Living in a forest, I don't have a lot of hesitation taking down trees, but there are always some that are more special than others which I try to protect and turn into landscape features, both for myself and for customers. Usually this is because something is old, unique, large, something like that. In my southern view out the living room window, I had this big old doug fir that had grown on essentially a cliffside, mostly rock, had a great shape and I've enjoyed it for many years. It had a significant lean and had clearly been that way for many many decades. Tonight I was walking back from the shop to the house after doing tool maintenance for tomorrows job and noticed it was at a lower angle than usual.
So I went to inspect it, and saw it was leaning hard, with large cracks right at the base. This was at 7pm. I knew it was toast, but thought it might hang on for a few days, and pondered ways to guy-line it back in order to climb and piece it out to avoid so much damage to the trees below, plus the risk of it's roots ripping out part of the cliff. It seemed a little foolish to think about, but I was just trying to puzzle out the options. At about 9:30pm I was on the couch watching some youtube, when I looked out the window and it was gone from view, tipped over. From the deck I could smell the freshly split wood and got dressed to go inspect it.
It didn't tear out as much rock as I thought it might, and only crushed three or four trees below, barely reaching the pond, but it's going to be a pain in the butt to clean up and will be missed on my treeline. Once I get it down and count the rings, I'll share how old it ended up living to.
So I went to inspect it, and saw it was leaning hard, with large cracks right at the base. This was at 7pm. I knew it was toast, but thought it might hang on for a few days, and pondered ways to guy-line it back in order to climb and piece it out to avoid so much damage to the trees below, plus the risk of it's roots ripping out part of the cliff. It seemed a little foolish to think about, but I was just trying to puzzle out the options. At about 9:30pm I was on the couch watching some youtube, when I looked out the window and it was gone from view, tipped over. From the deck I could smell the freshly split wood and got dressed to go inspect it.
It didn't tear out as much rock as I thought it might, and only crushed three or four trees below, barely reaching the pond, but it's going to be a pain in the butt to clean up and will be missed on my treeline. Once I get it down and count the rings, I'll share how old it ended up living to.
