350-year-old Lakewood tree gets new life

There’s a natural draw between kids and trees. Just ask Micah Glastetter who grew up in Lakewood biking to a towering fir tree along Steilacoom Drive Southwest.

“I looked up and saw this tree. I couldn’t believe it,” said Glastetter. “I think like most little boys, it just was the biggest tree around and that was the most impressive part.”

At 350 years old, the tree predates Glastetter, this neighborhood and the city of Lakewood itself, but rot and decay turned the tree into a potential danger. The city said it needed to come down.

Glastetter, who turned a love of climbing trees into a career – founded Ranger Tree Experts – submitted a bid for the job and secured the gig.

“I was more excited that we were taking the tree down because then it wouldn’t become a big pile of firewood,” said Glastetter. “That kind of thing happens once or twice in a lifetime, something this size.”

Ranger Tree Experts specializes in large-scale and high-difficulty tree removal across Pierce and King counties. It took two days to bring down the 160-foot tree that had amassed three centuries of history. A lift got Glastetter 90 feet into the air while a crane removed individual branches that weighed in at 500 to 2,000 pounds a piece.

Glastetter said this job was personal and he didn’t want the tree and its wood to go to waste, so he reclaimed the wood, bringing it to his shop where it’ll be worked into live edge tables, mantles, whiskey smokers and other mementos.

His goal is to leave nothing to waste.

“The number of pieces is going to be in the thousands,” said Glastetter. “To have this material where you have 250 years of history in 12 inches is going to mean a lot to people.”

Glastetter’s Lakewood Live Edge shop is comprised of custom-made saws, kilns, and other machinery that will turn the wood that others could see as ugly and unusable into something beautiful that has the potential to last another hundred years.

“We see something very different with big ugly wood than most tree services,” said Glastetter. “It’s amazing to be able to uncover beauty in logs like this.”