View from the trees

Pathfinder

2008-09-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

I am constantly surprised by how few people can give accurate directions over the phone. In world war two, Allies found places they hadn't been before, sometimes with no maps, told others how to get there, and had to kill people along the way or be killed.

Add to this the awful communications of field telephones, the vagaries of 'fraternal fire' (I just can't call it Friendly) and there was a certain recipe for disaster. I think wars were won, ground was settled, and cars were driven better then, than now, due to folks knowing how to converse, and the forgotten skill of giving and taking directions.

For instance, I live on one of those streets that should be easy to find, but is not. Not long ago, I ran a business out of my home and had to give directions to scores of banjo students (arguably not the most promising demographic) who somehow found me.

Part of the problem in direction giving, is that you must imagine seeing things for the first time, and explain only the germane things, nothing else. One can throw in a landmark, but really, is it necessary? I know I am in trouble when someone I am talking to on the phone says: "You know five corners, right?"

Of course I do. I know Five Corners in Spokane, by the Post Office, in Deer Park Washington here in Portland Oregon, (off Killingsworth Street, a street you should always spell carefully for your intended victim) and I think I recall one on the north side of Oahu. But this xenophobe is talking about his Five Corners. Over by the mill. Just after you cross the creek.

At this point I know that young uns who have not driven an average of twenty thousand miles a year for twenty years are piping up. "Just Mapquest it" or Google it, or god knows what else. No. I seldom do that, but I may use it as an adjunct to directions I find on a quaint nineteenth century device I call The Map. Most of the last two centuries were devoted to finding and identifying places, and putting them on maps, and I for one am not abandoning that for the narrow view afforded by a computer screen. Go to, indeed. Where are you coming from?

Maps work well, but are not perfect. They take some getting used to. I still get lost when I should not, but I also amaze myself (my harshest critic) with my encyclopedic knowledge of various places and streets. I have done tree work in many neighborhoods around here. And around Oahu. And around Seattle. And around Spokane. I love the Thomas Guides. In Oahu, we used Brian's Sectional Maps.

Basically, a book of various maps, with the edges of each describing where it fits into the next. When someone mentions Five Corners, I politely ask for the address, and the nearest large cross street. Some people, unfamiliar with this, will stubbornly repeat... "Well it's Broadway, but if you go past the mill to Five Corners all you have to do is just cross the crik and..." I listen with half an ear and look it up meanwhile. For this, it is essential to have a map in the car and a map in the office. A simple rule, but an important one.

I still ask " Is that Feniway Street, or Place, or what?" And believe it or not, get impatient responses!

"Court of course. There IS no Feniway Place. "(Not since the war, how stupid of me).

But worse than this is the people who say," Yeah, I think its Feniway Place. Anyway, you go on past the little crik, and..." They do not know.

They have an address, but it is unimportant. Letters are a thing of the past, after all. A physical address is becoming archaic. But if I have to get to your tree is, an address is essential. I try to smile while I talk over the phone, because they say you wrinkle less. Plus, people can hear a frown. But I have also developed what some tree and service people all over the world probably know already, and I share it with you here, as a public service from view from the trees.

I write shorthand, and I write it big on the back of the work order, or on about a half page of the 8.5x 11 phone log. This is because, while driving, I may have to consult it in a hurry, and I do not want to search for my place on the directions at thirty miles per hour. As I read it, I fold it from the top, so that I have erased and saved directions as I go. So very 90's. So very Eighteen nineties. Get it? My shorthand goes like this:

left turn=L

Just a big L, but I do a circle around it.

Right turn =R. I guess I got into doing the circle around it because I was trying to make it very plain to myself what I meant. Anyhow, I do it.

RR or RRX means, you guessed it, Railroad tracks or 'cross railroad tracks'

1 mi. means 1 mile.

1 blk.= One block.

N=north, etcetera.

I write out the words 'past' and 'until'. No wait, sometimes I fudge on that and I write the word 'till'. I may say 'to'.

Oh, and interstates get a drawing of a badge, with the number inside it. Crude, but effective, I find.

That's pretty much it. Then I can read it on the run, not that I want to, but my memory is short, so even though I read it to myself a few times before starting, I need to refresh the page a few times during the journey. And one other thing, just in case, I do write a few notes in the margin, such as, 'near 5 crnrs? Go over bridge?' Just in case.

So the directions today said;

" I-5 N to Exit 32. R to 117th, L 7 mi. till R onto W.Main. (becomes E.Main, then NE 219th st.) L on 182nd Ave. 1.3 mi. to NE Allworth Rd. 1.8 mi approx. to Rock Creek. R.... Then the address, what house on the right or left. Simple dimple. Why not?

Tree Sitters Lose Another Grove

2008-09-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

When Ghandi first proposed nonviolent resistance, he had a contest in his then-newspaper to come up with a uniquely Indian word to describe it. The word was 'Satyagraha'.

Fifty-some years later, someone posted a funny little sign on their front lawn in Seattle. The sign said: "Word of The Week" on top. That one week in the Autumn SATYAGRAHA was scrawled below. I searched two dictionaries with no result. There were no personal computers yet. I could have asked one of the angels of the library system, a reference librarian, but I was a busy man at the time, running to practice for a marathon after tree work on a production arborist crew.

So I simply called my Dad. He immediately told me about the word, where I'd find it, and then the meaning of another word from the board, KLUDGE, which is an aerospace term meaning 'to patch together hurriedly.' Dad is a former editor, and one of those people who take words so seriously it is actually funny. Like me and trees, I suppose. I could just work with them. Sort of funny how you can end up with several of these in the same family.

So I went to the library and got two books on Ghandi. One was the remarkable In his Own Words.

Ghandi never met the regents at University of California, Berkeley. Had he met them, he probably would have needed more words. Words for 'Obstinate fools who would remove living treasures for profit' for instance. He would have liked the peaceful protestors, Satyaghrahi's, who have been living in the trees on campus since 2006, when it was announced that the grove of redwoods and native oaks would be razed for a new Sports Complex.

You can read a little about it at Tree-Sitters Fail to Halt Construction this site. Tree thugs, calling themselves arborists, helped the Construction/Destruction crew to get the tree sitters out.

A little background. Oaks in California are a native species. These are big beauties more than 200 years old. The Redwoods are younger, but an essential part of this grove on campus. In California and the bay area, nobody really knows why young oaks are not surviving. It could be that the over-populated deer herds nibble them to death. It could be that compaction for equipment, landscaping, and construction foot traffic kill them. It could be a result of overwatering from landscape installation. Whatever the cause, the oaks are dying out during construction, and they are not coming back. Oh, and a new disease Phytophthera ramosa, is also decimating them, due to longer wetter springs. Some say Global Warming.

Wouldn't it behoove a University to preserve their oaks in this kind of climate? Is it really down to that particular piece of property being the only place in Berkeley where a student can get in a workout? Seems to me there were lots of stadiums, gymnasiums, and open space on campus, without taking down big mature trees.

Once Ghandi was asked what made him think of passive resistance. He snapped "It is not passive. It is non-violent. There is nothing passive about our resistance!" He went on to say it was the only way his country could win against Britain's yoke, without a huge loss of life. Some folks do not know that he served in a war, drove ambulances, and saw firsthand what kind of horror it could be. He served for the Crown. Even then, he was against violence.

