An Unlikely Artist

Yesterday we felled 2 trees on the BSRC property in spaces most people would look at, shake their heads and say, "Your're nuts if you try." One of the trees was a maple tree with 4 trunks, each big enough to be a tree in its own right and all over 70 feet tall.

Ben Thompson, our friend and a logger by trade from the time he was a boy, studied the trees and determined that he could fell them. Skeptical, but trusting his judgement [because after all he is the expert] I watched as he artfully felled the trees along lines that he missed, if he missed at all, by less than twelve inches. Some of the trees leaned 90 degrees opposite to the direction of the fall. He climbed up 40 feet or more [mind you, he is not a school boy, but a 50 year old man], tied on a rope to be used "just as a precaution" and keep the tree from swaying in the wind before it fell correctly. But the direction of the fall ultimately depended and in fact happened by the skillful cuts that Ben made.

I never thought about calling a logger an artist, but Ben, you are an artist.