Meet In The Middle
Near the break in the hill, a large tree was scheduled to be felled. Mike referred to it as ‘grousy’. I have not been able to find the word grousy in the dictionary, but the verb grouse can be described as;
complain
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None of these explanations come close to what grousy means to woodland travelers. In the forest, grousy is a term used for a tree that has grown unruly. Many times it is a tree that has been growing without competition, where the limbs can grow and extend out from the tree in a staggering show of appendages.The grousy tree that we needed to take down was growing in a center island where three skid roads came together forming a triangle. It had plenty of space each direction to grow limbs that were bigger around than my arms with some larger than my legs. It was in the way of the road that we needed to complete so Mike fell it.
Once the tree was safely on the forest floor, I started on the top end trimming the limbs off the tree while Mike worked his way up from the base.We had both ran the saws dry of fuel before we could meet at the middle of the tree.What you see is the amount of limbs that were left while we refueled. Mike is standing at the base of the tree, but is not visible because of all the foliage that still needs to be removed.