Maybe the tree-sitters, trying hard to be Satyagrahis, got complacent and passive. Maybe it takes more than sitting now. I still believe in non-violence, but I don't see so many examples of tree-sitting working against tree removal. It's time to modernize protesting. Trees expand to fill available space. Protesters need to do some expansion too, because the available space is getting thinner.

Take the Iraq war (please). Could Ghandi have successfully prevented that? Three million Europeans protested, non-violently. About a million Americans, including me, protested. The Republican strong suits went ahead. They controlled the press, and who they did not control they fought, dirty (see Valerie Plame). Ghandi counted on a free press to help with his country's struggle. What happens when that's gone? What happens when those who speak out are bumped off?

We can take an example from South America, where American CIA helped oppressive regimes close newspapers, kill detractors, and make money. Or we can take the example from Nazi Germany. Perhaps non-violent resistance would have worked there... But this is all academic. Because most of the Jewish, Polish and Gypsies who died in concentration camps were unaware that they were at war. Most were slowly assimilated, step by step, into worse and worse conditions, and by the time they realized they were at war, it was too late.

I think this is what is happening to trees in urban environments. They are being slowly consigned to smaller spaces, and when a grove such as the UCal oaks goes away, people hardly notice. It's a human interest story.

Saving and Planting

2008-09-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Alex Shigo, a scientist with heart and verbal skills, who changed the way we think about trees, rots, and wounding, is often quoted. I like this quote best:

"Nothing is all good, all the time." He said this in context of a planting project in Hawaii, in response to a question, if I remember correctly, something like: "why don't we just plant more and more of the good trees?"

I went home that night and wrote about this, and came up with an analogy I think nobody else had, yet. I said in the Aloha Arborists Newsletter that planting more, and not making plans for long term care, is like having sex and not planning for children. It's fun, everyone feels good afterward, and the kids are on their own. It's irresponsible at best.

Stakes are left in place and girdle the trees. Watering is forgotten after the first month or so. Weed whips are seen regularly slashing away at the bases of trees making them prettier (nice! say the planters) and deader (details).

I read a nice solution for staking in Tree Care Industry Magazine last Spring. I forget what issue. Rather than stake with long tied stakes above ground, the idea is to drive stakes right through the root mass, and drive the top of the (2 foot long 2"x2") stake right into the ground. This way the stake does its work (better, in my estimation), is hidden, and does not require ties to hold the tree in place. For you non-arborists, tying and staking irresponsibly is a cause of twenty to forty percent of new tree death, depending on who you listen to.

I have planted about a dozen trees this year, using the method above. None of them has blown over. I use three stakes, going in three directions slanted downward. Nifty trick from an industry magazine.

An example of why it is not all good all the time to preserve trees is shown in the photos. In south east Portland Oregon, we are building lots of McMansions right up next to trees. If it is done right, you can preserve the magnificence of nature right outside the backdoor of this impossible to heat, space-wasting, toxic dump of a domicile.

If it's done right. That means having an arborist on board from the blueprint stage onward, who protects the tree using a tree protection plan, includes fencing in specifications, and may be on site during mechanical excavation as well, to supervise cutting of roots, tunneling, or bridging over a critical root zone.

All this assumes that the tree in question is worth saving. The tree in this photo, photographed from the front of the overlarge dwelling, then from near the tree's base, is and was a hazard. It never should have been preserved closer than its height to any structure. If it were preserved, it could have been a lovely wildlife tree, and the family could have had their cheerios and watched each morning as woodpeckers foraged for insects out the window, a safe distance

away. And perhaps seen, over time, a raptor or two sitting in the dead branches, where the view of warm-blooded prey is best.

I am not suggesting that any tree, especially a hazard, is ever safe. Trees are seemingly unconcerned with safety. I have seen trees fall apart in forest situations and the limbs -- torn, broken, rotting -- put out new roots and colonize that space. Whoopee! The tree says. That was fun being tall. Lets just grow here, laying around, now.

If life hands them lemons, trees make lemonade. Lemon trees are never handed lemons, they must photosynthesize and draw up water and such to make lemons, but that is another story.

When builders are handed lemons, in the form of unsafe and undesirable trees, they find a lemon of an arborist to tell them it is ok, so that they do not have to do any expensive and time consuming planting of trees to get the property past inspection. More municipalities are requiring trees now, because the benefits to watersheds (trees slow the movement of water, use some of it, and help slow erosion), wildlife (trees provide thermal and hiding cover for critters and sometimes humans), and aesthetics (homes with trees in their landscapes can be worth much more than those without). Trees are good, right? But nothing, not even a merrily photosynthesizing , well-fluted column of woody tissue and non-woody associations with a leafy bower above is all good. At least, not all the time.

Reality nature

2008-09-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

So much on the news about the ups and downs of reality-television stars. So much on the tube. In my world, we watch reality television of trees. Its like science-fiction. I cannot watch television, due to a brain disability. I feel insulted by the programming; isn't that odd?

Some of us care about trees as much as viewers seem to care about the made-for-tv stars. Of course, they just sit there, right? The visuals need a little tweaking if we are going to send this from my mind to prime time. And trees, unfortunately, can't talk, so crying, a great draw, is also out. Oh, by the way, they may not 'feel' at all... but no matter. Just imagine....

Right after WWI, a previously undocumented disease made its way across Europe, killing stately, tall city trees we call elms. Especially American Elms, Ulmus americana, were susceptible to a fungus, transported by a beetle. Around 1930, the disease made its way to America in a shipment of wood.

As if overnight, the populations of city trees in the US and Canada were decimated, in some places almost entirely, and in some reduced by half or more. Nobody ever linked the presence of this disease to war, to the exploding of shells and piercing of bullets that took place all over Europe. A previously benign fungus that somehow became prevalent had elms quaking in their roots. If you look at the backgrounds in old movies, you see American Elms everywhere. They are tall, tall. Vase shaped, graceful, just your idea of the perfect tree, if you are like most of us.

Trees cannot fight, and they cannot run. So what would be the use of a 'fight-or-flight' reflex, such as we mammals have? This whole idea of trees 'screaming' as was so popular to believe in the seventies, is another example of man anthropomorphizing trees. Talking about 'bleeding', 'healing' and other junk science. Probably trees, like zen masters, just stood and accepted the fact, saying "Is that so?" to the wave of disease.

Trees, Dr. Shigo once said to me, are rarely defined. He went on to say that one can almost always win an argument by asking for a definition of terms. One of his hobbies was to come up with definitions, some of which took years, for common concepts. He had some nutty ideas, but I loved the elegance of his definitions. Trees, he said, are a ..."conglomeration of associations living and dead..." it went on, but thats enough for now. Don't hurt yourself.

We call things 'dead' and 'living' based on our own anthro-centric definitions. But discolored heartwood, which most arborists call 'dead' tissue, still transports water and nutrients upward, and is a highway for radial movement of parenchyma. 'Dead' bark and hollows containing decay are often thriving communities of fungus, bacteria, invertebrates and mammals. (-thanks Dr. Shigo!) So tree people seem to wax philosophical, and hedge (pardon the pun) when asked about dead wood. My friend Scotty Altenhoff used to always leave a hunk of deadwood near the top of a tree, a signature, if you will, for birds to sit on.

