Crash

Lying in bed on a Sunday, the cat put out for the morning, the coffee brewing in the kitchen, few things remind one more of impermanence than the sound of a tree crashing down - the cracking of wood, the rustling of leaves, and the crash to the earth. Impermanence is swift - life and death are the great concern.

Long-time readers will recall that I live in a heavily wooded area, and one of my fears is of a tree falling down on my house. Trees have already fallen on several houses in my neighborhood, and sometimes I think that it is just a matter of time before one falls on mine.

This morning was a very close call. A big and apparently quite healthy oak grows pretty much right on the property line between me and my neighbor. Although several quite large branches of that tree are above my house, I've worried less about that tree than some of the other, less-healthy trees in my yard. So when I heard the unmistakable sound of falling wood this morning, I thought for sure that one of those rotten trees were falling.

But I was mistaken. A large limb from the property-line oak had fallen, for no apparent reason that I could discern, and fell right between my house and my neighbor's without damaging either. However, I have a small shed behind my house, and the limb landed on top of that shed. It didn't knock a hole through the roof, however.

All in all, I was quite lucky. There's a much larger limb that in itself is the size of most other trees that extends directly over my bedroom - had that limb fallen, it might have damaged my house and possibly my self as well. As it was, the branch that fell came down in such a way as to cause minimum damage.

I called the insurance company and one tree removal contractor but, it being a Sunday, have heard nothing back. My neighbors spend their summers up at a lakehouse in North Carolina (they're retired), but I managed to reach them by cell phone and tell them the good news/bad news. They immediately offered to pay half the cost of clean-up, but I advised them to let's wait and see how the insurance companies want to handle things first. It might be interesting to see which side of the property line the cost burden falls upon, or if, like the limb itself, it falls equally between the two homes.