One night in late February, a quick but fierce blast of wind and rain came through.
The next day, I discovered an uprooted walnut tree on the small pond dam. Since I never wanted it there, that was okay, although I would never have cut down a bearing nut tree for fear of a squirrel uprising.
The grandkids found it was the perfect pirate ship.
Above the river, I found a tall cottonwood that had broken about seven feet above the ground, then split down to the dirt. Caught up in nearby trees, it couldn't fall. Every day since then, I walked down and checked it out. Avoiding the zone where it probably would fall seemed a good idea, lest I be pounded into the ground like a stake.
A few days of strong winds dislodged it slightly. Yesterday at noon, I gasped to see it was ten feet lower but still hung up in the canopy. At that point, I would have liked to pull up a lawn chair and wait for the inevitable. Reminding myself that I had already been weeks on this slowly unfolding drama, I hiked back up to the house.
At six last night, I heard what sounded like a distant, muffled explosion. When I went down at seven, the tree was down. It took out a big limb on a huge hickory, plus limbs on some nearby maples. Beau obligingly lent scale to this photo.
So I've concluded that if a tree falls in the woods, you will surely not get to see it. However, you may hear it fall.
