#uprooted trees

Second wind

Late Sunday night, or early Monday morning, the mighty wind that’s been buffeting us around in recent days took down three threes in our woodlot with a single puff.

That may sound like bad news, but actually it was excellent news because 10 days ago a similar wind uprooted the same trees and left them hung up, quite precariously, in a fourth tree.

Taking down a leaner is always a scary proposition, which is why they’re called widow-makers. What we had here was a triple widow-maker - clearly visible from our kitchen window.

I eyed the situation from all angles and couldn’t see a safe way to bring them down. Yet, I knew at some point I would be tempted to give it a go - and might live to regret it.

But on Monday morning Sharon glanced out the window and proclaimed, “They’re down! The trees … they’re down!”

Shakedown

Saturday’s big blow - 50-mph gusts throughout the day and night - uprooted trees on our property, brought down dead limbs and otherwise shook out the cobwebs from the forest canopy.

As you can see, the tree in the photo - another ash doomed long ago - didn’t have much to keep it anchored. It was just waiting for the kind fo wind we had Saturday.

Uprooted   -    William Mackinnon, 2020

Australian,b.1978-

On Seeing My Old Crooked Tree Uprooted After the Tornado

I loved this old crooked tree

that refused to grow straight

with the sky but willed itself

to stretch with the horizon,

limbs resisting what every oak

near it wanted— to kiss the sun.

  It had a brother, long since cut down,

its stump never uprooted, ground to chips.

Decades of weeping, trying to caress its kin,

had left it defiantly stunted, a hunchback

to its grief, its refusal to be another…