Posts Tagged ‘clearing trees’
Breathing Room
There is a lot of effort required in felling every single tree surrounding a large oak tree, but when the job is finally complete, the result evokes a rewarding feeling of satisfaction every time you walk past it. The newly opened space beneath the crown of the oak inspires increased visual energy solely on the oak. It’s nice to reclaim the more pronounced prominence these dominant trees deserve among the vast number of surrounding volunteers that naturally sprout and eventually rise up to become pests.
We are literally providing them more breathing room.
Over time, my perspective of managing a wooded lot has evolved from a basic belief that there can be no such thing as too many trees to one of being able to sacrifice some toward a goal of a healthier forest overall.
That’s not a simple transformation.
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Trimming Trail
Our property has been getting spruced up in preparation for a workshop Cyndie is hosting today. In the middle of my workday yesterday, I received a message from Cyndie that there was a tree leaning across one of our trails that she wanted me to clear when I got home.
Oh, yeah. I remember neglecting to take care of that for the last three weeks.
The tree was actually small enough that I decided to use a hand saw to bring it down the rest of the way. It just took enough forethought to finally have a saw in my possession when I walked deep into the woods.
The walk to get there was difficult enough through areas of the trail that were getting overgrown that I switched tools after the trees and branches were dispatched and got to work with the Stihl trimmer.
It brought to mind that moment six years ago when I was shopping for that trimmer with very limited knowledge about what I wanted to buy. I suddenly realized that I had lucked into a salesperson at the hardware store who was less into selling and more into how things worked.
I was talking to the mechanic who fixes equipment, not some kid who works the cash register and helps people find things in the store. I remember telling the guy about the property we recently moved to and how that quickly led him to the size trimmer we should have. I took his word for it.
He said we would be able to run this motor full speed all day long and it wouldn’t suffer one bit. I didn’t imagine we would ever need to push a tool that hard.
Now, when we spend hours upon hours running that trimmer at full tilt, I understand where that mechanic was coming from. He steered me to the right machine for our needs.
When it was new, that guard piece was bright orange. Not so much anymore.
As too often happens, I was within about ten yards of the end of one trail when the trimmer engine ran out of fuel. I took a break for dinner.
It’s not easy to discern the vast level of improvement in this shot of one section I completed, but after Cyndie and Delilah took a walk toward the end of the day, I received a pretty good rating about the freshly cleared pathways.
I’ll take that as a win.
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Relative Something 