Alex Burger

Don’t believe the hype – it’s all lies, these stories about trees falling in the forest. To fell a tree you don’t hack away at the core, you don’t throw your weight against its large trunk and emerge victorious, you don’t take vicious strokes and then yell “timber . . . “  This is all myth – there is no struggle, no crack, no thud.

Instead when you remove a tree, you do so in parts. You start from the top and you cut away: branches with a chainsaw, side trunks with an axe, ropes and pulleys to guide each falling piece. This is how you take apart a tree, until, in the end, the removal is so clean and so complete, you forget that the tree was even there.

 

 

 

I’ve just completed a five week trip across the USA.  Atlanta, across the south to Texas, up to Kansas and Iowa, through Chicago and Detroit, down through Philly and the Carolinas and back to the South. Stopping on the way with friends, listening to Greek tragedies on tape while driving, watching the signs out my window.  Here are a few.