Today the tree guys arrive to remove yet another giant oak. This one is in the back of the yard, alongside the fence. It’s not as dead as the two specimens felled last week, but is the most precarious of the bunch because it hangs over the neighbor’s property and threatens his shed.

Carman heads this crew. To watch him climb and cut is to observe an artist at work. His art is destruction, true, but it’s done with a flourish and a derring-do that puts even circus aerialists to shame. 

High in the treetops Carman manages rope and chain saw, deftly lassoing a 10-foot section of trunk, then sawing it off and (with assistance from the ground) lowering it down. To be hanging from the tree you’re cutting down seems an impossibility, but I watched him do it last week, watched him calmly and methodically take down the oak section by section by section … until it was gone.