Unsolved Mystery 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is a personal account -- an injury that might well have been a fatality, but no one would have been around to chronicle it. In 1999 I purchased a piece of property in New Jersey. It had six acres, four in lawn, and two in the back in wetlands which were protected by a conservation easement, a regulatory zone that meant you couldn't cut trees or do much of anything back there. Right at the edge of the lawn and the conservation easement was a very tall, very thin dead tree. All the bark was off it and all the limbs but one. I had asked my new neighbor for some help dropping it, since it was ugly and I was afraid it would come down and hit a kid or a dog, and I got a lecture on conservation easements and woodpeckers, which apparently like to live in dangerously unstable dead trees. Anyway, cowed by the neighbor's reaction, I did nothing about the tree. One night we were having a bit of a storm and my wife and I were looking at the wind and noticed that the tree was swaying dramatically. She commented that perhaps it would blow down in the night. Well, I watched the Mets game and had 4 or 5 beers and kept looking out at the damn tree, thinking that if it did fall it would probably fall onto my lawn instead of the swamp behind it, and I would have to spend a day cutting it up. Finally, when everyone was in bed and the neighbor's lights were out, inspiration struck. I decided that as much as the tree was shaking, I could go out and quietly push it down into the woods, with no clean up, and no neighbors the wiser. So, popping another beer, out I go. The base of the tree, I discovered, was fairly sturdy still, and pushing there didn't do much. However, there was about a 5 foot stump right next to it, and by standing on that somewhat precariously I was able to reach higher up. I pushed and the tree moved quite gratifyingly out toward the swamp. I remember thinking what a moron I was to have not simply done this months before. The tree then snapped back and there was a sickening crack up above my head. The top of the tree had snapped off and plunged straight down at my head! There was probably a thousand pounds of dead wood coming down on my head at about 70 miles an hour. Alertly, I jumped clear. No, I wish. Alertly I stood staring like an idiot and the thing almost brained me, and the remaining limb with its small branches crashed into my head, knocking me flat and leaving a bunch of scrapes on the side of my face and neck. As I laid there dazed and the lightning flashed around me, I had a sudden revelation. If this stupid stunt had just killed me, how would anyone have known what I was doing back there? They would have found my idiotic body 100 yards behind the house, in the middle of the night, in a swamp, apparently killed by a dead falling tree. Suicide? A vengeful God? Alien abduction? Anyway, suffice it to say, my wife was never told this tale, and still tells the story about how I was so stupid one night that I walked the dog in a lightning storm and slipped on the wet sidewalk :-)
Submitted on 10/07/2003
Submitted by:
jgr
Reference:
Personal Account
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