old life in a dead tree

I met Aidan Mwewe today. I've seen him before biking around the college on his bicycle with a chainsaw strapped to the back of his bike. I went to see his work cutting down one of our large Jacaranda trees that had died. When I found him he was 30 ft in the air chopping a branch from one of the upper limbs. What surprised me wasn't that he was not tied in and merely clinging to the tree with his legs, but it was that Aidan is on the verge of his 64th birthday. I said to him in absolute shock, 'you're how old?'

Aidan has been cutting trees since 1974 when he bought his first chain saw. 'I know these machines very well,' he said, 'I can fix them very well, keep them sharp, and I know how to make them cut the wood fine.' Aidan I would guess has no retirement plan and when I asked why he still cut trees, he simply said, 'it is what I do.' It made me think of how many 60+ year olds who would be willing to climb a tree to cut it down. It also made me think of retirement and that I didn't want to be climbing trees when I was 60. Cutting trees I told him, 'was for young men.'