2/ A few years ago, I was in this same situation and it wound up being one of the closer calls I’ve had with something Very Bad happening. That particular thousand pounds of wood decided it would tip straight toward me. I got set to GTFO. Except I couldn’t move; my feet had gotten stuck in the slash I’d left at my feet just getting to that point with the tree. A network of interconnected branches was holding me fast, right there.

The tree left a small scratch on my head going down. Damn lucky.

3/ Today I made sure the space around my feet was nice and clear. Tidied things up and got to work. Let me also add that I am very grateful, after an injury left me unable to even sit up for long and took over a year for the #ChronicPain to finally stop, that it was fucking awesome to be able to hold fifteen pounds of engine and cutting chain over my shoulders for all the time it took to make that foot-thick trunk come crashing down at my feet. Not a twinge.

Anyhow, five feet of tree came down.

4/ And then another five feet, but now I was getting pretty nervous because the little bit of lean the trunk had to it was disappearing as what was left up there got more and more to the vertical part. The dead tree had been in a years-long embrace of branches with a bigger one that is thankfully healthy and going strong after a hundred years.

But cutting the dead one anymore meant it would come thudding down somewhere right around my feet. Not great.

Here’s where #Covid comes in. About risk.

5/ I probably could have kept going. I’ve been at this for a long time and know how to dance with my chainsaw. I can judge where trees are going to go, mostly.

I could probably get my feet away from where that trunk would come crashing down. Probably. Let’s say I’m 95% sure.

But you know what? I didn’t like that remaining 5%. So I got my tractor and lifted up the forks on the front to about 10 feet up and then pushed the damn tree over. Not entirely safe, but much safer.

Seems logical, right?

6/ Of course it was. I’d be a damn fool to take a 5% risk of being maimed for life when I could drop that to probably less than 0.1% risk (if the bottom of the tree got pushed out instead of it tipping away from me). It was a small inconvenience to hike back to where the tractor was and bring it to the site. For an excellent reason.

Now, you know what’s not at all logical? You walking around rooms full of people exhaling #SARS2 without filtering that shit out with an #n95

Want to talk risk?