Download Tree Just Watching You
Peggy Schatz
Hello! My name is Sara. I am 34 years old, Mexican-Irish, short, liberal, tattooed, loud, proudly bisexual, and a total cat lady. I love reading, writing, eating cupcakes, watching baseball, listening to music, binging all the good TV stuff and running. I live in Southern California physically but my mind is always in a fictional place. My debut novel, The Awakened, was released in December of 2015, and was my first successful NaNoWriMo novel. The sequel, The Sanctuary was published January 2017. Both books were relaunched in June 2020. My debut new adult romance, Benched, was released in September of 2020.
Never is that more clear than when I visit the solitary willow tree near the south shore of Lake Wanaka in New Zealand. This striking tree just stands by itself in a lake (most of the time), with little motion, silhouette, or depth of field options to play with.
One of the conditions I have at least partial control over is stars. By going out after dark on a clear night, I can include stars. And depending on the timing, I can juxtapose the tree with the Milky Way. Because these images were captured at different times of the night, including the Milky Way resulted in completely different backgrounds. The first image came a few hours after sunset, when the Milky Way hung above the amber lights of Wanaka; the second image came on a different night, a couple of hours before sunrise, when the Milky Way had rotated above the Southern Alps.
Because I saw the potential for a beautiful sky, I went went wide to maximize the sky, choosing my Sony 12-24 f/2.8 GM lens on my Sony a7RIV body. I positioned myself so the reflection mirrored the arc of retreating clouds, creating a frame for the tree. I was aware that I was picking up the homes and buildings lining the opposite lakeshore, but felt that was justifiable compromise to ensure the best clouds and sunset color potential.
The light was beautiful when I started, but it just kept improving as the color ramped up. Every few minutes I repositioned myself to keep the tree framed by the shifting clouds. Wanting to feature the flat, multi-toned rocks visible beneath a thin veneer of still water, I dropped my tripod and moved it a foot or so into the water. And finally, I shifted just enough for the trunk to split the gap between two distant peaks. Going vertical allowed me to get the full arc of clouds and their reflection above the rocks, with less far lakeshore than a horizontal composition would have.
Gary, variations of a theme! That is when we are at our best. Find the unusual out of the usual, especially when one goes back to the same spot time after time, year after year. I love your variations of the tree!
By noon, the end was near. Everyone cleared the drop zone except Ian Fitzcharles. As crew leader for Bartlett, he handled the chainsaw for the difficult final stage. The five-foot diameter of the trunk required a piecemeal approach. Fitzcharles circled the base making angled cuts that would dictate where the tree would fall.
Witham contacted an arborist to assess the damage. The prognosis was negative. The remaining walls of the trunk were only a few inches thick in places, barely strong enough to support the full weight of branches. The arborist declared the tree a safety hazard and recommended its immediate removal.
After seeing such strong feelings in print, Witham wanted to give people a chance to express themselves in person. He hosted a vigil on September 28. About 20 people gathered around the stump to listen as Witham recounted some of the history that made the tree so special.
By 1878, the tree had already been growing for decades when the Western State Normal School was founded in Gorham. Portland Junior College bought the Deering estate for its campus in 1947. The Portland and Gorham institutions would merge in 1970 to form the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, later renamed USM. The tree was there through every change.
Jo Sehon felt it was important to bear witness to the end of that historic run, first at the tree cutting and then at the vigil. Sehon is working toward a Pre-Med certificate. That commitment to health care also extends to the health of the environment.
Once each visitor to the vigil had a chance to speak, Witham directed the crowd to a table with art supplies. They created mementos of the tree to take with them by pressing a leaf onto specially treated paper which reveals a colorful impression upon exposure to ultraviolet light.
Disclaimer: This is a fun and informative video that gives a high-level overview about what it takes to climb a tree. Our trainings are much more in-depth, and we require our team, even our most skilled climbers, to keep current on safety training. Please do not try this at home.
Hi! I'm Archie, I'm an arborist, and today we will be talking about how we climb trees. The first thing that we do when we go to a tree that we are going to climb is that we inspect it to make sure that it is safe. So we will be looking at the trunk, the crown, and the ground underneath the tree. Just to make sure we will be safe the entire time that we are climbing.
The first step in getting into a tree is this guy right here, and this is called a throw ball. We use this to throw over a branch that we want to put our rope in and pull our rope over the branch that we threw at. So it is a little weighted bean bang on some string and the end of it. I tell new climbers that this could be the easiest or the hardest part of your day, depending on what you're having. It could take three shots, or it could take as many as three hundred shots on a bad day.
So now that I have the rope around the branch that I want, I need the rope not to move. Every climber's system is going to be a little bit different, but what I like to use is a ring and carabiner to cinch the rope around the branch that's in the tree. Now that we are all set up, I am going to put my whole weight on this rope and make sure we are good to climb.
I use a mechanical device as well as my harness to suspend myself from the rope. Then I use ascenders like this little guy right here to walk myself up the rope. This makes things a lot easier on my body because I am using my leg muscles instead of my upper body to climb up the rope and get up into the tree.
Obviously, I am going to need my chainsaw up in the tree, but it makes it harder to climb up the rope. So what I do is tie my chainsaw to the bottom of the rope so that when I get into position up in the tree, I can pull it up to me.
Get ready to learn all about the importance of trees and how to properly care for them. But first please tell us your name so that we can greet you the way you prefer. PS: We'll need your email address too :)
It was the mellifluous voice of Charlie Russell, an old friend who had lived among bears and in the wilds for more decades than I could count. He was sitting on the bank thoughtfully watching me and Oly, a fellow wilderness guide and a New Zealander, prepare ourselves.
Oly put a thick strap around my belt and I climbed into position just upstream of the log. The saw started on the first pull and I leaned right across the log, Oly holding onto me tight, and began to cut from the downstream side back towards myself.
But the fallen tree had other ideas. I was only about a minute into the cut when, without warning, it exploded underneath me. There was so much force from the flowing water that the fibres just gave up.
With the school surrounded by law enforcement, Jimmy eventually leaves the classroom seemingly to face his fate. He encounters Lucas carrying the injured Peyton, which nearly sets him off again. At this point, Keith intervenes and attempts to talk Jimmy off the metaphorical ledge. \u201CThat pain in your stomach, that pain in your heart, it goes away,\u201D he tells Jimmy. \u201CThat voice in your head that\u2019s saying there\u2019s no way out, it\u2019s wrong, Jimmy. Would you please, please, just believe me? It gets better.\u201D
Jimmy, almost in a state of psychological delusion at this point, tearfully exclaims, \u201CIt won\u2019t! Not after this. I can\u2019t take this back! I can\u2019t erase this!\u201D He goes on, \u201CI just... I wanted... I wanted them to leave me alone. I just... I wanted them to like me.\u201D Despite Keith\u2019s efforts to get Jimmy to put down the gun, the teen instead turns the weapon on himself and fires into his chest.
This episode is never far from my mind, and it was especially stuck in my head following the Parkland school shooting just over three years ago. In the wake of that 2018 massacre in Florida, I posted the text of Lucas\u2019 end-of-episode voiceover on my Facebook page.
I believe this \u201COne Tree Hill\u201D episode holds some of the answers. By offering different perspectives \u2014 that of the shooter, the victim, the hostages, the escapees, etc. \u2014 we see how tragedies like this unfold from different angles and how the various elements of school shootings play out. Yes, this is a television show. Yes, it\u2019s fiction. Yes, merely watching this is incomparable to actually living it. Yes, not everything is done \u201Cright\u201D or \u201Cwell.\u201D But it is a way into something that needs to be better understood.
You can watch and un-watch a complete tree of pages (a page an all of its descendants) with just one action. Click on the icon which shows a tree and an eye at the top, toggle the switch and click apply in the dialog.
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