Brand New Nightmare

Yep - torn out by the root system.  The 8-10 ft wide root system.

Our house is in a part of Portland called Parkrose - for the most part, it's a quiet area, despite being only a couple of miles from the airport and less than a mile from the train tracks.  A lot of that quiet is due to the buffering of the trees in the area - we've got a lot of trees, some of which are 60 to 80 feet tall (one of the advantages to living in a temperate rain forest - there's a lot of greenery.) It makes it feel like its own little world - quiet, arboreal, contemplative...

And then there are days like yesterday.  See, our little neighborhood is also at the western end of the Columbia Gorge, which means that it's windy on the best of days, and on days like yesterday... see that tree in the picture?  Well, that quarter of a tree in the picture?  That's what happens when a tree finally has had it with standing up to 80 MPH gusts, and goes ahead and lies down.  Fortunately, no one was injured, and the houses even mostly survived (some cosmetic damage, but nothing serious).  But this happened less than 4 blocks from me, and it's got me looking around - there are a lot of trees of about that size within falling distance of me right now.  Suddenly, I'm starting to wonder if maybe the loggers had the right idea...