If a tree falls in the woods

You have all heard the saying, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it really make any sound.” The basic premise behind this is that without an audience, maybe there is no sound after all.

I am not sure how close you have to be to insure the tree knows you are there so it can produce a sound while hitting the ground. When I lived atop Willow Park, I would watch the trees fall in the big winds of spring.

Even though Ol' Dutch is about as deaf as a stone post, even I could hear them hit the ground albeit some with a delayed sound due to being far away.

This past September I was up in the forest hunting elk and bears and there were some pretty windy days up there. Now Ol' Dutch is generally pretty easygoing regardless of what Trixie says but the trees falling around me made me a little on the goosey side.

Now, dear readers, you’ll remember last week I mentioned a gremlin on my gamecam. If you, too, found yourself up in the forest alone with only beetle-killed trees, coyotes and gremlins for company and the soundtrack from the shining playing in your head, I bet you would also be a bit goosey.

The old timers had a word for branches and limbs which were hung up in the tops of trees and could fall unannounced on some unsuspecting sojourner walking by. They called such limbs “widow makers.” This referred to them falling and killing some poor logger or hunter and leaving a poor woman alone in her sorrow. Or whatever state she might be inclined to find herself.

Ol' Dutch was able to escape with life and limb without being hit but still I had to wonder if there was any sound just out of reach of my finely tuned hearing or, as Trixie calls it, “deaf as a nail.”

I always have to remind her that “there are none so deaf as those who will not hear” which has absolutely nothing to do with anything but sounds smart anyway and Ol' Dutch can use some of that around the house.

Now as most of you know, Trixie has wiled her way into my good graces and somehow she became a permanent fixture around the house without me even knowing it. Somewhere between fly fishing and bear hunting she slipped in unnoticed and has seemed to taken up permanent residence like the spider under the sink.

But back to sounds. Ol' Dutch sleeps like a log but it’s more like one rolling downhill as I am up all night. Trixie on the other hand has the audacity to lay her head on her pillow and not even move til morning thereby causing friction in an otherwise perfect relationship.

Any self-respecting woman should wake each and every time I do and see to my needs but not Trixie. She plows on til morning and plowing it is.

Her nasal passages do an about face about the time she hits the sack and Ol' Dutch is treated to a symphonic concert of epic proportions.

Trixie will tell you that since she is not awake there really is no sound to be heard resonating from her tonsils at 3 a.m. And even if there was, I could not hear it being deaf as a nail and additionally, she has no tonsils.

All I know is that the last time I heard such a sound I ducked for cover and now Ol' Dutch understands that if he ever says anything about it again, he will find himself without any covers.