it’s a bird! it’s a plane! no, it’s…Tree Guy!

Sometimes, when the wind gives a gusty laugh, I look up through the yurt’s dome and see the tops of the pines heaving around like God is mixing a salad. Pine trees with vinaigrette, coming right up. Yikes. A few were particularly crazy-leaning-over trees, so we decided they had to go. Sorry trees.

Turns out a friend of Paul’s used to do tree work and he agreed to come out and give Paul a hand.

And here he is! Jeff the Tree Guy, cutting out expert notches that cause the tree to hinge and fall exactly where he wants it to i.e. not on the yurt. Or the car. And not the kids either. Or Paul. Or the goats. Basically anything that is mine. I’m selfish that way. Go Jeff! What an interesting skill to have.

It was surprising (though it shouldn’t have been, except all I knew about it was you shout “Timber!” when the tree is about to fall—which Jeff did NOT, much to my disappointment) how technical it all was. Look at this assortment of chisel thingies he hammered in to direct the fall of this small elm.

I felt bad for the elm. It was a pretty little tree, one of the first to turn red each fall, and it had done nothing wrong. It’s just that it was right beside a particularly leaning-over-the-yurt pine, and there was fear that the huge pine would get hung in the elm and fall where we didn’t want it to. So the elm had to go to keep the yurt safe.

Now why is my yurt more important in the cosmos than this little elm that was here long before the yurt? I ask you.

Jeff had another amazing skill, that of super-fast and fearless tree climbing.

I walked over to get a picture of him go up and when I turned back around about ten seconds later, he was way up in the sky. Dude! How’d you do that?

Actually, he went much farther up than this picture reveals. I couldn’t get a good shot of the really high climbing because he was just a dot up there, and the sun was behind him causing all these flares…. so you’ll just have to trust me. He was up in the needles of these huge, old pines.

And this is what he saw:

It’s our place! From where the angels sit to watch over us!

That’s right, in the interests of completeness in my reporting I climbing that tree, too, and took this picture for your entertainment and edification.

Um. Yeah.

The place looks kind of cute from up there, you know? Sort of junky, but overall, quite cute.

Look at this one of the Noah House. Can you see Sophie in the widow?

She’s holding up a picture she drew of Jeff doing his Tree Guy Thang, so he’s taking a picture of her drawing a picture of him.

Can you see Jeff? He’s in the fourth tree from the left.

Turns out being a Tree Guy is the fifth most dangerous profession in the country, following such illustrious careers as mining and commercial crabbing. “Always have two kinds of safety gear in place at all times,” Jeff said, right after the branch he was tried into broke off. He caught himself, high up in the tree, with the spikes on his boots. He was fine, just some scratches on his arms, but holy shit. He stopped being a tree guy as a regular job when he started having kiddos. I can see why.

Here was the first tree down. You can see the Priscilla Tent is still standing, somewhat worse for the wear. I told them they should put their feet up on the tree, like those hunting pictures where the Big Hunter has felled a Mighty Beast by shooting it. They wouldn’t do it though. I wonder why.

Paul will cut the wood up into chunks and we’ll burn it in our waterstove.

Here’s a challenge for you. Can you see Jeff in this picture? Look high.