Here’s a little known fact about Vermont: Trees fall on the regular. Maybe not all of Vermont, but I’ve only lived in places where trees generally stay in their place, except for the occasional hurricane wind, so watching a tree fall during only “mostly” high winds, feels like it’s an all Vermont thing.
Now, high winds were on the forecast this morning. in fact, there was a wind “warning”. And I’ll agree there were some decent sized winds. But compared to what I’ve been through in Florida, I wouldn’t say they were a huge concern.
And yet, this morning we woke to our power out. Apparently it was enough wind to knock out our power for almost 2 hours.
And while I was in the kitchen cleaning up, it was enough wind for Tyler to yell “OH MY GOD!” followed by a loud cracking sound of a tall tree falling across the width of the road in front of our house.
Now, like I said, I’ve only been in places where trees stay put. So, when I saw a full sized tree fall onto our road, I might have freaked out a bit. Because it was a tree. In my road. And I had no idea who to call.
So I called my neighbor. And told her a tree fell in the road. And she’s all like “Oh okay, I’ll call the town office!” like this is a thing that happens everyday. So much so that she has town tree cleanup services, that happen to be in some mysterious office, on speed dial. (okay, yes, I realize no one has speed dial anymore. But let’s be realistic. This is Vermont. Many places don’t even take credit card. I’m certain people have speed dial around here.)
And then I glance outside and cars are stopping, breaking off a few branches from the tree, and just driving around it through our land. And I can just imagine them in there going “Oh lookie, Matilda! There’s another tree in the road. Must be Monday.”
So, I say to Tyler, we need to try to clear more out so the cars can drive around without driving through our land. I mean, it’s Vermont, who knows when the clean up will get here. They will probably put us on the bottom of the list and be out sometime next week. So we go out and start our own clean up, braking branches and tossing them to the side. All the while, cars are driving past us, driving through our land, waving as they go by, or rolling down their windows going “huh. That’s a tree”.
After awhile neighbors started to stop. The first of which was an older man in very loud pick up truck. Who was trying to tell us something. But his truck was so loud, we couldn’t understand a word he was saying. And he wasn’t wearing a mask, so we certainly weren’t going to get any closer to find out. But apparently he wanted to try hauling the tree out.
By the time he got it all hitched up, two other guys had stopped, one of which said he had a chainsaw in his truck. Because apparently it is also common for Vermonters to carry chainsaws around in their trucks. But Old Vermonter 1 was determined to try hauling it out.
So he chained it up, got in his truck, and drove off…
…taking a small branch with him as it snapped off the tree. And he drove awhile before he realized he wasn’t actually pulling the tree.
So, he attached it to the trunk this time. Got back in the truck and drove…. nowhere. Engines reared, tires spun. The truck and the tree were going nowhere.
And then the chain broke.
So Old Vermonter #2 went and got his trusty old truck chainsaw. And started sawing away at the unfortunate tree. And working together, we got the tree over to the side of the road…
Just as a digger drove up to do the exact same thing. So it pushed it a little farther for good measure and the tree is now sitting in many different pieces across the street from my house, reminding me forever of the first time a tree fell at my house.
RIP tree.
