Day 199 - Cut Down a Tree

Date: July 24th, 2010

American mythology taught us that George Washington couldn't tell a lie so he admitted to chopping down a cherry tree.  Or was that Abe Lincoln?  Being Honest Abe and all.  I've heard it both ways.  The point is, lying is bad.  Also, don't cut down trees.  Unless they're gigantic, ugly, power-line strangling monsters without a vegetative soul, to speak of.  That was the case this weekend as I head down to Southgate to chill with Justin's family.  One of the things his folks had been asking him to do (before he started disappearing to Ann Arbor every weekend for two months... something I take full personal blame for) was help cut back and poison one particularly aggressive tree-bush-monster that had been growing outside his brother's window.

As we headed down there, I realized that I a)had never cut down a tree before and b)was way too excited about this.  Its manual labor.  There's nothing, like, in the world, that should be exciting about that to a cultivator of laziness such as myself.  But as we got closer, I found myself almost giddy with anticipation.  I don't know if its the stress of a job where so many people need so much help or the constant driving back and forth from Ann Arbor to Lansing, but the time had come for me to hack wildly at something and better a tree than a person or small puppy of some kind.

I managed to get my hands on a small saw and started taking little branches off the thing with surprising ease.  Unlike most of my new things, there was no set of instructions to base my actions on.  It was more that Justin, his dad, his brother Aaron and I all walked out to his backyard, saw a tree, and decided to take it down in whatever manner best suited us.  Without strict rules, process or really any instruction whatsoever, it really was a great way to get out aggression.

By the time we were finished, a huge pile of branches was strewn across his back lawn, the "tree" was just a pathetic little stump and I was seriously in need of a spritzing.  You know, like, a blast of cool water to the face.  Preferably with a bit of perfuming to it.  I guess what I'm saying is that its hot, sweaty work to take out a tree.  But it was also seriously rewarding.  Where once there was this giant, ugly monster of a tree, now there was just a sad little stump and a pile of branches.  Immediate results.  Not like writing a letter or watching TV.  It felt good.  And I got to play with a saw... so I got that going for me.