Attack of the Zombie Trees

My idea of cross training is to walk through the woods with a chainsaw and cut out the dead or undesirable trees. It’s part of owning a tree farm (more on that in a future post) and a great way to be outside in the fresh air and get relatively low intensity exercise for the entire body.

The problem is, dead trees tend to be found where the forest is overcrowded, and the weak trees lose out in the survival of the fittest. In short, sometimes there’s not a lot of room for them to fall over. They become zombies. They resent my attempts to get them to lay down. They throw branches down on me. Once in a great while, they respond to my attempts to physically push them over by snapping in two, so that the top half can fall back at me and smite me mightily on the head.

I can tell you from experience that a small branch falling from 30 feet up hurts like hell when it hits you directly on the head. So as dorky as I sometimes feel wearing my bright orange hard hat for dinky jobs, it’s a good habit to be in. I can also tell you from experience that a 15 foot section of zombie fir tree falling from 30 feet up packs quite a wallop, but it didn’t hurt a bit.

So between dealing with zombie trees and a trail run that included getting lost in a field of ferns and prickers (while wearing shorts, of course), it was very nice to have a boring session running on the treadmill in air conditioned comfort.