I was out on the trail yesterday, and these thoughts came to me. In 37 years of backpacking, day hiking, fishing, hunting, and just plain holding down logs in the woods, I have never actually seen a tree fall. I see all kinds of signs that they fall, trees on the ground, loggers taking them down, and I've taken down a few myself. But I've never seen one fall "on its own". So it occurs to me that if some moron on this board, not you of course, were to say, in response to the old question about the tree falling in the forest, "show me evidence that trees fall in the forest when no one's around", I couldn't do it. I could only point to indirect evidence. And perhaps if I had ever seen one fall, that evidence might be called mere anecdote.