After we got home from the daycare event, I re-donned my boots, safety glasses, and earplugs and headed back out. I was piecing up a tree that had already fallen on its own, but it’s on a steep, rocky hill. I planned to go until I ran out of gas, but my final cut of the day proved, once again, that there’s no way to truly predict what will happen.

My prediction was that the tail end (lowest on the slope) would detach and roll down the hill. I was right, it did that. The rest of the tree, which was all uphill from me (the tree was laying almost straight up the hill), I predicted would shift down and away from me. Instead, it shifted down and towards me. I’m lucky that I wasn’t knocked over (sending me tumbling down a granite slope), or worse.

Chainsaws don’t scare me and I enjoy doing it, but trees are absolutely out to get me.