A dark and stormy night. And perhaps a day too. Even a day or two.

When we were last out to Roundrock, we had to stop several times on the drive through the forest to clear the fallen branches from the road. In one case, most of a tree was in the way, and I had to use my super powers to drag it out of the way. This is, of course, the norm in a forest, and it shows that any attempts by mere humans to transform the space are only provisional and temporary.

This young Blackjack oak near the cabin was one of the casualties of a recent storm. I wouldn’t normally expect a Blackjack oak to snap like this. These trees are the ones that will dull the chain on my saw the quickest, and I almost never attempt to cut them with a handsaw. The wood is just too dense and unforgiving. Yet among all of the trees near the cabin, the young and the old, this was the one that snapped in the storm.

I know why it happened. When the cabin was being built the tree had gotten scarred (right at the point where it subsequently broke) by some of the heavy machinery that had worked on the site. That was several years ago, and I assumed that since the tree continued to stand and bring out leaves each spring that the scar was minor. But apparently it was fatal.

I actually never liked this tree here. It was too close to the cabin. Imagine (as I had done countless times) if the tree had fallen the other direction and struck the cabin. It was only luck that the storm pushed the tree in the direction it did, but as you can see from the photo, there are plenty of other trees near the cabin I can set my worries on instead.

Actually, unless another storm has come along, this tree still stands as you see above. I did not bring it down the rest of the way. One reason is that I had not brought my chainsaw with me. (I’d say it’s still in the shop getting it’s annual tune up, but that would require it to have been taken to the shop, which is something we keep meaning to do.) As I said, I’m not about to try to cut that down with a hand saw. This snapped oak also rests in the branches of a fellow Blackjack oak nearby. Bringing it down is going to be a complicated job, perhaps more complicated than the last tree I brought down.

Like so many things at Roundrock, it’s a job that needs to be taken care of sooner or later. I think about things like that as I sit in the comfy chair on the shady porch overlooking the sparkling lake.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 at 12:17 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.