If a tree falls . . .

    Our summer camp in Goshen is paradise. But sometimes there’s trouble in paradise. Sometimes nature thumbs its nose at our presence.

    After watching night settle on the pond Saturday, we went to bed early. We’ve got a wedding in the family next weekend, and in-laws and a son and grandchildren will first gather at our camp to prepare for the big occasion. So we had some cleaning up and bed-making to do on Sunday.

    Sometime before 5 a.m., I heard a cracking sound outside the window. I knew it was a tree, but it was hard to tell how far away it was. We have about a half-acre on that side of the camp, and we have left it wild. The crack was somewhere out there.

    
    I dozed back off, but another crack jarred me awake again. Sometimes when the wind blows, you hears trees creak. But this was a crack, not a creak. And as far as I could tell, the wind wasn’t blowing.

    At least once more I heard a crack and went back to sleep.

    The next crack was  prolonged, and it was followed by a whoosh, a thunk and a shower of lesser after-thunks. So much for sleep. It was 5:03 a.m.

    The good news was that the tree had not hit the camp or the car. But that didn't mean we were out of the woods. Out on the road, perhaps 100 feet from our camp, we saw a tall maple across the road. The tree had broken off about 10 feet above the ground. Its trunk was easily 25 feet from the road. Its leaves were green and, other than being suddenly prone, it looked perfectly healthy.

    The tree was hanging so low that a car would have a hard time passing. At that time of day, of course, there were no cars. What was keeping the tree from hitting the ground was the electric wire between our camp and the pole on the road and our camp.

    We walked back to the camp and saw the really bad news. The impact of the tree on the wire had bent the pipe that protected the electric wires leading to our meter. It had torn the socket right out of the box and ripped the meter and the box off the outside wall.

    We called the power company and learned that everything from the tip of the pipe to the road belonged to the company. The rest was ours. The two men who came to shut down the live wire, remove the tree and roll the wire up were friendly and sympathetic. They would have helped us with the box if they could. They see lots of this, they said, shaking their heads, but “Wow! This one really got it!”

    We waited a while to call an electrician. He came over – on Father’s Day, no less – to check out the damage. He too had seen this kind of thing often before. “Wow!” he said when he saw ours.

    So today we’re in a little nervous. The electrician is trying to reconnect us, and I’m headed for the airport to pick up my wife’s parents, who are flying in from Belgium to stay at the camp.

    Please keep your fingers crossed for us.