Oneonta is stacked on hillsides above the Susquehanna, and half the yards in town are steeper than they look from the street. Ackley Tree Service climbs them — tree removal on a pitch where the only way out is up and over the house, tree trimming to hold sugar maples back off the eaves of the old side-street homes, pruning that gives a young tree a straight future. River fog fills the valley on autumn mornings and burns off about the time the saws start. When a storm rolls up the valley and lays a limb across a hillside driveway, storm damage cleanup means clearing it before anyone has to back down that grade in the dark. The reward is small and real: a clean cut, a raked lawn, and a house that stops holding its breath every time it blows.