Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
not sure how many of the old crew is around here...i posted a lot back in 2009, then came back briefly in 2012 after working superstorm sandy...i didn't get into doing big trees til my early 30s...this was a blessing as i learned to use my head as well as my body, incorporating kinesiology, physics and geometry into my work...so instead of trying to muscle everything, i let gravity work for me...
also i either worked for myself or contracted my climbing skills out, particularly in the sf bay area and during hurricane and ice storm cleanups from new england to florida...one thing i knew early on was if i wanted to climb into my 70s, i needed to take care of my body, and never work more than eight months a year...it worked, i'm happy to say, and in those four months off every year, i traveled a lot, sometimes taking my climbing gear with me...i've worked in australia, new zealand, hawaii, canada, alaska, etc...
now i only climb for my friends and do some side jobs...i like to say all my exes have the best looking trees in their neighborhoods, and i can still do a good sized tree...took down a large pine leader that split off from two others thirty feet up...only eighty feet or so to the top, but when i hit the ground and unstrapped my sliding D, it felt good and rekindled a lot of memories, so here i am, back at arborsite.com...
i've been reading some of the past posts from when i wrote "Guido's Last Hurrah," a semi-fictional series of vignettes of working in the bay area back in the 80s...man, the business sure has changed since then, but not the work...i'm thinking i've got a few good stories to share here, but not sure how it might be received...last time around a few folks thought it was inappropriate to write tree stories on a professional arborist site, even if those stories were instructional...and then there were the PC crowd upset cuz i wrote things they considered "out of bounds"...
also i either worked for myself or contracted my climbing skills out, particularly in the sf bay area and during hurricane and ice storm cleanups from new england to florida...one thing i knew early on was if i wanted to climb into my 70s, i needed to take care of my body, and never work more than eight months a year...it worked, i'm happy to say, and in those four months off every year, i traveled a lot, sometimes taking my climbing gear with me...i've worked in australia, new zealand, hawaii, canada, alaska, etc...
now i only climb for my friends and do some side jobs...i like to say all my exes have the best looking trees in their neighborhoods, and i can still do a good sized tree...took down a large pine leader that split off from two others thirty feet up...only eighty feet or so to the top, but when i hit the ground and unstrapped my sliding D, it felt good and rekindled a lot of memories, so here i am, back at arborsite.com...
i've been reading some of the past posts from when i wrote "Guido's Last Hurrah," a semi-fictional series of vignettes of working in the bay area back in the 80s...man, the business sure has changed since then, but not the work...i'm thinking i've got a few good stories to share here, but not sure how it might be received...last time around a few folks thought it was inappropriate to write tree stories on a professional arborist site, even if those stories were instructional...and then there were the PC crowd upset cuz i wrote things they considered "out of bounds"...