I am passionate about tree care. In earlier writings I touched on the influence my dad’s career as a Jaguar mechanic had on me. From an early age, I mean very early, I learned there was an unreproachable, uncontested, tireless, right way of doing things. When I knew that way existed, I married myself to that doctrine. Around the same time I learned about the wrong ways of doing things. I saw the mechanics in his shop who were disreputable. Observing how they carried themselves, I understood I was from a higher ilk, even if I didn’t fully comprehend what that meant, I knew I didn’t want to be like them. My dad was looked at with reverence in that shop. I got to interact with some of the other mechanics who looked up to my dad. It was peculiar to see a tender fellowship from such hardened people. Seeing that also helped me to understand how special of a mechanic my dad was. So that was it. Whatever I would do with this life would be executed with the special, diligent application I first observed in my dad.

Working arborists are products of their education, training, experience, company culture, and an array of innate traits. Things like work ethic, character, fearlessness, boldness, and creativity. If an arborist has these things in abundance, they are a truly formidable force. As a climbing arborist, this is what I became.

Much of my development as a climbing arborist was out of my control. In the early stages I knew what caliber of arborists I wanted to apprentice with. Getting hired on at the company where they worked, in December (a notoriously slow hiring month for tree services in my region due to the seasonal decline in demand), however, was a miracle from The Almighty that I was patently incapable of pulling off. That’s what actually happened though.

In December of 2017 I was hired on at Timberline Professional Tree Care. For the next three years I was inculcated with the ways of professional climbing arboriculture. So many good things happened during my apprenticeship. Because I had a good foundation from my upbringing, certain categories of my worker self were finished. Things like talking with clients, or being a hard worker, all the way to my athleticism which naturally helped me adapt to the physicality of tree work. Hard skillsets along with my mentality were forged into the human versions of Damascus steel. My mentors were the inculcators – model tree-climbers who held the esteem of arborist and tree service owners alike, from around the region.

It was cool to work with them, my mentors. Both of them were third generation arborists. Their connection to the industry was deeper than anything I had experienced at that time. I mean these guys were true professionals. They didn’t need oversight from ownership, or to be managed by a general manager. For their respective crews they set the pace and they utterly slayed the work. The dynamic at Timberline was odd. Odd, because the field crews set the pace within the company. This feature of our autonomy acculturized the company like a berserk force of nature. Every new employee either submitted to the mold or they were fitted into the unemployment line. My favorite thing of working there was the collective, and at times, counter-cultural mantra of, “we ain’t playing”.

Some of you probably think, “tree care”? “Bruh, sounds boring as a drill bit.” If your location is anything like the midwest, you haven’t seen tree care like we practiced. In our market, we were in the top 5% of arborists, higher than that honestly (1% no cap), but I don’t want you to mistake the ethical, honest reverence that imbued our practice for common arrogance. If we showed up to your house to do tree work you knew you were seeing something special. This is where the passion comes in. Yea, we did tree work, but we did it differently. Almost everything about our entire process, collectively and individually, was different than the other tree services in town.

We obsessed over the little details, like which climbing rope and hitch cord setup yielded the best performance for our individual climbing styles. Trees that we had pruned we would periodically observe to study how they responded to the pruning regimen we put them through. We got frustrated when ownership saddled us with used trucks and trailers that would break down, injecting unwanted chaos and time into our work. Then there were the special things that happened to us. One disturbing, yet truthful aspect of being a tree worker holds that you never have full control over all of the variables impacting your work, or, more importantly your life. So lethal situations would rectify themselves or warn us ahead of time. Yea, crazy, I know.

There’s two situations in particular I desire to relate to you. The first was a massive Red Oak removal in the backyard of this house. The tree leaned toward the house, and it had decay in the part of the root crown that was opposite the lean of the tree. Meaning the part of the roots most critical in resisting the tension of the tree’s mass was potentially compromised. Due to the tree’s location, it had to be climbed. Before the job was scheduled we had the opportunity to recce the tree. Fast forward a few weeks later, still before the tree hit the schedule, the entire tree failed, smashing everything underneath it. If that tree would’ve made it to removal day, and seen the rigging forces we would have applied to it, it would’ve failed on us. Fatalities, other critical injuries – it’s pretty shocking to consider what could’ve happened to us if nature had not rectified that tree for us.

The second situation was a tree in Saint Louis County Parks that we were slotted to cut down. One of the offensive things about doing municipal work is what they pay you. We were an S-tier + tree service, but only getting paid for C-tier work. So we did what we had to. Instead of taking time to dismantle the trees piece by piece to avoid disturbing the site around and under the target trees, we felled entire trees – behemoth trees. It was a blue-collar response to the infected head shed controlling the budget for Saint Louis County Parks. But I digress…

The target tree was to be dismantled by one of my mentors. I had never seen him approach a tree like he approached this one. I don’t mean his approach to cutting it down on the day of removal, I mean there was some secret dialogue he was having with himself and this tree. We probably visited this tree 3-4 times ahead of its slotted removal day – we never did that. He would just walk up to it, while I stood a piece off in the background, and stare at it. Out of the thousands of trees him and I worked on together, this one held him in a mesmeric trance. I wouldn’t know until much later what took place in the secret dialogue. Partly, I knew what he was doing. He was doing what every excellent climber does, he was getting to know his foe. It wasn’t the tree, or the area. He was acquainting himself with all of the hidden little lethal hazards pent up in this single tree. To be fair, there were a lot.

This tree was such a big deal, my mentor hired a videographer to record the tree’s removal. This is how he did it. I’m the one doing the speaking in the video – an impromptu station thrust upon me in the moment, lol.

Eventually, he told me what happened while he was looking at that tree. Something, an unseen force was not letting him climb this tree. That’s what he told me. The multiple visits were him verifying that he still felt that way. He said it wasn’t fear, there was just something inside him that wasn’t letting him climb that tree no matter what. And he couldn’t ignore it. Crazy. But it kept us safe and on the atmospheric side of the soil.

To Jason and E.J. (pictured above, dangling from the crane), I love you guys. Thank you for everything you taught me and all of the excellent work days we spent together. Your brotherhood is with me until my last breath.