The Beast

There was once a beautiful old tree on our property. It had seen several decades go by. We loved that old tree. If you take anything away from this post, let it be that if the tree could have stayed, it would have stayed. It was massive. We noticed that big chunks of the tree would appear underneath it. I would clean them up and then there would be more. It got so bad, that Mike didn’t want me under it. It was one of the tallest and oldest trees on the property. It was a BEAST!

We had someone come look at it. The outcome was that the tree was mostly dead. It had to go. The tree would be directly in front of where we were hoping to build one day. The tree would have cost several thousand dollars to be removed. In the Mike and Cat way of doing it, we did it ourselves. One day we pulled in to work and Mike announced he was taking the tree down.

A. I was scared to death. B. So scared, I didn’t even get video. He simply walked around it with the chainsaw and moved as far as he could. Seconds later it was on the ground. What we saw made it clear, we had definitely done the right thing.

It was hollowed out rotten. We later learned that only the bight exterior rings were alive. The rest of the center was actually dead, just not rotten out yet.

Then came the clean up. You have to understand that at this point we had already cleaned up thousands and thousands of limbs.

I asked Mike for one thing before we wrapped up that day at the ranch. I wanted a slice of that tree. I knew it would make a beautiful, one of a kind wall piece. Tired, sore, and slightly grouchy, Mike cut that slice. I wasn’t sure how my vision would become a reality. You will have to read The Beast in it’s New Form to read and see how it turned out.