Some time in the early sixties, a friend of mine's grandfather chopped down a woodlot and cleared it for farming. He dragged the tree trunks into a clump about forty feet around and piled them some six feet deep.

By the late '60s, my friend and I were in our early teens and this woodpile was the grandest jungle gym you ever saw. The trees had all settled and weren't moving, so we could run, jump, climb over and under, build forts and defend the world from invading Martians, Russians, or Nazis depending on what movie was on TV last night.

In the few years that making forts and playing war were fun, we advanced from hiding behind a log to hollowing out sections and roofing them with smaller logs and making actual water-tight hovels, suitable for a medieval peasant family of four.

This memory popped up this week when I noticed that a dead elm near the house was leaning towards the house, and needed to be talked to.

Thursday was a nice, not sunny, not too warm day, so, I tied Caz to a tree far from where me and Mr. Chainsaw would be holding negotiations and went to look.

The initial issue here was that one of my big cherry trees fell a few years ago. It fell away from the house, but managed to knock down a couple other smaller trees and lodge itself between some others.

And all of this got supported by a particularly thick patch of russian olive.

So, I've got this 3-D maze of fallen trees, much like the first turn in a a game of pick-up sticks.

Step one was clearing out enough russian olive that I could get close to the interlocking sets of 4-10 inch diameter tree trunks.

Once I'd dragged out enough of the olive branches, I had a roughly ten foot diameter open space with a canopy of leaves above me, and loosely stacked logs as sides.

A little bit of work, and it could be a crofter's hut. When I was twelve, this fortress would have been suitable for defending humanity.

Anyhow, I applied a little bit of chainsaw, and while I didn't get take down the leaning tower of tree-za, I did remove the logs that were pushing it over. By then the battery in my chainsaw was running out of juice, and so was I.

The nice thing about battery operated big tools is that they last about an hour or so, which is pretty much how long I last.