Timber!

     How did this happen? Twenty years ago I watched out my kitchen window teary-eyed as trees in the woods behind our house were pinched at their bases by heavy machinery and then toppled crashing to the ground. Like the song says, “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot . . .” only this time instead of a parking lot, they crammed cookie cutter houses in. Oh well, people need places to live.

     A few months later, we moved to another house, one with a wooded backyard. Nobody would be able to cut our trees down. Except us.

     On a breezy, cloudy March day, a man scaled up two of our 150’ Douglas Firs and a couple of Hemlock trees with a chainsaw dangling from a rope tied around his waist. I watched him harnessed to a tree that was swaying in the wind like a metronome--one last dance. I thought I was a tree hugger. How had I turned into the one signing the check to bring these trees down?

     In the seventeen years that we’ve lived in this house, we weathered many Northwest storms: windstorms, snow storms, even the Nisqually earthquake. But the ice storm on January 22, 2012 was the one that made us start questioning the wisdom of living “in the woods.”

Douglas fir branches bow under the weight of snow and ice.

   The ice storm hit our area hard. Throughout the night we heard branches snapping like gunshots followed by thunderous thuds on our roof and in our yard. We took shelter in our basement. Clearing the debris from our yard and roof took more than a week. The pile of branches along our curb ended up being almost 4 feet tall. We took load after load to the dump waiting in 30-minute lines with other trucks brimming with yard waste. (See January 18, 21, 22, and 28, 2012 posts.)

The pile of debri grows.

     Most of our debris came from the trees on the north side of the house After we cleared it all away, we realized that we had to replace the roof. We filed an insurance claim. We rigged some of the battered rain gutters and eventually replaced those as well.

     Weatherwise it was relatively calm until 2016 rolled around. On Thanksgiving, a windstorm hit. After a filling Thanksgiving meal, we stood in the driveway with our daughter Sarah and her boyfriend saying our goodbyes. John and I went inside and were turning off the lights to go to bed when the house shook with what sounded like an explosion.          

   We thought one of the trees fell on our house. Outside, we saw that it was a 15-20’ branch that fell.  It came down on the roof and then landed on my Camry. It was 11:15 at night, so we couldn’t see the full extent of the damage and we were worried about more branches coming down. We scurried back inside and considered ourselves lucky that the branch hadn’t hit us 15 minutes earlier.

     By the dawn’s early light, we checked our house and car. The house roof had a dent in it, but not a hole. The 250-lb branch must’ve hit the roof like a nail, then bounced off, landing on my car’s roof and rolling onto the hood. Somehow, it hadn’t broken the glass sunroof or the windshield. But there was a dent above the driver’s door, and also in the door. We get a lot of rain around here. Would it start leaking?

     The house roof didn’t seem to be leaking, but there’s a lot of insulation up in the attic. We called the company that put the “new” roof on and they sent someone out quickly. He inspected the damage and put a temporary patch of plastic over the dent to keep the rain out until they could fix it permanently.  We filed a property claim with our homeowner’s insurance.

     I took the 2001 Camry to three body shops for estimates. The news was not good. All three said that the repairs were going to end up costing a little more than the car was worth, so our insurance company would probably declare it totaled.

     One of the estimators told me that the damage was not structural, just cosmetic. She suggested I might want to repair it myself. Since the car is a Toyota and may have another 100,000 miles in it, that’s what I did. I sanded the dents down and painted it so that it won’t rust. We didn’t file an insurance claim on it.

    We had been working toward selling some of our cars and getting another newer model car for me. The plan had been for the Camry to go to Sarah anyway, just not damaged. We donated her Audi to Public Television, and then gave her the Camry with instructions not to open the sunroof because we aren’t sure it will close again.

    I finally switched my Toyota loyalty off and made up my mind about which vehicle I wanted. For the second time in our lives, we bought a brand new car—a zippy Mazda CX-5 in rich, lustrous Soul Red Crystal!

My new baby! Zoom! Zoom!

Our garage already has two cars in it which is why we are trying to shrink our fleet. So, I parked my sporty new Mazda SUV in the driveway.

     Two weeks later, on February 5, Super Bowl Sunday, Sarah and her boyfriend came to visit again. It started snowing heavily. We loved watching it sift down outside while we were warm and cozy inside. As the snow got deeper, 10” worth, they decided to stay with us overnight rather than attempt to drive back to Seattle.

     Our winter reverie snapped back to reality with a loud boom and the house shaking, again. We ran to look outside and found two of our cars buried in branches. The branches missed the new Mazda by 3."

Near miss!

There was also a 30’ branch on the roof covering half our house. It was from the same tree that dropped the branch on the Camry.

Buried classic BMW.

Branch on roof stretches across two bedrooms.

     We moved our dogs out of the bedroom under the trees. The four of us humans spent the night trying to fall asleep in the basement but keeping an ear open for more falling branches. This was getting old.

     In the morning, we unearthed the two cars buried under branches and removed the covers that protect them from tree sap.

The classic 1985 BMW had cracks streaking down the windshield. The branches hit hard enough to knock the computer out of the roof. The roof and hood were dented.

     My son’s Honda Accord, a survivor of many brutal winters at WSU in Pullman, WA, had the entire back window shattered. The center rear brake light was also destroyed and the frame around the window had dented under the weight of the branch.

