Last Sunday I had a bizarre and harrowing experience. I used to live in a house at the very edge of Shell Creek. There, while gardening and taming the Creek, I heard a snap and saw the whole half of a tree fall straight down like a knife into the mud where always after it looked like a dead tree straight up and bleak as it was, and I could have been under that.
Last Sunday, I walked to the beach on my Carkeek Park (Shell Creek on steroids) walk/hike and coming home I heard firecrackers from the neighborhood. Then I realized it was not firecrackers. I looked for the falling tree to ID my location in relation to it, and witnessed a 30 ft alder fall 10 paces in front of me across the path. It happens very fast. Crack crack snap crack shift snap shift fall whoosh - maybe 1 minute. I climbed over it once I regained composure and a little boy came along with his father going the other way, still wondering if it was bringing any more deadly timber branches and trees with it. I climbed over it and its live branches and got moss and lichen on my pants from its trunk. It was decades old. I left the park still thinking it could have repercussions. So I know life happens fast.