What 0.8.2 version are you on and is the tree somewhere near the river?
So I'm not sure why all of it happened, but uh upon re-entering the game my kerfur decided to get un-possessed while being hooked to the ATV... That's awesome, but I'll still say that the version is 0.8.2_0010, one of the latest ones from a few days ago. The tree is nowhere near the river, it's near Bravo, to the south west