Stop and Look

When I was younger I loved to travel. The farther away I could get the better. My favorite trips where to Great Britain and the accompanying lands, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the land of my forefathers. Every winter I would try to go out West to visit my brother in Salt Lake City at the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range of the Rockies. I am a granny skier, means that I like to ski, but slowly. And the skiing in Park City was absolutely amazing. Not very many people and gorgeous slopes. I would also weasel my way into the avalanche patrol group to see if I could watch them work their dogs.

Then I bought my little slice of heaven here in Virginia and I only leave it under extreme duress.I love Virginia and all her variations. Our mountains are not as grandiose as the Rockies, but they are breath taking in a quiet slowly overwhelming way.

Fridley's Gap, Massanutten Mountain

In my travels around the state on the various searches I get called to, I get to see many parts that most of us don’t even think about. Let alone know about. From the Dismal Swamp to the Blue Ridge to the western most boundary, the Allegheny Mountains and everything in between. I am however, not a flatlander. I need to see what might be behind the next curve on the backcountry road, what the next little valley may be hiding.

We tend to forget that in our own backyard, there are scenes of beauty that we don’t need to travel thousands of miles to experience. That point was driven home to me when I was heading home from a search at the Homestead, in Hot Springs Va. I stopped at the top the mountain ridge that separated Calf Pasture River valley from the James River and got out to look around. The day was clear, bright and the scene breathtaking I felt I could see for miles.

In the Capital Reef area of Utah, there is an observation point that says you can see for 90 miles in every direction. Where I got out after my search, at the top of the mountain ridge, I don’t think I could see for 90 miles but I could see probably 10 miles before the mountains closed in.

Even around my small parcel of land the quiet beauty sneaks up on you. A walk in the first light of a summer morning, the crunch and creak of the newly fallen snow under your boot and the delicate lacey patterns of the dormant trees in snow above your head. And then in the fall, the surprise of a flock of turkeys strutting across the pasture or a doe and this year’s fawn grazing beside the horses.

Don't forget your backyard.  Stop, and look at it through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before.  You'll be surprised.

Landscaping the power company way

In April, my local electric company contacted me to let me know that they were going through my little hollow to clean up the right of way that our electric lines run through. I thought that was nice of them to let me know, but didn’t really think much of it.

A couple of days ago I was sitting in my office when a helicopter comes buzzing over my house. The electric company has an interesting way of accomplishing their landscaping tasks. Stunning, actually.

My electricity went out when the helicopter went over my house so I was thinking bad things were going on. So I was a bit relieved when an electric company guy pulls up my drive, hoping he had some information. He did, but it wasn’t what I thought.

Do you ever wonder how the power companies keep the massive miles of electric lines clear of trees and limbs from falling on them? I found out. They hire a company that flies helicopters and huge 30’ chainsaws that are attached to the underside of said helicopter by very long chains that fly around cutting trees and tree limbs. That sounds deceptively straight forward. However, the right of way is only 15 feet on either side of the electric lines. So the pilot needs to be able to keep the saw within those fifteen feet, not hit the wires, not run into the tops of the trees, and doing all this with the wash from the helicopters rotors making the trees and saw move as wildly as if in the middle of a thunderstorm. And sometimes do it backwards. All the while hanging out the side of the helicopter to see what he is doing, he also is also trying to fly the copter without it running into the ground.

So on Wednesday of this week, I start hearing the helicopter fly overhead and the power company truck drives up my driveway. Mainly because I have two horses in the pasture next to the power lines whose right of way is being cleared and they wanted to see if I could get them out of the pasture and up on the hill behind my house. I knew right away that this guy wasn’t a horse person. There is no way you can hang on to a frightened horse, let alone two at the same time. Because there wasn’t any way these horses have ever seen a helicopter close up like they were about to and calm isn’t a word I would use to describe my horses. One is an ex-racehorse and the other has about as much common sense as a pea hen. She also weighs close to 1200 pounds.

Watching the horizon for enemies

I go down to the pasture and get the halters ready just in case they do something stupid like try to jump the cattle guard and not making it. Whatever the power company was paying the pilot, it was certainly worth it. Especially when it came to the horses. He was smart enough to stay at one end of the pasture long enough for them to become somewhat accustom to the noise and sight of what he was doing. It also allowed them time to race to the other end of the pasture to watch the whole show. The pilot finished the first half of the right of way, and rather than continue straight on thereby pushing the horses into a tighter and tighter corner, he picked up and started at the far end of the pasture. This pushed the horses to the end of the pasture that was already done and they could hide out under the trees that weren’t being trimmed.

Here's what it looks and sounds like

Here's the view from the other side

The pilot put on a great show and I was late for all of my house calls, but it was worth it. My neighbor and her kids were down in the pasture with me just having a grand time. She remarked that she was glad the trimming was almost done because she was tired of chasing the helicopter.I found out that she’d been driving the kids around most of the morning, urged faster and faster by her oldest boy who is a machine maniac, following the tree trimmer. An unusual thing to be doing on their summer vacation!

All in all, it took him about 20 minutes to do everything. I spoke to the power company guy after the helicopter left the area and he said that if they’d done it in a conventional manner from the ground, what that pilot did would have taken a week and half for a ground crew with 5-7 men to do. The next step was for the poor guys that had to come in behind the aerial tree trimmer and chop up all the debris he left behind.