Up on the ridges east of the village, Patterson is stone walls and steep driveways, with Thunder Ridge white on the skyline for half the winter. Champion Tree Service works that upland ground: tree removal on a slope where a hardwood has to be roped so it goes exactly where it is told, tree trimming to keep a long driveway open overhead. Ice storms are the local proving ground — they come in as rain and land as glass, and by morning storm damage cleanup means hemlocks bent double over the road. Late-winter pruning, with the crowns bare and the ground hard underfoot, is when a tree's shape is easiest to correct. Come green-up nobody has to think about the driveway at all.