DAY 24

DAY 24
04.28.07
TREE 27 & 28

Lately I’ve been wandering to areas of the Sanctuary I haven’t visited yet to find trees to climb. Over beyond the white water tower in the field I found 3 more trail heads I can’t wait to explore. From across the field I saw large trees on the edge of a wood. The closer I got to them the more I realized they were too big and the branches too high. Except one where the trunk split about 9 or 10 feet up. I grabbed a fallen tree and leaned it in the split. But it was too dead to trust. I looked around for another way and saw a young tree growing next to the large trunk that came close to the first branch 12-14 feet up (I guess). It felt very high. I didn’t get any higher, though I could touch the next highest branch. Again my fear judged my position high enough. Yet with the tree transfer and the height, I am not disappointed like yesterday.

 

4-28-08:  In the picture above you can see both the small trunk I leaned up against the large tree and the small tree that I used to get to that first large branch.  Also, I wrote “(I guess)” because my judgment of distance was not great but has improved over the project.  Well… sometimes.  Like yesterday I climbed this huge maple tree at Cox’s Park.  To get down I went way out on a low limb then hung down from my hands.  I walked out further to bend the branch down and get closer to the ground to drop.  I thought I was pretty close to the ground, let go and fell a lot farther than I thought.  My ankles had that sudden pinching pain from landing flat footed.  But the tree with all it’s new green leaves was beautiful.  I took two videos but I don’t like either so will not be sharing them.  One had potential.  I sat in the top and picked the young green whirligigs, then dropped them in the camera’s view so I could record them twisting down.  It went for over 2 minutes and none of the ones that actually spun like a helicopter got camptured by the camera.  The other one was me talking about the climb while I look around from the top.  I posted a similar one yesterday, and as is normal, I didn’t like what I said nor the sound of my voice.  But I took some pictures.  Here is my favorite: