View versus Trees

This blog has little to do with travel and tourism in the Arkansas Ozarks.  But it does represent the issues that we face here in the Ozarks and in many other places across the US.

My home sets on a ridge top.  Although I only have 3 acres of land, I am pretty much surrounded by hardwood trees.  My neighbors, or hardly anything else is barely visible through the foliage.  This past winter, thanks to an extreme ice storm, many of the trees upper limbs and branches were broken off which opened up a view to the valley below that we had never seen.  It was fantastic,  We could see from our living room at least 10 miles over to and beyond Bull Shoals lake and the White River.

Pictured here is a somewhat blurry photo taken from my window using a cell phone of a rafter of turkeys in my yard this winter.  Nearly 50 birds.  You get the idea - I live in a fantastics place.  

Now here is the problem.  The leaves have grown back on the trees and our view is obstructed by only a couple beautiful and majestic trees.  We highly value the oaks - an in this case, these two large red oaks that surround our yard.  Yes - we have a fireplace and we do cut trees for heat.  Although we usually go out to my wife's family owned 300 acres and try our hand at forrest management when cutting for firewood.  If we cut these two oaks, we could not justify them as good forrest management - quite the opposite.  The only reason to cut these two would be for an increased view.  An outstanding increased view.

What would you do?    omr - at - ozarkmountainregion.com      Let me know your thoughts.