Right now in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Portland, Oregon, large populations of American Elms quietly await their fate. For some reason, these elms have escaped the wholesale destruction most of North America felt due to Dutch Elm Disease (DED) so called, because of the Dutch scientists who first noticed it in the years following WWI. In these areas, hominids are prevented from cutting or pruning trees of this species form March 15 to November 15 or thereabouts. Injections are given. Infected areas are pruned out. Trees are 'protected by law' a very human solution to woody plant problems.

It is my opinion that diseases like this will continue to crop up with global heating. These are secondary reactions of tree associations, if you will. Trees suffer from some of mankinds more brutal follies, like war and the slow heating of the biosphere. Diseases like bark beetle and root rots, that used to be winter killed, are finding the weather to their liking, and are on the increase here in the Pacific Northwest. Who can tell, maybe it also true with the DED?

I wish you could all see what I am seeing, in the slow-motion world of trees, where fascinating changes are taking place in real time, with real actors, who just happen to be another species, in another kingdom. For now the tv, even cable, can't run it. But if you really care, and you watch over time, you can partake of this tragicomedy in your own brain. You just have to watch them, a few days out of the year, with consciousness.

Lets Get Messed Up-On Art

2008-08-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

When you think of art, you just have to think of history. As long as we have been around, we have decorated stuff we carried. Lots of reasons exist. You can say we did it to please the gods, or ward off evil, or attract good. But defining visual art can be easy. Stuff made to ellicit an emotional response in humans.

In Puebla, Mexico, the entire city sweats, bleeds, and pisses art. Some of this can be unpleasant. Some is delightful. Some is for sale. Some would please even anarchist/artists like Banksy in its inneffable unliftable unsellable ephemeralism. (Banksy.co.uk or Banksy.com). The fabulous graffiti/signage found had a blogspot address! want it? Ok...its www.elmonofacil.blogspot.com. I think that means The Easy Monkey. my SOuth American friends called me Mono Gordo when we were all climbing together. I think that means Honored Brother. (Please- don't correct my Spanish. I couldn't take it.)

In Puebla, the true afficionado must leave the credit cards with a trusted friend. Tallavera pottery is so wonderfully cheap and available, in several fine shops. I also found and bought recycled glass drinking glasses, and antique jewelry as gifts. These did not strain the pocketbook, and were high quality.

Puebla has what Santa Barbara and Beverly hills aim for: that funky working-class authenticity that makes simple objects valuable. real soul and a working knowledge of what's working. Does this mean every gallery is a winner? No. Enough said.

But it also had incredible signs, even better than those I found on the walls of Mexico City. Signs for Auto Repair and Upholstery Shops were as good as those for galle

ries. And graffiti, so artfully blended into edifices, had another quality from the unfurling screed that is ever present in my native Portland, Oregon. The 'mi mi mi meeeeee' art I once heard aptly described as 'kids playing with paint'. Its like listening to the radio and thinking you do not like music. You do, just not radio crap.

And trees? I wish I could say they were respected, understood, loved. I wish they had been in enough soil to be healthy, pruned so that they were not dangers 'to themselves and others'. But they weren't. The trees had bands strapped around their stems and major limbs, effectively cutting off the circulation in a slow constriction depending on the tree's growth.

Trees were set in one or two major parks I saw (Paseo Bravo, El Paseo San Francisco, and the main square) and not allowed outside those parks on pain of death. Any that had escaped were confined to walled front yards or cracks in pavement and liberally dusted with pollution, pee and trash. Then dried for a period of years, hacked at by brave climbers hobbled by nineteenth-century methods, and left to thrive.

Herein is a photo of a few trees in the main park, girdled to death or close, in one case, by metal bands. Its hard to imagine, because we know it is wrong, but some folks have not had the education yet, and cannot figure out this cause and effect. We know they love their trees, and the lights are hung there because fiestas are fun amongst the trees. But its killing them. Anyone want to go down and do a teaching trip? I volunteer to accompany you.

I belong to an organization called the International Society of Arboriculture (isa-arbor.org) Can I say without complaint, with urgency, with dread, that I have seen pruning,planting and tree care get better all over the US when I visit, but in Europe and Mexico, I have seen no change from when I started 27 years ago? Plenty of Europeans in the ISA directory, and some in the directory are from South America.

Its time we started to get our 'I' back. If we are truly international, we need to bring education to South Americans, as well as North Americans and Europeans. Conventions have people form all over the world. But the word is not getting out fast enough. The trees are dying. The globe is warming. Something must be done. Its been said that the trees in the Urban Forest are the only ones that the public really have control over; all the rest are in corporate or private hands.

Trees of Mexico City, or ,:Exploring my own roots

2008-08-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

Apologies in advance for any typos.

Your fearless correspondent is sitting in an internet ¨cafe¨ (no food here) in the heart of Mexico City, or DF, as it is called here. He is using an unfamiliar keyboard, cannot download from his camera until next week, and is gaining weight on the fabulous food despite walking more than he has in years.

The trees here are of incredible variety and health, despite cruel growing conditions. I see one I just cannot identify, looks like a native fraxinus, everywhere. And ficus, ulmus, erythrina, delonix, eucalyptus, cypress. It has always been a big city. I mean, there was a botanical garden here around the timne of christ, for instance, watered by human sacrifice, probably.

But my roots are partially from here. Great grandpa´s family on both sides of my grandmother
(Nena, is what we always called her) were from here. Maybe, like most immigrant american families, we remembered only what we chose to. Nena would say, if I cut my finger; you´ll heal quick, its that good Indio blood. and practically in the same breath: Use your knife to cut, not your fork. Never forget you are descended form aristocratic spanish stock.

Trees here are probably told the same things when they are young. Don´t worry, there is water below the ground; any Banyan can find it. And in the same breath, Don´t worry about bad pruning; even the Toltec pruned us badly.

I have seen trees growing in soapy pools of water. Trees in manicured parks. Mal-pruned trees, dead trees left standing long past when anyone would be able to climb them, and on top of this practically no tree awareness. The botanical garden at UNAM (the biggest college.... a quarter of a million enrolled at any given time) is a joke. Tiny collection;bad signage; even in Latin. Some have a sign, some do not. I have seen private yards with better accessioned tree collections, and more quantity. But a great cactus and succulent collection. I mean, not to be missed. An old oak in the succulent garden better than any tree in the botanical part. There were nice interpretive signs for butterfly identification. Go figure.

Later I will put up the photos. Frogs on tiny millions of lilly pads, jumping sometimes through, sometimes onto them.... A waterfall and two super grottos of beautiful lava, with stairs worked in artfully. Part of that succulent collections so well tended, and the other, larger part, perhaps four acres, overrun with weeds and non-pruned agave so you had to squeeze through the poinky parts. Am I being too technical here? Poinky. Ow!

This morning I wrote in a park (-with this quaint old habit of using pen and paper I still have) filled with trees, fountains lining the walks, and benches where the folks sacked out or sat as they must have for hundreds of years.

