Sometimes life among the trees has its snags

BIG TREES SURROUND MY CABIN, and mostly that’s a delightful blessing.

The best time is a blue-sky summer morning when I can sit on my deck with a mug of steaming coffee, look straight up and watch golden rays sneak into the treetops 100 feet above my head as the sun just crests the rocky knoll behind me.

The trees are a little more worrisome but no less entertaining to watch through my front windows on a blustery winter day as they shake and sway like wild Tahitian dancers.

Rarely does one fall, but it has happened. About 15 years ago, when we still came to Center Island only for monthly getaways from Seattle, a big fir broke off about 15 feet above the ground and fell directly on my cabin, punching a hole in the metal roof. Happily it didn’t break through the wooden ceiling. A roofing crew from Skagit County came out on a barge and replaced half of the roof at a cost of $11,000. Thank you, Farmers Insurance.

But the base of that tree remained as a tall snag, only a few feet from another old dead fir snag about three feet in diameter and 20 feet high with spears of sharp wood topping it. Both were a fall-down hazard that could have taken out my cedar woodshed or my neighbor’s shed, not to mention one of us if we were in the wrong place at the right time.

After years of saying “I need to deal with those snags,” on Tuesday I commissioned two tree cutters to come over from Anacortes and take them down, along with the dead upper limbs of a nearby bigleaf maple.

The tree guys, John and Austin, were experts. John called his partner Austin “a sniper” because of his ability to lay a tree down exactly where he wanted it to fall. Using one of the bigger chainsaws I’ve ever seen, he fell both big snags without damaging either woodshed or even another tree.

The snags were so rotten inside that both disintegrated into powder and wood shards when they hit the ground. An earlier inspection by another tree man had produced the recommendation: “Don’t breathe on them” for fear they’d fall. No firewood out of this cut! The fallen remains will nourish the forest duff.

What was most fascinating was to watch Austin go to work on the maple, whose dead upper limbs reached above my rooftop. This tree, on a steep slope, presented two challenges: I wanted to save the lower 7 feet, which still had living branches that spread many shading maple leaves in summertime. And there was no clean and safe fall line to drop the tree in place without hitting my back deck, my compost bin, my water tank or the beautiful mossy rocks atop the knoll.

Austin’s first surprising move was to climb high into a nearby fir, probably 80 feet off the ground. Using lumberjack spikes mounted to his boots, he zipped upward like a squirrel. Once high enough, with a small chainsaw dangling by a cord from his waist, he rigged a safety line, lowered himself back down and managed to lean out far enough to start cutting the topmost limbs from the maple. Eventually he executed a short Tarzan swing of sorts and positioned himself on the maple’s trunk. He then proceeded to cut pieces of the tree above him, lowered them on a rope to his partner, and methodically made his way downward. Now I know the origin of the term “tree surgeon.” His work was meticulous.

They were done in fewer than 90 minutes. I paid the $1,200 fee they had quoted. For their expertise and dangerous work, they earned it. Nobody got hurt, and Center Island’s woodsheds are out of danger. Another challenge to living in woods on a remote island has been met!

These are tumultuous times. Stay safe, friends.