Jon Crispin's Notebook

Our house is surrounded by enormous white pines.  Every once in a while, during a storm one of them falls down.  Before I became a homeowner I used to love violent weather.  Wind, lightening, heavy rains…the more the better.  Waking up in the middle of the night with the wind is blowing like crazy isn’t so much fun when you are waiting to hear a loud crack and hoping that an eighty year old tree doesn’t land on your head.  When our neighbor Ken decided to have a few of the larger pines around his house taken down, it seemed like a good idea to join in.  We began talking to Leon and Shay this summer, and they encouraged us to wait until the winter to have the work done.  They showed up Wednesday morning with a giant crane, a chipper, a tractor and lots of chain saws.

These are huge trees.  I got no work done over the last two days, watching these guys work to take them down.  Shay would clip his climbing harness into the ball of the crane, be raised three quarters of the way up the tree and attach one of these yellow chains to the trunk.  He would then rappel down to about 50 feet off the ground and make a cut.  The crane would support the weight of the tree and move it over the house to the driveway where it would be dragged to the street.

It is always interesting to watch people who are very good at what they do, and who seem to have lots of fun in the process.  Shay was a rock climber when he was younger, and seems to be most comfortable flying around in the air.  The crane guy told me that of all the tree climbers he worked with, Shay was at the top of the list.

What a great bunch of guys.