening the limb would have been the good thing to do, and I said as much in the estimate. They wanted it off. So, I went to work inflicting injury. These people throw me a lot of work, a lot if it good and rewarding. Sometimes though, there are the occasions like today that i just feel like a tool.
 
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there are the occasions like today that i just feel like a tool.

[/ QUOTE ]Happens here too, not a good feeling.
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The ideal scenario is when both contractor and client are tools in service of the trees and the earth, and all profit from the relationship.
smile.gif
 
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The ideal scenario is when both contractor and client are tools in service of the trees and the earth, and all profit from the relationship.
smile.gif


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Couldn't agree more, Guy. That should be the end of this thread.....



or should it?


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i hate to mess up your graceful simultaneous bow in front of the downed curtain, but i just gotta say...

god, i love the buzz!

thank you gentlemen for an entertaining and thought provoking conversation.
k.
 
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