What happened in this city, when Cortez came into power, was a levelling of the old buildings for the new. So you literally stand on history. The market was always the market, since pre-Aztec times, and it was always oriented thus, but the Metro line is new. Names change here, too.It is amazing to think, at Zocalo, that you are at the level of the old market as you descend the steps to the new subway.

Its very like Europe, in so many ways, but of course, was civilized a bit sooner. Built on a lake in the mountains, a sort of Shangri-La if you will, where the weather is mild, many things grow well, and 22 million people live in relative harmony. Mild weather. Real easy going folks. I guess you'd have to be.

Shangri-La is even real. My friend Doug once told me of finding mango trees grown for fruit production at 5,000 feet in the Himalayas. Thats a sub-tropical plant, folks, not normally found much in the mountains. Hortus Third says..."'Mangos do best on rich, well-drained soils in hot rather dry lowland climates." I thought I saw a mango here, form a taxi, but the driver said I was off my rocker. I think it may have been an avocado, something I also have seen here, from fast taxis.

One would think that there was a rule.... Hotter weather, plus water, makes everything grow better. I worked in a botanical garden in Hawaii, and I learned that this is not so. Leaving out invasive exotic species of insects, birds, plants and reptiles, not to mention humans and their mammals, certain species do better in their area of origin than they do anywhere else on earth. Others do better in a place where they are introduced. This is attributable to many things. In Hawaii, in the highlands, apples grow. They are not very tasty, at least the ones I had. (always researching... with every bite).

I think I heard someone say it was because they did not get the cold 'hardening' they would get in a cooler clime, but really, that is not very scientific. Take the Tea tree. Melaleauca... I think it is leucadendron.

It was introduced in Florida early in the nineteenth cenury. It quickly became invasive, a weed, a nuisance, etc. Tales are told of deer skeletons found in the everglades in copses of Leucadendron where the deer jump in, but can never find a way out of the thicket, and so starve to death. It is illegal to have or transport into Florida. Introduced at the same time in San Diego, it is a desirable, tough-to grow landscape amenity. I have climbed them in Hawaii that were two feet in diameter, over forty feet high. Never saw one that big in San Diego.

We know, for instance, that in Hawaii, the Polynesians were responsible for introducing the coconut, the pig, and other living things. Some of these naturalized to such an extent that they became invasive. Many species formerly thriving became extinct. I think this number is 2000 species. The white man got there a few hundred years later, and is credited with extinguishing about a third of the species the polynesians did. Heavy, isn't it? Man's inhumanity to his environment, and all in the best of intentions. It makes me wonder what this area was like before the pyramids. Before the people, even.

One more thing. On top of the largest Pyramid of the sun, at Teotihuacan, I saw butterflies dancing together, maybe twelve altogether. Monarch, indeed. But I would have liked an interpretive sign! Spirits of the pyramid builders, surely.

Worry and Action Don't Mix

2008-08-17T12:49:00.000-07:00

Two photos. One is myself in Greece, listening to a Street Musician. I think Street musician should always be capitalized. They are unsung (sic) heroes of the Urban Assault Zone we live in. And they certainly seem to need more capital.

It has been said that trees 'humanize' a landscape by bringing nature in. Song and music do as well. Of course, the Parthenon in the background on a sunny Spring day helps humanize anyone. And it can connect us to the past, in a deeper sense than history we know in the consensus world. I stood here, in 2003, with this beautiful harmonica and sweet guitar arpeggios filling the air, and my eyes got a little wet. He and I each knew enough French to communicate; and enough music to appreciate each other. Music isn't music until it goes in an ear. Music is sound created for a human effect. You cannot get music alone(its practice, or worship at that point) you can only get it with communication as a key.

My wife shot the photo. I bought a few of this guys cds. Sally will not let me play them because she says I get too sentimental. How could I not be? I was there in the place where street music had been played for about 2500 years, humanizing landscapes... I stood there and heard this guy offering up music from the place where the word 'muse' was first spoken. From within a mile of where Socrates drank a Hemlock smoothie because he would rather do that than put up with a retraction of his speech.

From where posters used to say: 'Tonight- the sensation of Lesbos! Sappho!"

She makes the Beatles look like a little cafe band. Her music was popular before recording, for over 300 years. It was all sung by heart, and the fragments of her poetry are mostly preserved from those who lived and wrote hundreds of years after her death. I like this poem by her best..."If you are squeamish, Do not prod the beach rubble."

But then I have never met a Lesbian I did not like. Gay people, in my opinion, are aptly named 'gay'.

I need to say that the Greeks, who invented or appropriated some wonderful methods of discourse, written word, and mathematical ingenuity, were not what you would call environmentally-minded. Sure they invented the words eco and enviro, but were they saving any trees? In order to build what they did in stone, they needed tons of timber.

Locally harvested forests soon dried up so they did what we are now doing with oil. They got it from trading or wars with other nations. If the nation was strong enough, they paid; but if the nation was weak anyhow, the Greeks had people for that. Something tells me our current administration has more than a passing interest in that sort of democracy.

And the goats nibbled grass right down into the roots, killing the understory, and

the timber was harvested, the spoils of that were burned, and somewhere in there, Greece became functionally a desert. A limited ecosystem.

In Mexico City, where I am headed, the folks had the first known zoos and botanical gardens on earth. Way before Christian-era gardens to collect species. I will comment on what I find there in the next few weeks. The gardens look pretty arid in the photos.

I used to be such an intrepid traveller. Once, I was even a street musician for a while. I played for literally tens of people, and was a legend in my own mind.

Now I am a bit older, and have bouts of worry I never used to have. Will I remember to- have I brought enough- is there a dangerous neighborhood I should know about?

it reminds me of the Tree Fear. It only came at night, before a major project. It visited when I was trying to sleep. It was all the could be's and better nots I never felt during the day. In the photos here, I am in a rented lift just a few years ago, at about forty feet up, cutting dead poplar out of a tiny little yard. I can say with certainty that that job did not scare me, after I got up there. It only scared me to think about it beforehand.

I think for myself and most of the Tree People I have talked with, it is the same. When it is going down; you just do the next thing necessary. When you have time to think it over, it is freaky where your mind can go to.

Does this mean I should ignore the little discomforts of worry? I do not think so. I think they should be noted and put away for later. In a time of action, like being in a strange country, lost and short of appropriate words, I will not have time for worry, and I'll feel fine. Now, with language cd's all over my house and car, and phrasebooks proving my ignorance to me time and again, I can worry I will not get it right. I can toss and turn.

Some people would not worry about the things I do, but would worry or fear the tasks I perform on trees daily. One way I can deal is to think what I would tell them if they were learning to climb, and listen to it as advice form inside;" Concentrate on what you are doing right now; not what you are going to be doing later. Keep you rope tight and your knees loose. relax, slips are part of the learning curve..."

My Bark is Better Than My Bite

2008-08-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

My biting commentary today will not be as good as the bark. Isn't that great stuff? A guy who has a tree business in San Francisco does these images, and gave me a copy. He calls it bark as art. Beautiful how some people can take what is all around us, everyday, and frame it into something we can all recognize as beautiful. I will find his name here somewhere in my 90's office space (lots of paper, things, and as an afterthought, an electronic device or two.) I am a nineties (1890's) kind of guy.

