Up in Walker County the ridges close in, and Rock Spring sits down in the valley between them where cold air settles on a January night. Tom's Tree Services works that hollow ground and the slopes on both sides — hardwood removals in tight yards, trimming to take weight off a limb hanging over the house, pruning while the leaves are down and the structure of a tree shows plain. Ice is the local trouble: it loads a hickory until something has to give, and what gives usually lands across the way in. Storm days go to cutting a path first and tidying second, until the road is open and the ground is bare again. There is a real pleasure in the last cut of a removal, when a tree that had turned into a problem is a stack of wood and a wide piece of sky.