Storm

Friday firesmith – in memory of trees: the fallen

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On April the 12th of 2023, a freak rainstorm dropped nearly a foot of water in six hours. The sound on the metal roof was surreal. A dull roar that simply did not end, the rain began with a vengeance at midnight and I dozed off and on until five then got up. There was no chance of getting the dogs out until the rain stopped. At six it was a slow drizzle and my little piece of the world had flooded.

The house was okay. We were safe. But the pond spilled over into the yard in a big way. Two more hurricanes followed that year. Most of the back of my property was underwater for two and a half years.

The Big Pine Tree near the pond died slow. The Leaning Live Oak fell over on Day One. A host of smaller trees fell or simply drowned in time.

The Slingshot Tree, a small water oak with two main branches died first. One of the last to die was the leaning tree where Sam, Sam, the Happy Hound dug under the roots to make a den. Sam would hunker down there, and Bert would try to drag him out. They would play like this for hours.

Lucas and Lilith played this game, too, much younger animals than Bert and Sam, they used the same toy in the same way. I remember a Black Racer making his way under those roots and stopping Sam from going after him.

Tuesday night I heard a thump and went back to sleep. The next morning the tree was on the ground.

I knew it would be. It had died late in the flooding, but was still dead. The trees surrounding the pond, so many of them are dead now, so many still standing, a feast for woodpeckers, but so many dead.

You can try to dictate terms to nature but then you are no longer living within nature. The drought lasted for eight months after the pond finally dried up. Now, rain has returned and we’ve gotten three inches of rain this week, which seems to be a lot but the fires in Georgia still burn east of here.

Homes destroyed, lives disrupted, smoke covers the eastern part of Georgia like the dire mists of Mordor. The sun rises red over in that part of the world. Their trees have burned, and mine have drowned.

I know most of the trees on my property. None fall within notice. I have been here long enough to see a place where no tree stood to have a tree, and the first bird nest. I have seen giants die and fall. I have seen small trees grow beyond my own height and reach for starlight.

But this day, I say to you this: A tree that holds memories of my pack has fallen.

These words are a memorial, and they are grief.

Take Care,

Mike

The tree broken, not yet fallen over. I still wonder how its root system held

Here it’s landed on the pile I started when I was able to start moving stuff out of the yard, and away from the fences. It landed with its kin. All the bushy looking stuff was once so shaded nothing grew there. The loss of tree has triggered a population explosion of smaller plants.

friday firesmith – Hell of a fire. Best in a long time.

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On the 12th of April, 2023, the rain began around midnight. The sound was amazingly loud. Sleep had to be abandoned, so I got up, checked the radar, and a deep red splotch of clouds hovered directly over my area and nowhere else. The rain came down in a roar.

The next morning the pond had overflowed, and the Live Oak in the backyard that had a serious lean was creaking. It fell before I could get my phone, and in the next couple of months, I was able to get most of the larger limbs cut.

The next two years brought hurricanes, more rain, more flooding, and eventually, trees died from their roots being submerged for too long.

About six months ago, the water began to recede. I was able to get the fence back up, my compost pile has emerged from the ocean, and I’ve been able to assess how bad things are.

I also had two dead trees close to the house taken down. One very close to the house, a gum tree, was still alive, but it had a growth near the top that caused the top to break off. Considering the size of the tree and its proximity to the house, I had it taken down, too.

I have spent the last couple of days moving logs over to the Live Oak that fell, and setting things on fire. I’m usually a let nature take Her course, but I’ve got a lot, and I do mean a lot, of dead trees. Dozens of them have died, some have fallen, but at the time of this writing I’ve got four piles of dead stuff that if they catch on fire, it’s going to get weird. Two are so close together their blaze will be visible from the moon.

The Live Oak blocks the path from the house to the woods, and it is large. I would like to leave some of it to return to the earth as all thing should, but I have to reduce it. I have made good progress in this endeavor.

I began the process of moving parts of the Gum Tree to help burn the Live Oak. I used rollers, levers, and manual labor to get this done. If you know Physics, you can take an eight foot long log that is two feet in diameter, and move it one hundred yards without breaking a sweat. Push, move a roller, push, move a roller, push, move a roller, push, use a roller as a pivot, reset rollers, push, pivot, burn.

All the wonders of the ancient world were built by people who knew how to apply force in a manner consistent with the laws of physics. It’s not difficult once you understand how. Aliens were not needed and are not needed to build, to move, to create an environment where humans can get things done without machines.

I’m alone in the woods and can move logs some machines might struggle with. I used pieces of trees to move trees.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Storm Damage and stuff

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The back of the property is finally dry enough for me to reclaim my Compost Pile Complex, yet only the original pile is going to be used for a while. I’ve got some work to do back there. Let’s so a quick recap of why this conversation is taking place.

12 April 2023. A freak rain event drops eleven inches of rain in six hours on top of a small part of Brooks County Georgia, resulting in the pond overflowing, my backyard flooding, and the compost pile being submerged. I lose a giant Live Oak in the backyard due to its roots being submerged and it falling over. A wet summer follows.

20 August 2023. Hurricane Idalia comes ashore and brings us some wind and rain. Some smaller trees are knocked over, limbs fall in the flooded area and that’s where they will stay for a while.

26 September 2024. Hurricane Helene comes ashore and we take a direct hit with maximum winds of 128 mph recorded in Brooks County. More rain, more downed trees in the back, and one big Water Oak on the west side of my two acres is broken near the ground and pushed due west. It had been leaning due east. The flood water in my backyard nearly reaches the deck. My shed, which is three feet off the ground, is six inches away from being flooded.

20 January 2025. A foot of snow falls in South Georgia. It’s pretty. But it’s also made of water and it does not help at all. The giant Pine Tree in the backyard dies from its root system being submerged. It’s seventy-five feet tall. I take it down with a chainsaw and more than a few tears.

The water hangs around until we start having drier weather in the first part of 2025. April and May see only a few inches of water, and as the water recedes, I start moving stuff out of the yard.

By June of 2025, the water is almost all gone and by July, I’m back into the Compost Pile.

The hibernaculum started before the flooding and got bigger once the Live Oak fell. I set fire to it one time, when the water was high and got some cool photos of it. I also took the kayak out and paddled around, even over the compost pile.

But now, it’s a wasteland out there for trees. Many, many, many have died, from being pushed over or for being drowned. Quite a few are leaning on other trees and will eventually fall. I can either let nature takes it course and hope they fall well and not on a dog, or I can take them down.

One thing is for certain is I won’t live long enough to see the trees return. The First Tree, the tree that caught my attention by being the first free to grow in the Fire Pit Area is dead. For years, the back part of the property was overgrown with vines, and when I cleared them out, the trees returned. That was twenty-five years ago. A lot of my work in growing trees has been erased now, and I will not get another chance.

Take Care,

Mike