     I was hopeful that we could just replace the window and fix the brake light ourselves. It was an entertaining, rainy drive to a Safelite AutoGlass with a shower curtain taped across the back of the car. I was following John and could tell when he turned the defroster on because the shower curtain poufed outward like a bubble. He made it most of the way to the shop before the painter’s tape let loose and the shower curtain started flapping in the wind and rain.

     The window technician told us he couldn’t replace the glass because with the dent in the frame, the glass wouldn’t seat properly. John nodded in agreement. He had predicted this. But, the Safelite guy was great. He vacuumed the glass pieces out and replaced the shower curtain with a more professional temporary back window.

     I followed John to our favorite body shop, Abra, for an estimate. (We’d never had a favorite body shop before.) We filed insurance claims for the Honda, and the BMW, but worried that they’d be declared totaled because they are old cars.

     We decided the trees had to go. It was just too much. We were constantly worried about the danger looming from those trees. We couldn’t park our cars in the driveway. Every time the wind picked up, I was fearfully watching the trees. If it got blustery, I got the dogs out and left the house.

     Some background: Our neighborhood was built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The idea was that the houses were built to blend into nature and become a part of the natural forest, a la Frank Lloyd Wright. As many older trees as possible were left in place during construction. That’s how Manorwood was created and it still has its wooded feel, due to the homeowners’ association covenants.

    To have a tree with a diameter of more than 6” removed, it has to be approved by the board of the Manorwood Homeowners’ Association. Getting approval is difficult if not impossible. You have to hire an arborist to assess the health of the tree. The effects on neighbors is taken into account, as well as how it affects the forest density and how much light your property receives. You must provide a map of all the trees on the property. New trees have to replace the removed ones.

   Most of the stories that I’ve heard about getting approval for tree removal did not have happy endings. All I’ve ever heard are tales of people cutting trees down and then having liens put on their homes, or being fined $600 per tree removed.

    The neighbor who shares the property line with the problem trees is also a board member. He encouraged us to go to the next homeowner’s meeting to talk about the trees. We went and the woman who makes the tree decisions was not exactly sympathetic. When we told her that our roof was damaged and we had three cars totaled, she told us we should park our cars in the RV lot. We were trying to be positive, so I didn’t ask her if we should park our roof in the RV lot too.

     Instead I went home and filled out the request to remove trees. I mapped the trees on our property (we would still have more than 20 trees left after removing the dangerous ones). I prepared a 35-page report documenting with photos the damage done by the trees since 2012. We hired arborists to examine the trees and give us their findings. At least two trees were diseased. Most of the branches left on the trees were on one side--over our house. I included that in the report. Our neighbor had several board members come by and look at the trees hovering over our house. One was growing only 4 feet from our bedroom.

Douglas fir 4 feet from our bedroom.

Douglas fir leaning toward our house.

   We submitted the report and waited. If they didn’t approve it, we would work with our neighbor to get the covenants changed to allow for dangerous trees to be removed. He wanted to get a petition started. John and I also talked about moving if we didn’t get approval.

Fortunately our request was approved. I think the tree committee realized that if they denied us and someone got injured or killed by one of those trees they could be legally liable.

    We worked with our neighbor to get bids on removing the trees and settled on an experienced, affordable company, Foothills Tree Service & Stump Grinding. I called utilities companies to come out and mark where our gas lines, cable lines, and telephone lines were.

     And that is how I came to be sitting in my car across the street and up the hill from my house watching those stately trees that I loved come down. It was a bittersweet experience.

     I focused on the skills of the tree cutters. I’ve always been fascinated by trades people who are great at their jobs, and these men were experts. What they were doing—climbing 150 feet up trees that were swaying in the wind—in a harness with a chain saw was extremely risky. The guys below were also in potential danger from above, and from feeding a chipper. Coordination between those in the sky and those on earth was crucial.

Tree cutter in the center of the photo.

     They were totally comfortable with their work, doing their jobs automatically, joking easily. I, on the other hand, was holding my breath a lot! I watched the climber throw a rope over upper branches, tie it to lower branches, start up the chainsaw, cut the branch, slowly spin it into a perfect position to lower it below the roof line, and then let it drop to the ground. It was a narrow strip of a target between our house and fence yet he managed to hit it without taking out his co-workers, our houses, fences, sheds, or shrubs.

Note how tall the trees are over the
 lightpost and our  2-story house.

The top of one tree ready for the chipper.

     Questions swirled in my head as I watched them. How do you tie a knot that holds a 250-lb branch, yet releases easily when it needs to? How do you keep the saw from binding up? How do you make sure you don’t cut a rope or yikes, your harness? How do you know how high to climb before you cut the very top of the tree off? I didn’t know the answers, but watching them work was mesmerizing.

     What do they do when the chainsaw runs out of gas? Lower it on the rope, and get one of the other guys to fill ‘er up, then pull it back up. How do you make sure you don’t slide back down the tree? Have spikes on your shoes, and against instinct, lean away from the tree trunk, even when your arms are pushing a 3-ft chunk of cut tree trunk in the opposite direction, away from you.

    During a donut break, I listened to their stories. Most of them had been cutting trees all their lives. They had learned their craft from fathers and grandfathers before them. One told me that his grandfather was still climbing trees when he was 65 years old.

     When I told them I could never do their jobs, they teased me and told me to step into the harness, they’d teach me. I think I’ll stick to fighting battles with a pen (or laptop). When those chainsaws started buzzing, neighbors from up and down our street came out to watch, and to congratulate me on winning over the homeowner’s association. For now, in my tiny neck of woods, I’m a suburban legend.

Laura Keolanui Stark is starting to trust trees again. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.