I had a dream, the other night that was so clear it made me sad. That deep deep sad you get sometimes. It was me dying that bummed me out. Even being awake, it sort of still hurt. Imagine, the world without us two, gentle reader. Damn. That's just sad. I had visited Mexico in my dream, it seems. I have roots in Mexico, and am a quarter Mexican. Here is a photo from El Dia De Los Muertes, here in Portland. A friend's party.

And what is Mexican? Notice you can get MIX out of that word real easy. Lots of the oldest and most advanced tribes in the Americas, with a history written by the conquerors, telling of blood and sacrifices. Who knows what they were really like? Some 300 'authentic' Aztec religions are reportedly in Mexico City today.

The small truths that remain, though, are that the Aztecs had a city of a million (Now it is 22 million-Mexico City) living on a lake high in the mountains, farming their stuff, and building their pyramids, and they blew it. The rulers got a little too into themselves. Or maybe they just weren't that into slaves. I read somewhere that the Inca had more miles of road than the Romans did in Europe. But no wheel.

A view from the trees notes that Inca rulers communicated via runners, who carried lengths of string, in Pony Express fashion, hundreds of miles. The knots told the story, in a code only known to those ruling classes. Each runner only ran about a mile. Imagine if we could get that well organized with tree work. Knots are still signatures, in certain work. I used a half-hitch for years, because I was ignorant, as a stopper knot. Now I use a figure-eight as a stopper. You can find little figure eights all over my things. But of course, you can find them all over the place.

When Cortez and the rest of them got there, they introduced smallpox and stuff, quite by accident. This reduced the population of Mexico from 24 million to about 1.5 million in a few years. Their fire sticks are the stuff of legend, and every schoolchild hears about how they went into battle with the mighty Aztecs and won, but we have to remember, they brought disease as a front line.

Back to my dream. I am part Mexican, and my Nena was born Mexican, in Mexico City. But her Father was from an old family around Vera Cruz. She came here at three, on the wrong side of that Mexican Revolution. In my childhood, I was always just an American; its all I knew. I also seemed to notice lots of Mexican people at family reunions and weddings, but I took little notice of this. In other words, my mother, a Chicana, was 'passing'. My Nena, who we always called that, not Grandma, spoke little bits of Spanish. But we didn't learn it.

Later, Mom got into the women's movement, and the Chicana thing, but for us kids it was a surprise, sort of. We always knew we could get a good tan, and take the heat well, but we did not identify as people of the South Americas.

Later, a cousin became a Flamenca. Another became a professor of Latin American Women's literature. What the hell? And my sister began speaking a passable Spanish, after living in Mexico on a boat for years. What was I missing?

I took note of the dream, but until I walked into an Aztec Ceremony in Mount Tabor Park, I really had it on a back burner. That's when I started connecting the dots. I watched full on costumed Aztecs do a religious ceremony up there last weekend, and it was mostly in Spanish, but some other Native Americans were there who spoke English and were translated to.

And a truck of mine broke down, six weeks after I purchased it. I sold it at auction, not having the heart to trade it in. Four days after the auction, I am riding my bike, and a Mexican dude is driving my former truck across the intersection I stop at.

That's when I decided for sure I was buying a ticket to Mexico City. If I do not listen to the signals, they become louder and louder, and might manifest themselves as symptoms. I don't need more of those. I am going to Mexico.

Bad Idea

2008-08-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

Is this a third world country in the photos? No, its a third-rate job, right down the street from my house.

Its hard to believe that people are still hiring unsafe workers to do one of the most dangerous jobs imaginable. Or maybe this was a 'favor', the kind I hear about so many times in the past tense in my capacity as expert witness in tree-related injury cases.

" So you are telling me that no money was exchanged, and your cousin just volunteered to do the job?"

"Yes, your honor."

"And you never thought about what might go wrong?"

"No sir, I mean, he was a real good trimmer, god rest his soul."

These photos could be titled, What the Hell Were They Thinking? Or A Redneck Gets R Done.

It angers me because I mention to people that I am an arborist, and about the first thing out of their mouths is how they know someone who was seriously hurt doing that kind of work. Maybe its just an urban legend, or maybe it is a mass consciousness of the inevitability of error in a profession that routinely runs power saws in a place with no viable exit strategy.

When a logger fells a tree, and it starts to crack, and hinge down, things can go wrong, and guess what? He can drop the saw and run. Most of them are so good at what they do that they surprise me. I see them sometimes on lot clearings in Portland, and I am blown away by the stuff they will attempt and execute.

Arborists get in unavoidable situations where something above them, tied, rigged, and directed, is supposed to go in a certain direction, say south. And as the back is cut, it becomes apparent that the wood is rotten, the thing is not going to hinge like it should; its headed east-no west-north... he starts to yell to his ground crew, to tell them to pull it harder, or stop pulling it, or begin praying... Remember, he is tied in to that thing. Tons of tree could suddenly decide to obey some arcane law of physics and end up in his lap, or on his hard hat. That's the difference between us and the loggers. We can't run.

And no amount of safety awareness, protection, or training can prepare you for certain situations.

You do your best to avoid being caught alive in a dead tree, like the one pictured, because you can usually tie into a larger, living tree nearby. If the dead one fails while you climb it or work in it, you swing back into the live one; and maybe break a leg, but your priorities were excellent, you avoided the Reaper. We all know there is no guarantee, climbing a dead tree. A piece the size of a motorcycle can break off as you climb up, due to the vibrations you initiate. If that hits you, going 25 feet per second, per second...Lets just say the hardhat will make it easier for the funeral home to reconstruct something.

Sometimes there is no live tree. No crane access. Just a big backyard full of valuable stonework, and sculpture, and a pool, and a roof of a glass greenhouse. And you bang on the dead tree; pronounce it ok, and you go up. You do it for the money. Or you were dumb enough to sell it, and you do it for your pride's sake. I have. One thing you will notice is that the longer the guy has been in the business, the calmer he is around dangerous situations. This can be a problem in itself, but I have noticed over the years that the oldest guys on the job tend to do the weirdest removals. I've seen good climbers get partway up something, climb down and say; "Uh- uh. Not me, not today." Something can scare any of us.

For me it was a coconut, twisting in a light wind, probably under twenty miles per hour. But it was five or six feet from a primary power line, and moved within two feet or so each time there was a gust. I went up past the wire, never cut a frond. I was the second guy who went up, climbed down that day. Something about it. Third guy, older than either of us, just did it.

But I have also gone up dead hardwoods, cut them down to applause, and realized when I made the butt cut that I was standing fifty or sixty feet in the air on something with the structure of a roll of tissue paper. You look at the hollow after it falls, and its kind of unreal. Ipso Facto logic tells you that if it didn't fall, it must not have been dangerous. The fallacy plays out every day, even for the best of us. The safest way is always the best way; seldom the fastest or most dramatic way. But safety does not have to be a dull proclamation. Safety is fun!

