Everyday Canvas

An Incident from My Woodswoman Days

Write about an ordinary ritual/event in which something goes ...terribly wrong.

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Do I have to light a candle, say a prayer, burn incense, or wear a feather and dance around a fire in order to answer this prompt? I don’t think so. It would freak my husband even more than everything else I do that freaks him out. I just think he’s easy when it comes to freaking out.

Here’s one story that really made him freak out. Once upon a time, yours truly and the freaked-out guy used to live in a home with a large yard and tall trees.

There was one tree in the backyard that was totally dried out, with no life left in it, but it was at least 70 to 80 feet high. It didn’t have side branches too much. Each time I looked at it, I saw firewood.

“We should cut that down,” I said.

He said, “Too tall for us. I’ll get the tree people.”

Now, it wasn’t that we didn’t know how to cut a dead tree. We had done it together several times before. There is a ritual to it. You tie a strong cord to the tree in a Y shape, the base of which stays on the tree trunk. The upper two lines of the Y you tie two strong points could be another tree or something stable, so when cut the tree falls in between the two upper lines of the Y. Then you cut a wedge on the trunk above where the cord is tied, in the direction of where you want the tree fall. After the wedge, you cut a straight line on the exact opposite side of the tree. This way, the tree falls on the wedge and in between the two upper lines of the Y exactly where you want it to fall.

Back to the specific tree, days passed, but no tree people. Hubby said, “It’ll have to be when I am home.”

But he was never home as he was working two jobs at the time, and winter was only a couple of months away. I figured I’d do this myself. I tied the cord to the trunk, then tied one end of the rope to a strong oak tree, but there was no other strong enough place to tie the other end. There was an apple tree, but I didn’t want to risk the death of it. So I tied it to a neighbor’s aluminum fence. Then I sawed out the wedge, and cut the opposite slice, but the tree wasn’t falling down even though it was making creaking sounds. So, I ran where the fence was, and untied the cord. Holding on to it, I pulled, let go, then pulled again a few times. The tree started coming down, but instead of falling in the middle of the cord’s Y, it was coming at me.

I started to run with the tree coming after me. I heard my husband screaming, “Let go of the rope!” He had come home to get some papers he had forgotten in the morning. Then I realized I was running with the end of the cord still in my hand. I let go of the cord and the tree fell exactly where I had planned it to fall.

You could say, I was very lucky. You could say hubby’s screams saved me, or you could say I am a daredevil. I think you’d be right.


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These two photos are from my woodswoman days,