babzog said:
I'm amazed how some folks can aim a tree perfectly. I would think that tree is going to air condition his house but some guys could probably cut a fallen log and make it go the other way.
I'd hire a pro for any trees around the house that even look like they'd threaten to fall where I wouldn't want them to go.
'
I've got a book called Handlogger, by W.H. Jackson. It's an autobiography about a man who was working in lumber camps and oilfields in California and Oregon about a hundred years ago, when he was lured away by the northern forests. He followed the coast up to Alaska, and on the way learned the trade of handlogging, in which a couple of men, or a man, using hand tools would do the work of an entire logging crew.
They'd pick a tree a hundred feet or more tall, six feet across or bigger, and cut it down, sometimes standing on planks inserted in notches cut in the tree. They'd pick the tree's route so carefully that, when all went as planned, the tree would barrel down off a mountain, skinning itself in the process, land in water so deep it would plunge to the bottom and then `blow' like a whale, come back to the surface, stream out and land with a whump in the water.
Sometimes the trees would get hung up, usually at the tip, and then they'd have to work down at the bottom of this tree, sometimes on land so steep that they'd have to dig footholds, releasing whatever was keeping it from moving--tree roots, or digging up a hillside that it had buried itself in. They'd have their escape route planned before they began--he told the story of two handloggers working together who each had an escape route planned that, when the tree started moving, resulted in their running into one another so hard each sat down. Fortunately, the tree only moved ten feet and stopped again. Jackson said that one time he moved so fast when that tree moved that he ran out from under his hat, and found it later ground into the dirt. He said that sometimes he was asked why he didn't use power tools, and he always replied that he used the two strongest powers on earth: gravity and the tides.
Jackson married a woman who was a crack shot and a good cook, and he and his wife lived on a boat in the Ketchikan area and handlogged for years. It's a heck of a yarn, and a fun read. I thought of the book when I read the comment about cutting a fallen log and making it fall the other way-- :lol: ---anyway, it was reprinted awhile back, and copies are still available on Amazon. When I see pictures of trees like this, I think of the picture in the book with him standing next to a tree wider than he was tall--which was plenty tall--with a notch cut out half his height and longer than he was, smooth as someone slicing into a round of cheese with a sharp knife--and done all with an axe. They grew folks tough in those days, and not much mercy for slow learners.
I've known people who could drive a stake with a tree. They'll tell you right where it's going to land, and it does, and sometimes it has to rotate around on the stump before it drops. Quite the art form.
