If you think living in the woods is relaxing you are sadly mistaken. Okay, if you think living in the woods is relaxing for me then you have never actually met me. I find myself at various times in the relaxation cycle staring at the many half dead, hundred foot tall trees surrounding my cabin. There is ash borer infestation, hemlock woolly adelgid, hemlock bracket fungi, and hemlock rust, to name a few. If you think I was heavy on the hemlock diseases it is because my cabin is surrounded by the eastern variety, and they are not in good health. I have in mind one particular hundred foot tall hemlock which just happens to stand exactly opposite my perfectly situated Adirondack chair. Sure, it lives across the stream, but that is little consolation due to its majestic height. And it sits on state wilderness land so I have zero control over its management. One stiff breeze and this thing is going to take out my Adirondack chair, the shed behind that, the road adjacent to the shed, and quite possibly my neighbor's house across the road. I have not done the actual triangulation survey to determine it's exact height and the distance to my neighbor's house but just the idea of this tree is enough to turn my easy chair into an uneasy chair.
Most of the trees in my area are second or third growth so I don't know how this beast escaped the lumberjack's axe. I am quite certain this tree was familiar to the actual last of the Mohicans. The hemlock was an important tree commercially in the latter part of the nineteenth century due to it's high tannin content and tough wood. So I am sorry, but I wish this one was part of somebody's leather belt or kitchen table. It isn't just that all the hemlocks are in trouble in the Catskills, but this one's root support system is also totally eroded away on the downhill side facing my property. The photo is above.
Most people visiting the valley, surrounded by sublime beauty, feel the presence of their Creator. I on the other hand feel the presence of Shiva the Destroyer. And if it is not the sickly trees that worry me, it is the abundance of undergrowth and dead fall, all fuel for a property destroying conflagration started by the careless flick of a cigarette butt out a car window. If I could single-handedly tidy up the forest I would. The fungi, moss, bacteria, and lichens do not work fast enough for me. Come to think of it, they don't work fast enough for Mother Nature either and that is why she sends down lightening every so often, to hurry things along.
Maybe I shouldn't own a cabin in the woods, surrounded by the chaos of nature. But living in the well groomed suburbs has not provided me with much solace either. Right off the bat I can recall three incidents where a seemingly healthy oak tree fell on a house during a routine thunder storm. And I have a couple of very old trees on my property in Woodbury that lean menacingly over my bedroom roof. It's a wonder I get any sleep at all. Maybe next time I'll buy a condo in the city, no higher than the third floor, so I can walk up....because, you know, elevators get stuck.
This is why we have insurance. . . .
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