Be Careful What You Wish For...

At the end of winter or beginning of spring, we had an idea.  We thought it would be fun to hack a trail from one end of our woods to the other.  It would be like an adventure through the forest we could walk with our grandbabies.  We gave an attempt at making it, but the woods was just an overgrown impossible mass of vines and trees and weeds and briers and brambles.  In the end, we decided that it wasn't feasible for us to do.

Be careful what you wish for...

Yesterday morning...
A guy from the utilities department came by.  He said they needed to trim a path under the power line that runs through the woods from the highway. He acted like he was asking permission, but really he was just making me aware.  
They did it the year after the ice storm of the century in 2009.  Their plan is to do it every 5-10 years so that there will never be another time when so many power lines get broken by falling branches and trees.

Yesterday afternoon...
There was a cacophony of chainsaws inside our woods.  I couldn't see them, but there was no question that they were wasting no time getting to it.

This morning...
There was a noise of destruction like I've never heard before.  I can only describe it as a cross between Dr. Seuss's Super-Axe-Hacker from The Lorax and a mechanical version of the Tasmanian Devil.

 

I could see it through the trees a little bit.  It would drive into a pile of yesterday's debris and start chewing and snarling and biting and tossing and pulverizing.  

After a while I just had to have a look.  I walked through the 10 feet of woods and could not believe it...
I walked up the swath of devastation and watched the Tasmanian Super-Axe-Hacker work.  In only a few minutes the nice guy in an orange hardhat came down to chat.  I could only say, "Wow..."   He said, "This will all grow back.  We just have to keep a path for the power line. That machine throws a lot of stuff a pretty far distance."  He didn't actually ask me to leave (my own property), but the work did come to a halt until I did.  And, I noticed he kept an eye out that I kept going back. 

Perhaps you think I might be stretching this just a little bit. 

This is the view from my mailbox on the highway. 
See that pole on the right side?
Let me walk up the highway to that pole...

Now you see that pole on the left.
That empty space beside it... was forest yesterday.
Let's take a closer look, shall we?

And... there's the pole, safe from any tree branch, ice storm, or creeping vine.
Courtesy of the Tasmanian Super-Axe-Hacker, yesterdays trees are...
 ... today's mulch.

This was the sight I was met by when I walked through my woods.
If you enlarge it, you'll see the man in the hard hat keeping an eye on both me and the Tasmanian Super-Axe-Hacker.

Look carefully through the trees...
Do you see it?
That's the antagonist of today's story... The Tasmanian Super-Axe-Hacker!

We still have a beautiful view from our drive.
Okay... I know I've been dramatic.
But, seriously... It felt (feels) a little dramatic...

I suppose we did get our trail through the woods that we'd wished for.

There's always some wonder here on Serendipity...

And to think I was going to write about the platter-sized snapping turtle we saw yesterday.  She'd dug a little hole, was backed up to it, and was just dropping her third egg down into the hole.  

Sheesh... and I thought that was an adventure worth telling!!