Really tall trees
I can't sleep, but I can come up with some odd visuals while I try. This is from a half-sleeping dream I had:

Thousands of years ago, the trees of Saliphood grew too thick. The branches intermingled, and fought for position in the light of the sun. The branches and leaves grew so thick together, that they blacked out the sun over Saliphood completely. Still, the trees fought.

With agonizing slowness, they grew taller, and thicker, to gain purchase over each other. After a thousand years, it stopped raining in Saliphood. The rain would fall down on the trees, and they would collect the water, absorb it, and let it evaporate on their leaves. Hundreds of feet tall, as thick as a house, the trees made even the rain their servant.

Eventually, the lower branches began to starve and die out. As new trees grew, they stopped producing low branches altogether. The high branches of the old trees were so tightly interwoven, that the trees did not fall. Even when a tree died (usually of old age. Most trees had grown beyond being killed by a lightning strike or minor fire), it would not fall because of all the support it had from the others around it. Instead, it would slowly rot as it hung by it's branches.

The people of the hood had long ago learned to live without. They had energy for their street lights, and the water came from the ground, or the nearby river. The parents had stopped telling children about sunlight, because the stories had long ago slipped from their legends.

The trees weren't forgotten, though. They couldn't be. The trees were as real as the ground, and were treated in much the same way. They weren't things to look up at (the canopy above Saliphood was homogenous and thick, so that only artists would look for patterns in it), they were things to build around.

And when they died, they were huge events to move. Thompson was one of that crew. Once a tree was declared dead, his crew would begin stripping it. They would climb to the top of the tree, where the first branches took root. The only way to climb a tree was for five men to tie lines to each other, encircling the tree. They would all hug their portion of the tree, and slowly start to climb. Each man would hoist the line to the man on his left, and they would shimmy up the tree together.

From the top, they would cut a long strip, about six feet long and two feet deep. Then they would pry a long wedge into the cut, pushing it down to make the strip peel away from the tree. At this point, they would push down on the wedge with tremendous force, usually using the lower branches for a base. As the strip began to peel from the tree, each man would find himself nestled in a small alcove created between the strip and the tree itself.

There was a tool, much like a jackhammer, that attached to the tree, and pushed the wedge down lower. Slowly, inexorably, the men would pull strips hundreds of feet long, and two feet thick, away from the tree.

These men were skilled craftsmen. They knew just how much pressure and just when to apply it to make sure the strip didn't break away from the tree. Hundreds of feet below, neighborhoods would be evacuated in case a strip broke away. It was rare, and usually grounds for a dismissal, but not unheard of. These men were so good at their jobs, they had contests to see who could reach the ground first, strip intact.

Then, once the last strip was broken off from the stump and carted away, these men would begin their climb again, to pull down another strip.

The whole process would take weeks, and when it was done, there would only be a thin strip of the stump left. That would be chopped up, from the top down, by one man who made the entire climb on his own. Thompson was the key man for his crew, and he was usually the one to make this climb. He would climb to the lowest branches, throw a guideline over a branch, and repel down the tree, cutting off four-foot long sections as he went. Each section, he would tie to the guideline, and lower to his crew on the ground.

When they were done, there would only be a dead stump on the ground, and a dead stump in the sky. Both would be assimilated by their surroundings.

- posted by BrandG @ 2:37 AM