An astute follower on Instagram mentioned that an old-school forester could easily get the height of a tree using only a stick the length of his arm. And he’s right. The libella method might give you a bit more accurate result, but this would be a very quick way of seeing how far away you need to stand to not get hit when it falls! See if you can figure out how this would work by studying the above illustration. To avoid being hit by the falling tree, the lumberjack would need to step back a distance  equal to his height. If he wanted to know how high the tree is, he could simply count the paces from where he stands to the base of the tree. He would multiply the length of his stride (which he would know from testing) by the number needed to cross the distance.