Countless times we go up and come down, with the only notable result that everyone goes home safe, the tree is beautiful, and ok, maybe we crushed a sprinkler head we did not see.

And to those of us who do it right, there is no more insulting sight than some idiot doing it dead wrong. That's the idiot who will be remembered, get ink in the paper, and be the public face of arboriculture. His utter foolishness will just be a sidebar, noticed by the intelligentsia of trees. And when I mention I do tree work, people will think I am a little bit crazy (I am) and a little bit foolish (I am not) and that special brand of fool who tempts fate.

I do not. Most of us doing this for a living do not. Most of us who do tree work are smart about a lot of things, or we just do not last. The problem with our industry is that the press we get is unexciting unless we fall, or cut ourselves, somewhere out of reach of the ambulance crew. It affects our insurance rates, our credibility with homeowner/clients, and our standing as an industry.

We can do all the Arbor Days and public service things from now on, and never get as big a headline than the guy who gets crushed, electrocuted, or falls. It isn't because the world must know. Its because death and destruction sells the news. Information is a sidebar. That's what I have seen in watching and clipping things for over 25 years in this profession.

Thus I tend to see the international news as less than true. If you've ever been quoted in a newspaper, you'll see immediately what I mean. Even a straight news story can get spun. Take the war in Iraq. Please.

Business is looking up

2008-08-10T04:03:00.000-07:00

This is how most of the work on the ground is. You stand there, looking up or shouting up or being shouted at. In a few other trades, I am sure people shout at each other, but in treework, it is a daily occurence.

Funny, because older tree guys have notoriously bad hearing. SO they do that thing of assuming everyone in the world hears at their level, and shout "Nice looking girl over there, ya see that?"

I saw an old logger's presentation a couple of times, real good, practical chainsaw and felling info. He said if you live with a bunch of guys for the week, the tv gets louder and louder, because: "We are all going deaf together".

I have been a freak about ear protection. There are a few of us out there who did the math, and realized if we were going to dig music and whispers into our nineties, we'd have to wear uncomfortable things in or on our ears at work. Wah! But we did it, and we could hear the macho comments like; " I just can't stand not being able to hear-like if the tree starts to crack." We could hear them with our dorky looking, hot ear protection on, because it is made to let certain sounds in. I have not, in these last 27 years, failed to hear a crrrrrrack! when I needed to, and I have not cursed my ear phones much. I like the ones that clip onto the hardhat, like Peltor. They usually last about a year if you wear them every day. You can replace the innards cheap, or buy the set for like forty bucks. I mean, that's the cost of a couple cds.

Anyway, I really love my hearing. Sometimes I'll pull off my phones, up in the tree, and say: "What?" about fifty times in a morning. Its a hassle, sweat and sawdust get in there, the comment is often not necessary (be careful!-ok!) but sometimes it is germain.

When you are leaving a work area, and tying in somewhere else, and your ground guy says' Hey! Get that hanger!" You grab the hanging limb you didn't see, or forgot about, because it all blends in after a while, and you feel grateful. You will not have to rassle your way back in there again, between three competing oak limbs, or out there, thirty feet from the stem, because you hadn't seen the hanger under your feet.

And I hear those guys who just can't be bothered to do it. Its my opinion that we call it work for a reason, and texting our buddies on the job is just as ridiculous as being on the phone. Tree work, if done well, is another way to experience the joy of this moment, and hone in on the work, and be in one place, doing one thing, sometimes for a day or more, but usually for just an hour or however much time that one tree takes you. I got into this business because it is fun. I could not believe, for the first ten or so years, that I was actually making money outside, away from crowds, around birds and squirrels, doing physical and mental work to make trees look better and be safer. I would chortle sometimes to myself, like a guy who has found a way to beat the system.

If you need to escape in the middle of that, to text home, or to see what everyone else is doing, you might look at another line of work. One where nobody is depending on you to get him a rope, and nobody is waiting for you to drag your limbs so they can drag theirs through a small space, and nobody is starting up a chainsaw nearby that will have incredible, irrevocable effects on whatever its chain touches. One where your agility and ability to respond to the moment is not required, and you can sit at a nice comfy chair for the next forty years.

I hear you that work is a hassle: that's why we get paid for it. And while you're at it, do you think you could lift the corners of your mouth once in a while? Just as a yogic exercise, for me? For the customer's benefit? I find it gives me endurance to engage these small muscles while I work. And I know you don't like ear protection on your head... Oops. Did you get that? I want to tell you I hear you, but you aren't facing this way, so I'll have to wait until you turn around so you can read my lips.

All about Dudekind

2008-08-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

Maybe this blog is a little too stream of consciousness. Its meant to be a place where you can experience life from above the ground.

Just a blink ago, in geologic time, we all spent most of our nights in trees. Various theories have us coming down. One of the things separating us from other hominids was our ability to share. To think in the abstract, and plan for the future, took an attitude of sharing.

Then the fields (poetical to call them savannah) of Africa, where Dudekind first learned to hunt. Apparently we were omnivorous before we learned to hunt. Then we found out about growing stuff. All this took cooperation. We literally ran down those animals. Relay racing was born form necessity. And carrying a stick in the relays we run now is so primal, isn't it? Bang that sucker on the head when you catch up. Maybe the stick used to be a spear.

At any rate, we still carry, encoded into our bodies, bits of information from ancestral hunts, and climbs we took to evade the animals we feared. Many of us are real close to agrarian life, Dudekinds third-nearest evolution, and the one that gets so much attention. (Then comes Industrial, then comes information age). We tend to look at Farmers in the soft glow of the good old days. Come to think of it, that's how we see Ancient Hunters, too, and the incredibly unsung Gatherers, precursors to the information age.

If it weren't for the women, the Gatherers, we probably never would have developed into a society of any size. Can't you see them sitting in a circle, planning the next move, shucking roots, or berrying, and discussing where to move next? So much like the modern boardroom.

Men had to be more non-verbal, hunting. Wave the hand over there; everyone intently watching the other (like high school is for boys, still) everyone knowing little, but watching for a cue. Everyone listening to the wind, shifting as it shifts, hearing the crack as a grass-eater makes a false step. Closing in, still in silence, still just watching the moves.

Then the one with the best position moves. Like a breakaway in cycling, it becomes an instant free-for-all. The animal is suddenly part of the game; is game; bolts, is hit, turns, is hit, and goes down. The silverback comes in for the kill, avoiding the hoofs and delivering the final blow. Then singing out. Just like guys today, watching the Olympics, quietly digest the patter, and shout with glee as a winner delivers the final step, or blow, or throw.

Its easy to figure out lots of our behavior when we study a little anthropology. Its a big interest to me because Dudekind is my species, and its fun to see how we are replaying the old dances and hunts. Its like not-so-instant-replay to try and understand ourselves.

We love to share, and it has kept us alive over the millenia. What has gone around definitely comes around again. The loners in society tend to die off, some by their own hands. I think sharing is so deeply ingrained it is more than a choice for us; almost instinctual.

