A forestry “masticator,” which mulches small trees and large branches, is here used to pull a ponderosa pine trunk off a hillside.
On Thursday, February 27th, M and I went on a city shopping trip, returning mid-afternoon. I heard a chainsaw running and thought it was a neighbor cutting road. Then another saw coughed to life, and another. Three sawyers in red hardhats were working in the pines between our house and the county road.
They worked for the electric co-op whose lines cross our property on the way to the neighbors. Those power poles were erected in the mid-1960s, I assume, when this land changed from scrubby, low-value ranch land to exurban homesites. A photo from our porch taken in the 1970s gives a clear view of another neighboring home with just little pine trees coming up. Now they are not so little.
A pine fell. “Those trees are living beings!” M cried. And they are. But we were standing on wooden floors in a wooden house that is partly heated with wood, for all that I seek out dead trees (victims of mountain pine beetle + fungus) whenever I can for firewood.
The crew was back on Friday. M. took the dog on a longish walk in the national forest while I drove a temporarily incapacitated friend on a series of errands. When I came back the tracks of a masticator ran here and there, that being a machine that “eats” branches, small trees, and stumps and leaves behind a coarse shredded mulch. I know someone who operates a masticator for a private forestry outfit, quickly thinning dense conifers to reduce fire risk around ski areas and mountain mansions.1
The foreman knew that we burned wood—almost everyone around here does—and he had the sawyers cutting logs into rounds and leaving them piled here and there. So fewer trees, but probably three cords of wood, at least.2
M. went off Saturday to see a friend. I stayed home.
Those fresh-cut white stumps. I took some whiskey and honey around to the bigger ones, left offerings, and chatted a little with them. On Sunday I started consolidating some piles, just to keep track of them. The wood is wet and heavy.
The crew returned on Monday, cut some more. On Tuesday a climber went up into the highest pine, probably more than 100 feet tall, with a hand saw to cut a “window” through the limbs. That tree is not coming down, I told the foreman. He agreed.
How do I react? Which “me” is reacting?
The forester’s son?. He automatically wants to thin the pines and to select the straightest, strongest trees for survival.
The sometime wildland firefighter? He’s happy to see fewer trees within 40 yards of the house and is also happy with the thinning. He wants to get cut out yet more small stuff.
The exurban homeowner? He is OK with some thinning, but hates to lose any visual barrier around between house and road and house and neighbors. He wants to sit on the porch and see nothing but green, which is his wife’s feeling too.
The Pagan-animist? Just thanking the trees. The oldest were probably from around 1940. Most of this forest is post-1960s, produced by taking off the cows and keeping wildfire out of a foothills subdivision.
This land then has not always looked this way. In the future it may well look different too. Right now, I step outside grateful to be here on this day.
My property borders a road that runs over a culvert. The rain washes down from the other side of the road into my property and then into the beginnings of the stream that eventually reaches the Nolichucky River. Along that road is a steep short drop to my property, but that area is, technically speaking, county property. Along it, because it’s so steep and difficult to mow or weedwack, a lot of scrub weedy trees have grown up. The county came in about 10 years ago and cut the trees down,then just dropped the wood so that it rolled down the and stopped near my property line. It is very difficult now to mow and/or weed wack that section. Last year, the county showed up with one of those “mulchers” and was going to cut down some of the trees because they interfere with the electrical and cable lines.
When I saw them starting to “mulch”, I ran over there to ask that they not cut down the Leyland Cypress (which is actually on my property) down. The guy running the machine asked about the other trees and I told him that where they were growing was county property and I couldn’t care less about their cutting it down; besides, it was a safety hazard as you could not see up the hill if some idiot was driving 10 miles over the speed limit.
When they finished, I was shocked (and happy)to see that some trees that were a good two or three feet in diameter, reduced to mulch. It’s still difficult to mow or weedwack that area, but I’m thinking of dropping some type of fast-growing plant seeds to (hopefully!) cover the bare area so I don’t have to worry about weedwacking volunteer blackberry brambles. In the past, attempting to mow next to them always ended up with my getting attacked and having blood drawn. I figured that was my “blood offering” to the blackberry gods.
“Nolichucky” is such a great name. Of Cherokee origin, I take it.