It definitely has been an interesting few days, to say the least. Not only have I had the adventure of heading into the sun while driving through drifts in near whiteout conditions, I also got the pleasure of nearly destroying my own house.

I was over at my land in Virginia recently when I noticed that a large tree near the corner of the kitchen had been storm damaged.

The tree, a big old black gum, had been broken by recent high winds and part of the top was leaning precariously. Several limbs were also falling off and the whole trunk had taken on a tilt. From the broken piece, I could see that the inside of the treetop was hollow, which meant that it could snap off at any time and come crashing down on the house.

So, since it was quiet that day, I fired up the chainsaw and tried to take it down in a safe direction — with try being the operative word here.

I made a nice notch, but the broken top of the tree was leaning the other direction, which acted like a counterweight that I hadn't counted on. It slowly started leaning, ever so slightly, its great trunk moaning from the strain of changing positions.

That's when I started to worry. The trunk of the tree was turned in several different directions to start with, sort of like a snake standing on its tail. Even so, it was about 60 or so feet tall to the tip and a good 20 inches through the middle. This was not a tree to toy with.

Once I realized that the tree might try to go exactly where I didn't want it to, I entered into a panic mode. There is nothing wrong with panic mode per se, except for the fact that I was responsible for a huge tree that was about to flatten the house and I had no one else to turn to for help or sage advice. At times like that, the adrenaline from panic mode isn't what's needed. I needed normal brain function, which is something I obviously lost about 30 minutes earlier when I decided to cut the tree and save the house. I have heard that he who hesitates is lost, but he who doesn't hesitate has a tree on his house. Anyhow, I started by grabbing some big pieces of lumber and bracing up the tree to buy some time, thinking that it could go at any time and crush me like a bug.

All the time, I was thinking to myself in headlines. "Local man crushes self with tree," or, "Man drops huge tree on his own house."

If you can recall what happened a few years ago, I had a similar situation with some big trees that fell and got caught on one another. This was much, much worse.

Allow me to clarify what was going on — I had only made one big notch and the tree had only moved a very little, but it was enough to get me concerned.

Any way, after I got a few braces in place and was satisfied that the tree wasn't going to edge over, I stepped back to take one of those calm moments and think. The only problem was the turmoil in my mind, which was by now throwing solutions in my directions ranging from the lucid to the absurd. I thought of pulling it with the truck, winching, pushing and using a come-along.

When a thousand thoughts per second are coursing through the brain, it is very difficult to catch hold of any one of them. Therefore, I just stood there, about 20 feet from the base of the tree, gawking like a man who just noticed a flying pig circling overhead.

Once I had come back to my senses, I said a few well-meant prayers and went back to work. I decided to try and go higher than my first cut and get the tree to lean the other direction.

I got my ladder out and started up the side and attached a big chain from the trunk of the tree to a nearby oak. Then I climbed a little higher and made a notch to help lean the tree back the way I wanted it to go. I went a little lower and made another notch, figuring that portion of the trunk, which was leaning to my favor at that point, might be my saving grace.

At the third notch point, I heard the leaves rustling as a breeze started to blow on what had been a perfectly quiet afternoon. I immediately took the saw and left the vicinity of the tree, just as I heard the trunk again start to groan and then start to crack. It almost looked like it was lying down to take a nap. The biggest part of the trunk, the bottom, was still in place up to where I braced it, but the higher notches were giving way. Only the thunderous noise of the trunk splitting broke the near quiet as the tree came down, narrowly missing the building and the roof, but clipping about two feet off the edge of the front porch roof.

I was so glad it was down, I didn't even mind the porch. It will be easily repaired with one support board and one piece of tin. A very small loss considering the fact that I could have been facing death, dismemberment or financial catastrophe. Upon looking over the fallen behemoth, my chest felt like a great weight had been lifted, but the porch stood as visual evidence that a great weight had instead been dropped.

Leave it to me to try and find irony in knocking the corner off the porch.

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