Vs. tree

The lowest branch of the ancient spruce beside me was in easy reach. I ripped the limb from the body without any effort at all. The wood shrieked and protested, the bark and splinters exploded from the site of the injury. I weighed the bough for a moment in my hand. Roughly eight hundred sixty three pounds. Not enough to win in a fight with the hemlock across the clearing to my right, but enough to do some damage.
	I flicked the branch at the hemlock tree, aiming for a knot about thirty feet from the ground. My projectile hit dead center, the thickest end of the bough smashing with a booming crunch and disintegrating into shards of shattered wood that rained down the ferns below with a faint hissing. A fissure split through the center of the knot and it snaked its way a few feet in either direction. The hemlock tree trembled once, the shock radiating through the roots and into the ground. I wondered if I'd killed it. I'd have to wait a few months to know. Hopefully it would recover; the meadow was perfect as it was.
	So little effort on my part. I'd not needed to use more than a tiny fraction of my available strength. And still, so much violence. So much harm.