The day after Sonny Bono was killed by a tree, a San Francisco newspaper ran a front-page, full-color picture of the tree, identifying it as the tree that killed the shorter half of Sonny and Cher.
There it was, trying to blend in with all the other trees. That’s the way they are. Trees.
Sometimes, you can’t tell the forest for the trees. That’s what they count on.
From the photo, I could tell, this was not a good tree. It was a very bad tree. Shifty bark, shallow roots. You know the type.
And, listen, it was up by Lake Tahoe, you know. The same place where Fredo got whacked in “The Godfather, Part II.” I mean, I didn’t need anyone to draw me a picture because, after all, there it was right in the Chronicle.
Trees are giving skiing a bad name. As if avalanches and snowboards and $54 lift tickets haven’t all but ruined a perfectly good sport. Now trees.
This is the last straw, or lodge pole pine as the case may be.
Now they’re talking about requiring helmets on the slopes, turning skiers into miners and linebackers. All because of trees.
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I have one question. Do you think a helmet would have saved Jimmy Hoffa?
We know what the problem is. Trees are the problem. Trees are hard. Heads are soft. No one tries to run into trees. Skiers try to miss trees. But have you ever seen a tree try to get out of the way?
Yet, if I read the public sentiment, the blame is all on the skiers and none on the trees. Wake up, world.
I have skied many a trail when suddenly there is a tree where there was none before. I do not trust trees.
The first time I ever skied, at Arapahoe Basin in Colorado, I ended upside down in a tree, and I will swear to this day that tree was not there when I started my turn.
I broke my collarbone in France going face first into a tree, a foreign tree that I am convinced was not only stalking me, but mocking me as well.
How much easier it would be just to get rid of all the trees than to make everyone wear a hard hat. Helmets will require helmet police and a whole helmet bureaucracy.
If helmets are required on the slopes, ties will be required in the lodge. You’ll see.
I can hear the objections. Aesthetics. Trees are pretty. Trees are majestic.
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. Yeah, yeah. What is this, a contest? Who wouldn’t pick a live oak over “Thanatopsis.”
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Yeah, well, so’s an alley, but I don’t think I want to be skiing down one.
Don’t just blame skiers. There is not a golfer alive who ever met a tree he liked. And though fatality statistics for trees and golfers tend to be less than for skiers, that’s just my point.
You really don’t need a life and death reason to distrust trees.
What is clear here is something is going to have to go, the skiers or the trees, and the next time a tree pays $20 to park a mile from the base lodge will be the first.
I have not seen a picture of the tree that killed Michael Kennedy, but I would not at all be surprised if it were the same one I saw in the Chronicle. Oh, I know they were mountain ranges apart, but we have to consider the possibility of a serial tree.
Let’s not dismiss the notion of conspiracy. Ever see a tree all by itself, an only tree? Almost never. Trees stick together, so a single tree acting alone is a very nice theory, but unnatural.
I suppose there are bleeding heart liberal tree lovers out there who won’t believe anything bad about trees.
They’ll say it is not the tree’s fault, the tree can’t help it. It is a prisoner of its environment, or it was raised wrong.
You know, as the twig is bent . . . I’ve heard it all before.