East of town the Pere Marquette runs dark under overhanging cedar, and the sandy ground back there grows oak and jack pine in about equal measure. Boon's Tree Service works those lots and the ones out along Hamlin Lake — removals where a trunk has gone punky at the base, trimming to get weight off a roofline, pruning that gives a young tree a shape to grow into. Autumn is the good stretch: leaves down, structure plain to see, every judgment easier to make. When a hard west wind comes through and lays half a tree across the lane, the cleanup is a morning's work. What's left afterward is an open yard, a clean cut, and a stack of rounds by the shed.