Bringing Dead Trees Safely Down

When a tree falls across a trail, we're often able to clear it with our electric chainsaws. But sometimes there's a need for someone with skills well beyond ours.

That's when we give a call to our chainsaw virtuoso and angel in our midst, Victorino. The ash was our most common tree before being killed by the wave of Emerald ash borers that has swept through Princeton in recent years. Though many, deeper in the forest, can be left standing to serve as habitat and carbon sequestration, some closer in need to be cut down before they grow brittle. In a crowded woodland, they need to fall in just the right direction, so as not to catch on, or damage, a neighboring tree.

Victorino came most recently in early October, when there's a lot of color in the woods. A tree that fell on its own some years back was bearing a promising crop of Chicken of the Woods. We weren't sure enough, though, to harvest it.

Another tree trunk seemed to be showing off its brilliant fall color, but in fact was a snag, up which a poison ivy vine had grown and branched out, forming what I call a "poison ivy tree." Birds feast on the berries, but we stayed away from that one.

As he carefully felled one dead ash, then another, a tree would sometimes resist falling. At that point, Victorino would cut wedges out of nearby dead wood,   

and hammer them into the cut to encourage the tree in its falling.

This one fell beautifully along the edge of a trail. Victorino learned his trade in Guatemala, where they would build a house out of the trees growing nearby. Oftentimes, he'll add an artistic touch, like this curved cut to bend with the trail.

After a couple hours of hard work, he takes a moment to rest and reflect. As Tom Lehrer, the mathematician and political satirist would say, "What good are laurels if you can't rest on them?"

It was a great relief to have those trees safely down. Thank you, Victorino!