I have a teacher who says; "Try it for yourself, but check it out in your body, not just your head." His advice is usually directed toward spiritual things, but try this. Think about this blog as you watch the Olympic relays, especially the men and women's 4x400 or 4x100. Think about it as you watch soccer, or Tae Kwan Do. How does it feel in your heart to watch a come-from-behind win? Or to witness battle? My heart beats fast, and unfounded joys take over. My head fills with images from the wide open plains we all came form, and the strong ones, lining up for a race, man or woman, I want to share some food with, and be around them. I crave a tribal bond with the winners, and even the losers who have such unbelievable,indomitable heart.

Try to upload photos

2008-08-08T18:44:00.001-07:00

Now I have to tell you. I am not a geek. My friend Daniyel, who was just here, he can geek out. I pay him to do things on the website I am creating as we converse (www.im4trees.com). This suits me. He has a way of including me into his fabulous realities, saying things like:" And when you decide you want to do code...." or whatever. I have decided, long ago, that there is nothing less appetizing than doing code. Nevertheless, his address is www.daniyel.com. .

Use it at your own risk.

So I am only uploading photos for one reason: to show you what I'm talking about. In reports I write, I say stuff like:" This map is ONLY to be used for the purpose of locating trees and is not to scale." Ya gotta be careful, when you consult.

Did I mention consulting? Consulting is what I am doing more and more. It is a way for old tree trimmers to make money writing about trees. But seriously, consulting is me interpreting what I see, into language you can understand, about where the tree is in its life cycle;usefulness in the landscape cycle, and finally its worth as a landscape amenity. Sound confusing? You ought to see code...

Fatigued

2008-08-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

I used to try and explain to people who work at desks about fatigue. It is really not something I can explain, because it has to be felt. Cumulative fatigue is felt by fewer and fewer people these days, as we come out of post-modernism into the age of slugs.

We are not farmers or hunters or gatherers much anymore, at least in this country. It is what it is, or as my Dad would say;" It doesn't make you bad" We are sitters and expecters and anger bearing devices, ready to explode with the energy given us at birth, misdirected into seat after seat after seat. We are told to sit still then shown how we can make money at it and then we start to, in our thirties, usually, resent getting up. No wonder road rage is epidemic. We have no social world,e xcept for those we know from nearby seats, or connected to our phones and internet.

Yesterday I took out a 140' Fir tree. It was the second of two we removed in this one yard. It was hard, but I knew what to do. It still takes its toll. There is a stupidity that takes over, after that much time aloft. By the way, the client has four more trees in his yard, equally as big. There was a reason for removal, but lets get into that in another blog. I got yelled at by a neighbor, told all about root systems and how trees nearby will blow down now. I felt like asking when was the last time someone yelled at him while he was doing his job, but I also felt like making him go away, so I sad; Yep, yep, you betcha. Put the earphones back on as he yelled some more. Poor sitter.

Stupidity may come from the root word, stoop. As in stooped from work. I can hardly make my fingers work. It is difficult to formulate thoughts, twenty hours after I threw the last limb. I feel a kinship with the folks who work day in and day out, but no way could I ever keep up with one of the poor souls who do hard manual labor each day. I am too soft. Sore spots materialized hours after work. Today one felt like a stress fracture, where the spur ties on above my left ankle.

I read an article in the latest TCIA magazine, a trade magazine for tree folks. It talked about the phrase"Industrial athletes" to describe our industry. Why not just call us professional athletes, and get real? If you do something physically demanding, and can do it well enough that it makes you money, you're a professional. I defy anyone to do it for an hour and not call it athletic. Its not industrial, but it can be industrious.

Not that all trades using the human body are athletic, but tree work involving climbing trees is. I did work from an aerial lift (often called a 'bucket' or 'cherry picker') for most of the year I did line clearance. In that, I felt like an industrial athlete. My low back got real sore, because my legs did the same constricted dance all day. I tried to invent a bucket that uses the legs more actively;but nothing came of it. I was told it would be difficult to sell anything with such a backlog of implied liability waiting to pounce on it. We sue each other for the incorrect use of tools all the time, after all. And the line clearance industry is no exception.

"Your honor, he made me use a tool that forced me to stoop!"

Climbing, especially on rope, but even on spurs, is physically demanding in some strange ways. It is not really aerobic, except the brief ascent, which can be a good pump, especially on rope. But there is a lot of weight bearing, rope coiling and retrieval, and stress. The blood pools and coagulates while you wait for a pile to get moved out of the drop zone. Each piece that falls with force (these are the ones that simply drop) has the potential to kill or maim a ground worker. It can also destroy property. Insurance pays for things, but you cannot cut a tree down using an insurance policy; just as a warranty does not start a car on a cold winter morning.

So many things have to work well in a well done job. Communication, if you are lowering things, or simply want a saw serviced. The saw. The carabiners, clips, ropes, personal protective equipment (PPE) like hardhat, glasses, or ear protection. Lowering is as much a skill for the ground crew as it is for the one aloft. Common sense is incredibly uncommon. We use ropes, and knots, for very little except shoes in American society. At seventeen, I was shown the trucker's hitch and a bowline (bolun). I had to learn both again several years later.

Twining and weaving string may have been the first thing hominids used as a tool (Richard Leakey said so). If so, then a knot is the first human technology, and we have forgotten it, nearly. Except for those doing macrame and knitting. And tree pruners. Each knot has a purpose, or at least an intent. I learned about stopper knots after I caused damage using a clove hitch while lowering a heavy limb without one. The knot, stable as hell under most kinds of tension, simply unrolled. It was Hawaii, in 1989, and my employer was not amused.

One could say our relationship began to unravel at that point too. He was in a hospital bed, broken up about as bad as you can imagine, and he told me what a dick I'd been to do that and do a job he had not sold, all on the same day. The job hadn't been sold, but it had been bid. If I had looked at a certain mark on a certain paper, I'd have known that. It was about my first month working in Hawaii, and I hardly knew the island, barely knew ten trees, and had five guys under me. I had to stay busy. It was a huge condo complex, and had hundreds of trees we were doing, several hundred we were not. I was just glad it was not a removal. I was contrite, and things never were the same. He expected from me what I had always expected of my workers: perfection. Incidentally, he was one of the best climbers I ever saw, and even ten years my senior, could outrun me in trees. So it wasn't likely I'd ever have cause to point out one of his foibles.

Men knot together for different reasons. We had a rapport from the start,like long lost cousins. If he hadn't fallen from that tree, roped in so it fell right onto him, crushing this and that... We might have been some kind of team. We were both as competitive as hell, in love with tree work, and seemed to need to prove something. Not in a bad way, just, hell, if someone thinks they can beat me, ok, lets race. That was our attitude when we showed up at work every morning. No wonder we both ended up working solo; not as crew leaders in some big outfit.

"I never made a mistake like that when I was a foreman" he said over the phone. The rope that had been stretched taut in me, ready, working, at that point curled up and slackened. I still get a knot in my stomach when I think of it. How could I have been so stupid?

Vehicles and Men

2008-07-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

I can only comment on men, because I am one. I can only comment on trucks, because I have loved and lost so many.

Long ago, I read a great short story called Love Affair With A Truck. Some Russian Author. The guy has to feel and unload and deal with a river, etc. It does not end well, because it is Russian, but it was in a nutshell how I feel when I drive a tree rig. I know where it is, and it is more than a vehicle. It is a sense of place. Ownership. Identity.

