Woody Thick: Stumps are like icebergs

“Call me Ishmael” is the iconic opening sentence of the classic novel “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville. It’s the story of one man’s obsession, leading to his ultimate destruction.

While not an easy read — Melville goes way down the rabbit hole of seafaring lore and whaling intricacies for much of it — it’s still a powerful work with themes that stand the test of time. If you can plow through it, you will no doubt be rewarded.

We can become obsessed with more than catching an elusive whale, of course. Things like:

— Trying to make the cut in a golf tournament;

— Running a marathon;

— Getting our art displayed in an exhibition; or

— Publishing our first book.

And on and on. Obsession doesn’t have to destroy us.

I’m obsessed with learning to play music and, while my progress is painfully slow because I don’t practice nearly enough, the journey of learning to play, even just a little at a time, is rewarding.

So let me tell you about my new obsession. His name is (was) Woody Thick — in honor of Moby Dick, of course.

When we built our house, we went to a large tree farm/nursery, where we got a lot of the foundation plants and a few trees for our property. I had never been in a place like this before. They had so many trees of different varieties it just blew me away. But one tree really got my attention.

If you ever attend an evangelical church, watch the ladies who sit up front. When the choir or the band really gets going, these ladies raise their arms up and wide in praise, as if they are opening their souls to God herself.

Well, this tree I saw at the nursery — turns out it was a flowering cherry apple tree — had its two main limbs rising from the trunk in this exact manner. It was like the tree was praising the Lord.

Even our landscape architect said it was by far the prettiest tree in the whole place. That tree graced the front of our home for many years, becoming a favorite of birds and squirrels along the way.

Now the tree wasn’t perfect. When it flowered in the spring, it was absolutely stunning with its pink flowers. But the voluminous tiny cherry apples that fell got underfoot, and under tires, and corralling all those smashed apples was a pain.

Still, you had to do it, or else they would draw ants and such. Then, after over 30 years, some limbs began to die. As I trimmed the dead ones, the live ones started to grow over the driveway, right where we didn’t want them.

So last year, after thinking long and hard about it, I took out the chainsaw and that was it. Everything has its season, as we know all too well.

The stump that was left was about 8 to 10 inches in diameter. I’ve removed smaller stumps myself in the past, so I figured this one wouldn’t be much different. Then I got started, and that’s when I realized I was dealing with my new obsession, which was removing Woody Thick all by myself.

Turns out stumps are like icebergs. What you see above ground, or above water, is only the tip. There is a lot more that you can’t see.

I started digging around the stump and, wow, it just got a lot wider the more I went. Still, had I been able to easily dig around it, the job would have been a lot smoother.

The problem was, because this tree was planted when it was already quite sizable, the root ball had been enclosed in a metal wire mesh cage. There was a lot of thick wire surrounding the part of Woody Thick that was underground.

This made it extremely hard to shovel anywhere near it. What I had to do was use a hatchet to break the wire, then bend the wire back and forth until it snapped. I had to do this over and over to get rid of all the mesh. That was really hard and time-consuming.

After a lot of hard work over several days I had most of Woody Thick exposed. Then I attempted to push it back and forth. Good luck with that.

Even banging it with a heavy mattock did nothing. If you ever want to know how a 5,000-pound car can bash into a tree and the tree not move an inch, take a look at the root system. What an incredible foundation nature gives to trees.

The strong, thick roots embed themselves tightly into the earth, making an interlocking structure that is just about impossible to budge. Trust me on this: When you are removing a stump, until you get it to move just a tiny bit, you haven’t gained on it in the least.

At this point, I needed a new plan of attack, so I had to deploy my least favorite tool of all of them, the chainsaw. Think about a chainsaw for a minute.

You have an 18-inch or longer very sharp blade with no guard of any kind spinning like a maniac right out in the open. There are just so many things that are dangerous about using a chainsaw that I only use it as a last resort.

If you have to use a chainsaw, please, for your own safety, take the time to read and understand the manual that came with it. Read that last sentence again. Chainsaws are serious business.

I had wanted to remove Woody Thick as one complete piece but, when I saw how strong it was, I changed my strategy. It was time to divide and conquer, just like the generals do in war time.

I used a wire brush to remove as much of the dirt from around the stump as I could — dirt is like grinding paste for a chainsaw blade, quickly dulling it — and then cut it vertically right down the middle. I did this cut carefully and slowly, letting the saw do all the work.

I also cut the channel wide, so the saw blade wouldn’t get pinched. Again, be very careful when running a chainsaw. It above all other tools should command your greatest respect.

When I completed the vertical cut, I was able to ever so slightly move each half of Woody Thick. That’s when I knew I was over the hump. Until you get some movement, you have nothing.

Then I did some thinking “outside the box,” as they often say in the business world. What I did was pry the gap open with a long metal bar, and insert a car tire jack in the gap.

My thinking was, expand the jack and let it push the stump open, breaking it apart while letting the jack do all the work. Easy peasy, right? Not!

Most times, when I tried opening the jack, it would just pop out. A couple of times, before it popped out, I got the gap to be really big, like 10 inches. But instead of snapping, the live wood in the stump’s deepest remaining roots just bent and returned to position.

It never came close to breaking. Score one for Mother Nature, and zero for thinking outside the box.

So I dug down more and more, and finally found one of the main roots, or “taproot,” that was holding one side of Woody Thick down. After resharpening the chainsaw blade, I carefully used the tip to dig into that main root.

I was using the saw like those guys who carve bears out of tree trunks do, tip first, though nowhere near as artistically as they do. And it actually worked. After that main root was severed, prying and levering revealed several smaller roots that I took out with the hatchet. Just like that, one half of Woody Thick was gone.

For the second half, it was rinse and repeat. Fortunately, I didn’t have to use the chainsaw again.

That half of the stump had some rot in it and, after a lot of hatchet work and prying, I got it out in two pieces. Whew, that felt good.

There were a couple more big horizontal roots that were a real pain to deal with, because of how thick and deep they were, but by then I was “in the zone” and just fought with them until they gave up. Holy moly.

At this point, all I have left to remove are the vestiges of the roots that expanded out from Woody Thick. I want to make that whole area pristine so that whatever my lovely wife and I decide to plant there has a decent chance of making it.

A lot of times you’ll hear guys who have powerful trucks say something like, “Yeah, this baby is a real stump puller!”

I have a brand new truck, and I briefly thought about attaching a strong, thick metal chain from its bumper to the stump to try to yank it out that way. But then I thought, “Hmmm, do I really want a thick metal chain in tension behind my brand new truck?”

If the chain slipped off, which is not only possible but actually quite probable, I’d have lots of metal ricocheting right back towards me. Or maybe the whole stump itself. Or maybe the truck would lurch forward when the stump gave way, causing some kind of mayhem.

Powerful, stump-pulling capable pickup trucks are no doubt great; actually using them to pull out stumps, not so much. Too many bad things can happen.

Could I have just called a tree guy to grind the stump out? Of course, but I wanted the many roots around the stump removed as well, which is a lot of labor, so I figured I would just do it myself.

Also, after a career working at a desk with computer software, I actually enjoy doing physical work where you can plainly see the results of your effort just by looking. A finely tuned database is nice, but no one can see that. A big honkin’ hole in the ground from where a large stump used to be? Now that’s something everyone can see.

While removing Woody Thick was not as epic as hunting down Moby Dick, it was just as satisfying. Chasing after your obsession, as long as it doesn’t destroy you, is a very good thing.