On tree climbing

I used to climb trees a lot when I was a kid. I've alluded to it before. There were several large quaking aspens in the fields around our house that were most suited to it. (I remember also climbing the large pine tree near a friend's house, but that was a lot less good - the needles were pokey, you got the pitch all over your clothes).

I never thought that much about it when I was a kid. It was just something kids did. I remember I would like to climb up into the biggest of the aspens, find a convenient spot where I could lean against the trunk but hook my arms and legs over branches (for security - I was very careful not to risk falling) and sit there and look around. The biggest thing for me was the different perspective - the bird's eye view, being able to see really far.

I don't think I ever climbed all that high; usually I was about even with the second-floor windows on my parents' house, so maybe 15-20 feet up? But it seemed really high up back then.

My brother and I never built treehouses - there were no trees suitable in the area and also no scrap lumber available, but we did climb trees, which was kind of the same thing.

I also admit I remember the largest of the aspens - it was actually probably either two trees or a double-trunked tree (or, knowing what I do now about aspens, a pair of clones). I mostly climbed one of the two trunks; it was more suitable. I also admit when I was really young I called it the "beautiful balloon tree" (after the old Fifth Dimension song, "Up, Up, and Away" - I guess I pretended the tree was a hot air balloon or something).

The saddest thing was seeing that tree cut down. I was in high school or maybe college and hadn't climbed it in years. The open fields near where we lived were sold and eventually became built up (we had moved away before most of it happened). Anyway, a bunch of heavy machinery came and the tree came down. I watched it, kind of like the way you'd go to the funeral of someone you cared about - not because you wanted to see it but because you felt you were doing it out of respect.

I haven't climbed a tree in maybe 35 years. I don't know if I really could, now - I'm probably too heavy for most trees and probably have less proportional upper-body strength to my size than I did at 9.

But some people do. Apparently it's a sport. And there's even safety equipment. (I wonder, do kids still climb trees like I did, with no helmet or pads or rigging? Or is tree climbing something that's been deemed unsafe?)