I do not feel that petroleum products are worth driving on, yet, in this business, I use them a lot. To fuel the saws, sure, but also the truck, the chipper, the stump grinder. It is all very well to stand around a coffee shop and decry fossil fuels, and wish for something better. It is also only in about the last ninety years that we have come to rely on them.

They were novelties before that. As proof, I offer that there were still horses in cavalry before WWII.

Elizabeth Kolbert writes wonderfully about how terribly global warming is ripping our planet a new one (In this case, its the ozone hole). One can also find hard evidence on the Peak Oil site(s). We are not going to be gas-guzzlers for long; one way or the other.

I know we Americans get way too much oil, and produce little of what we consume. I know we do injustice to the developing nations who just want their chance at life. In some of those, we are rightfully called oppressors, because although we have a free market, there are some who never can. On this, I disagree with the Libertarians, but don't get me started on my disagreements with political parties. Its like disagreeing with Europe, first you have to define it. By the way, I do not disagree with Europe, I think it is a fine idea.

Like so many of my fellow Americans (why does that phrase always sound so cheesy and overused?) ( Maybe because it is cheesy and overused) I have come to depend on my vehicle. Unlike many of us, I know that drilling the Arctic is a fool's game, and would not change the price of oil in the least, much less change the moral imperative we face when driving to Wal- Mart to buy cheap crap that breaks in a few weeks and keeps other countries polluted, struggling, and effectively out of money. See www.thestoryofstuff. for details or a quick tutorial, in a fun and simple format. You'll laugh, you'll cry.

I also have this weird feeling, because a truck of mine recently broke down, and it should not have been this tough, but it was. It hurt to be without my identity, my sense of place (in the world and in the town). It shouldn't, I tell myself. I am bigger than this. It means so much. A Rig. Something inanimate that some of us still lovingly name, and wash, and spend a third of our waking lives in. I spend a lot of time in traffic, due to the ways business in America is set up, and my own proclivities. The layout of cities, and the market, have grown in to an economy where if you do not drive in service businesses, you do not survive in the service businesses. And I just ended up, like so many of us do, finding a sense of adventure in that. I see different places, and visit them for a day or less, and go home again.

Also, living in Portland, I am surrounded by clouds of suspended guilt particulates as bicyclists whiz around, demanding little from their third world neighbors. Bicycles have cuter fuel than trucks. They are quieter. We don't need to go abroad to steal the oil from under a country to use them. Sure, it pollutes to build one out of metals, alloys, plastic and paint. But only once, then it glides around being cool and a little chic and very responsible to the planet until we need to grow monocultures of Rubber trees (Ficus elastica? A tree man should know this) to re-tread it.

I guess I am saying, fine, take all the morbidly obese wal mart shoppers out of their cars, and the fat cats who waste more in a year than we do in a lifetime, and the war mongers, and the bad guys ( I think we can identify them by their masks and bandannas, right?) But leave me my truck.

Tree work is right livelihood, I whine. We need trees in our urban areas to survive, and to humanize and naturalize these awful spaces we have created to live in. Can't you just leave me a chainsaw? I am whining so hard I do not realize I just began whining in the second person until I am back in the first again. Is that known as being beside oneself? Ooh Third person.. I'm triply tense.

In a few years, no matter what, even if we are fighting wars all over the globe to keep gas prices elsewhere higher... a noble cause; I will be carrying a saw around in a different vehicle.

The oil bubble cannot last. Hydrogen power is a myth. We could extend petroleum stores with the mass creation of propane and like gasses, but we do not, except on a tiny scale.

Meanwhile most folks do not even remember how to stack firewood, much less cook on wood. And that will come when we are craven enough. Smoke will just keep accelerating the process of global warming, as the wars rage, and boats sink, and children die for nought. Oh, Doom, where is thy sting? And why do I resent what I know is inevitable? Because I am honest about it? Probably. The Bushies and the neocons look so happy. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

Missing a truck you love; and know is killing the planet;and oppressing the four fifths of planetarians who do not drive; is not bliss. But it is a process that so many of us will go through in the near future, and I fear for our sanity. Maybe someone will begin building a better way. I just want my chainsaw.

Thoughts about cars continued

2008-07-28T18:38:00.001-07:00

Seems I ran out of space on the previous page. What I might call a technical difficulty; shutting up in time.

So the cones are there to alert careful drivers, but did you know they serve another purpose/ They also stop drivers who run over them. When I had to be an expert flagger I could have told you how many cones, collected under a speeding car, would slow it from 60 mph to a stop. Its like ten. If I were super-techy, I would have a link here, right? But I want you to use your imagination, gentle reader, and maybe wiki it.

Anyhow, cars have effects on trees just as cones have effects on cars. Ever notice those roadside trees with a quarter seemingly sliced out of the bottom? Before I pruned, I thought those were branches broken out of trees. They are not. They are where the tree has reacted to the wind's force, over time, and grown around the stocking of wind that accompanies fast vehicles (If you are patient with analogies, we will have some fun. In this one,the vehicle is the foot). The movement of wind, or shaking, or slight touching of a tree on a daily basis causes distinct and predictable reactions in growth. I knew a nurseryman who would pat his plants on the head each day to slow their upward growth.

Thoughts about cars from my spot in a tree.

2008-07-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

I am way up in a tree, most of the day, looking out and occasionally down. What I see are rooftops, wildlife, and cars. Who I communicate with are the ground crew, clients, the tree I am climbing, and the wildlife I encounter.

Sounds fun, but it has its drawbacks. That's why they call it tree WORK. Using a chainsaw is like being chained to a hot muffler all day, and often the compromises involve personal protective equipment that doesn't breathe, stinks, cuts out birdsong (and dogs barking incessantly at me, the thing their domestication and instinct tells them is a terrible threat) and even causes pain. Yes, personal protective equipment, like chaps, hardhat, ear muffs and face shields can cause, rather than mitigate, workplace discomfort and even pain.

Think about it. You wear more stuff, you are heavier. You wear more stuff, you are hotter. You wear more stuff, and you cannot fit between branches you would otherwise glide in amongst. Face shields keep the eyes from being poked out. But they also keep you from seeing well. Most arborists flip them up and down all day. I am no exception. A tiny twig tapping on an approved OSHA earmuff sounds like thunder inside your head.

I am not complaining. I don't feel right without most of that stuff, and when I teach climbing or pruning, it is a required component of the course. I just want my non-climbing friends to un- romanticize the act of climbing urban trees. It is fun, just as driving a beer truck might be, foir moments and moments at a time. But in any weather, with customers whose vociferous ignorance might astound you, with foremen and bosses and criteria that vary from day to day and job to job; climbing is a hassle, too.

Take traffic cones (please). These are the bright heavy conical thingies sitting in the road everywhere you need to be. If you want to park, there they are. If you need to shoot down a road, cones almost magically spring up to thwart your vehicle, and funnel it into a long line of other thwarted vehicles, angrily puffing on their exhaust pipes. This is the fault of fellows like me, who work in what is sportingly called The Public Rights-of-Way. I can't speak for all of us, but at least arborists use these things for workplace safety and security.