May 18-20: Big Tree

On Thursday we'd had a big, big thunderstorm up here. Lightning struck a giant white pine near our new house. I have a hard time estimating height, but it was only maybe 30-40 feet from the house and towered way over it. The lightning basically split the truck down the middle. Unfortunately, the split wasn't symetrical; the tree cracked kind of diagonally, so that the entire upper half of the tree was being supported by only a small percentage of the trunk.

The tree was also listing toward the house. So obviously it had to go. We debated calling a tree service, but decided to give it a go ourselves. To get it down safely, we decided to cut three other trees that were in the way, and drop it towards the driveway. All four trees would have come down this summer anyway, as all were to close to (and leaning towards) the house. Joe dropped the first two with amazing precision, putting them right between a pair of hardwood saplings that we wanted to keep. In the picture, he's cutting down the second of these. The 3rd and 4th trees are at the right of the picture. The fourth one is obviously the tree that got hit (it's split most of the way to the base), which gives you some idea how big it was. Joe was also successful in cutting down the small one next to it. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the small one was supporting the big one, and the big one came down on it's own. It landed nice and close to the house, as you can see, but didn't really cause any harm. Other than a bit of a fright. We cleaned it up quick and got on with our house building.