Climbing and cutting

With this recent warm weather I spent the past few afternoons cutting tree branches out in the pasture. As a result I am very stiff and sore and tired and my hands have a few blisters and callouses. (Yes, I wore gloves). I'm out of practice with working outside.

Today I worked on the large tree in the middle pasture that I see from the house. Over winter one of our large snowfalls snapped off and broke some of the branches on this tree. These are not little branches as a number of the broken branches are the size of a small tree. Some branches broke off completely and other were hanging by part of the branch.

It bothered me this winter as when I looked out to the pasture I always did a double look as the fallen and hanging branches caught my eye as the view was out of the ordinary.

I spent quite a number of hours today cutting the branches and pulling other broken branches from the good branches that had caught them when they fell. Even with my pole saw I could reach less than half the broken branches. With so many branches, once I was able to hoist myself up into the tree, I was able to climb the tree cutting broken and dead branches as I went. I was even able to cut the branches that broke in 2008 and 2007 that would hang straight down but never fall.

This tree is a monster tree and I was probably three or more stories high. Even at that height I could not wrap my arms around the tree trunk.

After cutting the branches I had to pull down the ones supported by live branches. Then I stacked them high next to the tree. I will cut them down to a more manageable size later. Like I said earlier, some branches are the size of a small tree.

Yesterday when I was out in the pasture I heard lots and lots of sirens relatively close. Later in the news I learned that a motorcyclist was killed on the highway. Apparently he had been drinking and when driving on the highway he had driven at speeds up to 100 mph and was passing cars in the center turn lane between the lanes in the four lane highway. He apparently drove into the back of a car when he pulled back into the lane from the center lane. He wasn't wearing a helmet but that wouldn't have saved him as his motorcycle cart wheeled down the highway end over end and every which way after the impact.

And the day before, on another highway, a 16 year old girl drove her car into the other lane and crashed head on into another car killing a pregnant woman and her son. Alcohol, drugs, or speeding were not a factor in that crash. No cause determined yet for that crash. Oh, by the way, the Montana Legislature recently decided not to ban talking on a cell phone when driving.

The first sign of warm weather and people are going crazy.