Two days after I graduated from high school I joined my Grandparents on a cross country road trip. They have a house out in Idaho where they spend the summer. The problem with such a house is that after a hard winter there is a lot of manual labor that needs to be done to open up the house. That is where I come in. Not only was I going along to aid in the driving to get there, I was mainly going to do all the lifting, hauling, stacking, painting that my Grandad could throw at me in the ten days that I would be there.
One of the big chores that needs to be done is to thin out the aspen grove. The aspen trees grow like weeds and to keep the whole grove healthy we constantly have to get rid of the old dead trees and the little trees underneath that aren’t going to grow fast enough because they aren’t going to get any sunlight because the mature trees are blocking it all.
This particular day we were working on getting rid of the mature dead and sick trees. My Grandad, who was approximately 82 at the time, was wondering around with the chainsaw while I nervously followed him hoping that he wasn’t actually as unsteady on his feet as he appeared to be.
You might be wondering why I didn’t have the chainsaw in my hands. You see, I am a girl, and girls are incapable of using chainsaws. However, I am a strong girl and therefore I am useful for holding the tree up at one end so that it can be cut into smaller logs to be used as fire wood.
Grandad and I had cut up several trees. While he was finishing up trimming some branches I headed over to the next tree that we had appointed as our victim. I leaned against the tree to take a bit of a rest and felt it shift under my weight. I pushed against the tree a bit harder and felt it groaning against the strain I was putting on it.
I turned to the tree, placed my hands against the trunk and started rhythmically pushing against it until I had a solid sway going. As I pushed harder and harder the tree began to sway rock more and more violently. Suddenly there was a loud tearing noise as the tree fell over and the roots tore from the ground. My Grandad looked up surprised. “Thought I would save you a bit of work,” I said with a grin on my face.
For the duration of my stay, whenever he introduced me to someone he would introduce me as Paulina Bunyan and tell this story.
