The parting-out of the Immense Tree

We are still working on a live oak tree blasted to smithereens (don’t we wish!) by a springtime 2007 lightning stroke. Shown above is approximately one-third of the tree. For scale, there are two yellow wedges used to keep the saw cut from closing on the chainsaw (lower yellow arrow). They are approximately the size of a human hand. The human in the background, Karla (upper yellow arrow), can also be used for scale. She is approximately the size of a human. Multiply all you see by three and you get an idea of what we are facing.

I wanted to get an action shot of me holding my chain saw with one hand while taking a picture with my camera. Lo and behold, as I was focusing, the following warning appeared in the viewfinder:


What a smart camera!

We will soon be reaching an important decision point: The base of the tree, even though broken into three pieces, is still huge. It contains about as much wood as the average three-story McMansion. Except it’s solid. We would need a chain saw with a 10-foot cutting bar, or a log splitter of some 12,000 tons of crushing force. I suppose we could raid the local National Guard Armory and steal 50 tons of high explosives and turn the base into wood pellets, but we would have to vacuum them up from a 300-acre area around the tree and spend the next two months rounding up the horses after the blast goes off. (What would we do with 24 deaf horses?)

And then there’s the whole 30-foot-deep crater and explaining-the-blast thing we would have to do with the Sheriff’s Department and the National Security Agency and the…well, you get the idea. I think we’ll just let the large parts rot.