November is a great month for pushing over dead trees, perhaps the best. I spent years wandering the wooded acres of northern Wisconsin, tracing my dad’s footsteps along deer trails and over hillsides covered in shiny brown oak leaves. And all along they way, I was pushing over the trees Mother Nature had long ago left for dead. 

Trees with no branches. Trees with their spines rotted hollow. Trees covered in mottled scraps of bark, riddled with woodpecker holes big enough to hold a large sandwich.*

I pushed them all over. Because that’s what little boys do in the woods. I’m betting girls do it, too, but my sister didn’t hunt, so I never got to find out.

I’d search for these old trees, the perfect ones to push. I was obsessed. My dad would be looking for signs of deer, sussing out that season’s prime hunting strategies. Me? CRASH. 

I’d search for these old trees, the perfect ones to push. I was obsessed. My dad would be looking for signs of deer, sussing out that season’s prime hunting strategies. Me? CRASH. Dad would hiss at me to knock it off, but I couldn’t help myself. I still can’t. 

When you push over a dead tree – one of these massive zombie fingers sluggishly gesturing to the dingy November cloudscape – when you lay your hands upon the peeling bark to push it over, at first you feel some resistance. It’s delightful. You push through that until you hear the bones crack. At the stump, near the dead, brown grass. A crunch that shutters up through the stale wood. You hear it. And you feel it through your skin. 

If you’re lucky, the wood softly crackles as it falls, twisting away from the stump, and maybe the log will moan as it flexes one last time. Then it crashes across the forest floor. It doesn’t explode in a cloud of splinters and wood chips. I wish. It just hits the ground with a thud, perhaps breaking over another fallen tree. I like it when that happens.

We’re not talking about huge trees, here. An old tree trunk about six or eight inches thick ought to do it. Maybe bigger. Strong enough to stand. Dead enough to shove. That’s what you want.

Also: sticks. Hitting trees with sticks is just great. Tactile. Cathartic. Loud.

There’s an art to finding the perfect stick. Like a good pushin’ tree, it needs to be a little rotten. You’re not looking for a sturdy wizard’s staff. You want something that will break. But it can’t be soft. If it’s soft, there’s no sound. No thwack. (You gotta have that thwack.) So it must be stiff yet ready to shatter.

A stick like that can do some pretty cool stuff. If you swing it sidearm, hitting a solid tree in just the right way, the stick will crack in half, and the suddenly free half goes flying forward. Sometimes it’ll rocket through the forest and smash into another tree, and it’s thoroughly fantastic. I know this because I’ve done it. Multiple times.

If everything goes according to plan, you feel like a kung-fu superhero scientist, harnessing the power of physics, taking action, betting on equal and opposite reactions. Hitting the mark with confidence. Yeah OK, all you did was get a hunk of old stick to fly in a certain direction. But it’s awesome.

If things don’t go according plan? Well, there are always more sticks.** 

Roughly 100 percent of my tree-crashing and stick-whacking was (and is) done while hunting deer. And I’m 100 percent sure that deer don’t like it. They run away. When you hunt, you’re supposed to be a woodland thief, a shadow filtering into a tangle of branches and crumbling leaves. Shadows don’t knock over old jack pines. They don’t go thwack. 

But the forest doesn’t seem to mind. I feel like it wants those decrepit trees out of the way anyhow, so why not help? Sure, the forest doesn’t really need your help, but hey – knock yourself out. 

Because November is a great month for pushing over dead trees. Perhaps the best.

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*Hey, we all have our favorite unit of measurement. Mine is sandwiches.
**THEY GROW ON TREES.