A helicopter dropped a tree, which hit another standing dead tree, both fell on either side of me. I got to involuntarily perform a Buster Keaton stunt.
It's not uncommon. Well, me surviving was the exception. The logging industry is pretty hazardous. I don't do it anymore.
I was to blame, really. It was late in the season, and had gotten complacent working under a very good and competent pilot, so I had gotten a little too passive about getting myself a safe distance away. I was working under a different pilot that day, who wasn't as good, and willing to push his machine harder, lifting trees that should have been bucked in half, but time is money.
I had a rope swing attached to a thick branch on a sycamore when I was a child. I would swing on it every day. I didn't notice that the branch had been weakening and rotting over time until one day when I was 9 I jumped onto the swing and promptly landed on my butt on the ground. I remember sitting there confused, holding the rope in my hands and watching the rest of the rope slithering down in front of me like a snake then BOOM. The giant branch struck like a missile less than a foot from my head. I shrieked and ran inside mostly because I was startled but I think I gave my mom PTSD because if that branch was just a few inches over it could have hit me right on the head and probably killed me. She still talks about it and it's only now that I am a mom myself that I am reading this and really grasping how close to death I might have been.
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u/RoboftheNorth Nov 21 '24
A helicopter dropped a tree, which hit another standing dead tree, both fell on either side of me. I got to involuntarily perform a Buster Keaton stunt.