It’s been a while, so I guess I probably owe a little more than just two cents worth, but that’s how it goes with Bipolar Mania. When I’m good, I’m really good. When I’m bad, don’t talk to me.
I’m bipolar, hypoglycemic, with a little attention deficit, and a whole lot of anal-retentiveness, occasionally I can use a touch of therapy.
Near the end of the movie Arachnophobia, after a ferocious battle with a new breed of deadly spiders the movie’s hero Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels) – a man suffering with a paralyzing fear of spiders – lays injured on the floor. As the queen arachnid slowly crawls up his chest he pulls up a nail gun and blasts the spider across the room with it bursting into flames as the nail impales the spider into an electrical control panel.
As he put the nail gun on the floor, Jennings mumbled “therapy.”
We can all use a little therapy sometimes. Some get it from a couch, some from sports, others from hobbies, volunteer work, or maybe a little colored pill.
While I’m not into blasting spiders off my chest with a nail gun, I do like my therapy to involve a little adrenaline rush, solitude, and/or suffering. Tree harvesting and mountain biking are two of my favorite forms. Best when not practiced at the same time. Harvesting trees with a bike really hurts.
As most know, I recently moved into a farm homestead. The passage of time, and the winds of thunderstorms and tornados had turned the yard and woodlands surrounding the homestead into a maze of broken branches and downed trees.
While many might have looked and thought, “what a mess.” I looked at the jumble of broken wood and thought, “therapy.”
During a time when I was less than happy with course in life, I retreated to the “lake house,” which, except for a highly inefficient electric furnace, was heated entirely with wood heat.
I spent the next six years cutting, hand-splitting, stacking and burning wood to keep my tootsies warm, and work out a few of my issues.
I was younger, braver and dum… less wiser then, and occasionally my woodcutting adventures were stories worth being told. Once, after watching me slip in the mud and toss a four-foot long, six-inch diameter log through the back window of my El Camino, a friend told me that I might be better off financially if I sold tickets when I went out to cut.
Now I am much older, a little bit wiser, and have the tree-harvesting assistance of a John Deere tractor with a bucket loader and claw.
One of the larger trees needing harvested was a 45-foot-tall Cottonwood with abase that was eight-foot in circumference. Time and a tornado had already taken off the top half, or more, of the tree and it was now little than a solid tower of wood with a loose bark covering.
While time and the tornado destroyed the tree, 80 years work of broken branches, bark and underbrush had built up quite a defensive barrier around the base of the tree.
By the time I spent three days stumbling through piles of wood and assorted sticker plants, getting swacked by small saplings as they sprung free from a load, and moving pile after pile of wood clearing the carcasses of two other towering giants that had previously fallen to their doom to get to the base of wooden monster I had worked out a fair amount of therapy. Along with a few curse words.
I needed to redirect the fall so I had to cut a nice sized wedge in the trunk of the giant, which was a bit of a challenge with my 18-inch Makita saw. I had to cut half of each slice of the wedge, and then move around to the other side and try to match it. I suppose marking a line around the trunk might have made it a bit easier.
I’m as good once as I ever was, but I’m not as good as I once was. I cut the tree stumps fairly high for easier removal later. By the time I manhandled the saw through two angled and two level cuts to make the wedge, my aching back and wavering arms confirmed the about statement.
I took a quick breather before starting into the final cut that would fell the tree. After what seemed like a long time, I heard a few cracks and saw the old tree shudder. I pulled the saw and took a step back. As I killed the saw, I realized the cracking noise I heard was the decaying bark that was clinging to the core of the tree. Like one of those imploding buildings you see on television, the bark was crashing down around me.
I took a lot of steps back stumbling over other branches and bark scattered around the area. After clearing the debris field, I snickered a little from the close call then turned around to look at the clearing cloud of dust and debris. As it cleared I could see the old tree was not giving up so easily. It was still standing.
I stumbled my way back through the debris field, which was much worse now that 45 feet of bark had crashed on top of it.
I flooded the saw on the restart so it took a few more pulls than normal to get it started, but finally after a three-day trial, I made the final cut and the towering tree came crashing down with an ground rumbling thud.
I hit the kill switch on the saw and mumbled, “therapy.”
That old Cottonwood probably stood in those woods for 80 years or more; stood the test of climate change, the wrath of Mother Nature twisting it’s limbs, and migrating birds defecating on it’s leaves.
Just before my final cut when that avalanche of crashing bark had me running for my life, I wonder if that tree was thinking the same thing.
We can all use a little therapy sometimes.
Terry Spradley is the editor of the St. John News. His e-mail address is sjnewseditor@embarqmail.com
