Trimming

You may have been my facebook post on this, but I’ve been thinking more about this operation. Our neighbor had a very tall tree taken down today. A large limb had destroyed the garage roof, and this was just after the whole house had been re-roofed. The insurance company paid to finish taking the limb down, but the entire tree needed to be removed so it didn’t continue to fall on the house!

I’m afraid of heights, so the guy in the cherry picker fascinated me. I think they call it a bucket, though. The other impressive part of the operation was the choreography. The guy in the bucket would slash the limbs off, letting them fall gracefully to the ground--but with a loud thump (and probably some holes in the ground). At an unseen signal, he would quit cutting and the ground crew would step in and heft the logs to the wood chipper (great murder weapon, I was thinking). I watched and watched for communications between them, but they all seemed to just know when to get out of the way of falling limbs and when to gather them up.

Those are good writing lessons, aren’t they? Trimming out the dead wood--and pacing. When to step it up and when to slow it down.

The only worrisome part was the guy who kept a constant cigarette going around all that sawdust!