I was just a man taking pictures of trees he was glad to own. I discovered it on a Tuesday morning in late March. I had gone out early to walk the fence line. I do this a few times a year, mostly after winter. Ice and fallen branches can damage the wire in places. It is routine maintenance, nothing dramatic. I came around the eastern edge of the property and stopped walking. The trees were gone.
Not all of them, but 11 of the mature trees along my eastern boundary. The birch and maple I had photographed just 5 months earlier had been cut down. Clean cuts, chainsaw work. The stumps were fresh. The sawdust was still pale, not yet darkened by weather. Some of the stumps still had sap seeping from the grain.
I stood there for a long time. I did not shout. I did not run to the varner property. I stood and I looked and I tried to understand what I was seeing. The logs had been cut into sections and removed. Someone had taken the wood. The brush had been dragged off to the side and piled loosely near the fence. Whoever did this had worked quickly and had tried to clean up after themselves.
Not out of guilt, I think, out of habit. I walked to the fence line itself. The fence, a simple four strand barbed wire which was intact. No one had cut it or moved it. But when I looked at the stumps relative to the fence, something stood out immediately. Every stump was on my side of the fence, not near the line, not ambiguous, clearly on my side.
The nearest stump was roughly 6 feet inside my property. The furthest was perhaps 18 ft in. There was no reasonable interpretation that put those trees on the varner side. None. I pulled out my phone and called my neighbor Dale, who owns the parcel to my north. He is a retired county surveyor. I trust his eye. He came over within the hour.
