Fragments From Floyd

I'm having regrets this morning. And tendinitis. From sins of commission, sins of omission.

Yesterday, I tried to make best use of a fallen hemlock. I could tell there were risks involved: because of the way this tree grows, there are literally hundreds of branches on a forty-foot tree. To cut them, I have to lift the chainsaw to shoulder height or higher. I know better than to do much of this. The repetitive use of my wrist extensors will always get me a case of lateral epicondylitis: tennis elbow; or in this case, chain saw elbow.

And once the branches are off, the trunk is so full of knots from all those branches that splitting it to woodstove size won't happen in a single stroke of the maul, which is all it takes with a section of oak, hickory, or locust.

And so I left the most of that tree there in the neighbor's meadow to be heaped in a brush pile and burned between snows this winter. A younger man, perhaps, would be willing and able to do what needs to be done to burn hemlock. I cannot.

I feel bad about this waste of a tree, about this waste of a species as all the hemlocks in this valley die and fall in the next years, and I can't use them for heat. I'll not be able to turn their untimely death to our comfort over the winters. Sad for them. Sad for us.