"It's hard to dance with the devil on your back"

The grandson pulled on his Nano's (grandfather) thick rough texured rope but the tree at the other end didn't budge. A power saw cut deeper into the trunk and the youth pulled again. He gained a foot, then the tree took back twice that. The saw took a final bite and the tree was ready. Now as trees go this one was only a snack for a beaver, no more than 30-feet tall and woefully underfed. But it was holding its own against the efforts of a guy more used to running track than wrestling trees.

Fifty years ago, at my childhood home, Nano used that rope to drop trees with the same precision that he measured samples where he worked as a biochemist. He first would cut the trunk with an old-fashioned bow saw. Then he tied a piece of branch or a few steel washers or whatever was small and weighty to a piece of long sturdy twine and threw threw it up over a branch of the tree that was being taken down. The twine was tied to the heavy rope and and pulled until the rope was over the branch and down where Nano could tie it to the tree. When the rope was in place and knotted, Nano made us all stand a safe distance away and then he tugged on the rope. The tree would sway and Nano would pull. The tree's own weight over the cut would break its resistance. The trees fell right where Nano planned.

Nano never threw anything away. When a heart attack took him abruptly from us a few years ago and the family home was put up for sale that rope was in the basement, along with lots of stuff that held no memories and a few things that did. Why I put the rope in the car I'll never know. We already had plenty of rope and anyway lumbering and such are beyond my ken. It's like a part of him is woven into the rope maybe?
 The grandson needed a little help at his end of Nano's rope. He and the tree were equal opponents and neither was going to budge. One was getting tired. A gentle assist from the middle generation tipped (pardon the expression) things in his favor. The grin of triumph on his face as the rope came his way and the tree bowed, then buckled was truly priceless. The tree, btw, fell right where Nano would have placed it, but the grandson got credit for that.