The wind picked up over the course of the day. It blew harder, then harder. By dark it was dragging chairs across the porch. The corners of the roof whistled. The weather vane creaked as the wind yanked it back and forth. Trees roared as wind hammered their branches. Once in bed, I could feel the wind battering the walls.

We had no damage at our house, just a few small branches down. Nearby, a few trees had fallen–into a ditch, into the river. Walking early we encountered the biggest blowdown–an ash, already dead, stretched across the road. We hopped over it. The dogs hesitated but they too managed to get past. We turned around later and met it from the opposite direction. We hopped over it again.

The day before, a crew had been trimming trees to make sure the power lines are clear. Our power company is good about that. We rarely lose power and I credit them with making sure the lines do not get hot by falling branches. After our walk we watched the truck go by and turn down that way. Their trimming had ended the day before well beyond our fallen tree but they could not get there without addressing that prone timber. They addressed it.

In the afternoon, on a run, I passed closely enough to see that the fallen tree was gone. This morning I walked past, binoculars at the ready to see spring migrants. The tree had been neatly attended to–logs laid beside the road and a pile of brush on the other side. That was timely work to be trimming just when a tree falls across the road that leads to the trimming zone. Fate, I suppose, sometimes throws us a bone.