DAY 82

DAY 82
06.25.07
TREE 91

My arms are worn out! I can barely write. I’m kinda having a shitty day and getting out to climb always helps. I picked another tree right off the parking lot next to the retreat center. I think I had eyed it before and deemed the first branch too high. I basically did the same thing again today but it looked like such a good climb. So I got my stilts. On this one I was able to grab the branch and drop the stilts on my first go. The first ten feet or so were pretty easy. I transferred to another main limb, went up and transferred back to the trunk. At this juncture I had quite the reach with not many limbs, and ants and slugs to contend with. But I pushed through unbitten. From this point upwards it was a very slow problem-solving climb. The inside of many of the branches had been eaten out hollow and were quite bendy but still strong. Those holes made for good grips. And I kept pushing upward finding different methods to inch higher and higher. There weren’t too many thick leaves so I could see out very well. I was scared but I made it pretty high and felt good. On the way down I transferred to a different limb to avoid the ants and slugs, but it ended up not working.But again, they didn’t bother me. It was smoother and quicker going down knowing which holds to use and branches to hold. Once on the ground I took my pictures and then got on my stilts and walked across the parking lot just beyond the pottery studios before I lost my balance in the grass. That’s what really wore my arms out.
6-25-08:  AHHH the feeling of being caught up.  At some points during the year of writing in my dailyclimb journals I would get a day or two behind and have to write a few at once to catch up.  Strangely, I never had a problem remembering my experience in accurate detail.  Not that I have had much trouble with memory, but what would happen is I would go into my visual memory and find the image of me at the bottom of the tree.  From there the memory would take over and it all would come flooding back to me and then to the page.  Even tiny sensory details would rush back, and then these sensations would trigger my thoughts from that moment.  I could recount a complex thought when my memory reached the place in the tree where I had it. 

When I went to Portland in November for week to get my stuff I got way behind.  From then on till just days before the end of the first year I was behind.  It got so bad that I think at one point I was an entire week behind.  The pressure I felt to catch up was constant and felt awful.  That is why the first time I got behind on this blogging I immediately started to panic.  I will be leaving this evening to go meet the McChensey’s in Lake Michigan.  I don’t believe they have too good of a connection up there so I might be absent for a few days, but you’ll be sure I’ll catch up on Sunday.  I will also get to reclimb the trees I climbed there last year that I never got to reclimb 3 months later.  Oh JOY!

Last night Basil, Will, and I did a little exploring downtown for possible parkour hot spots.  We didn’t necessarily find a whole lot but I did find a good tree to climb by Lincoln Elementary.  At least I think that is what the schools is named… I am going on Will’s hunch.  The tree is a massive hack berry that had gotten so big the bark had lost its signature ridgidness and mostly smoothed out.  It’s structure was quite similar to that of a beech tree.  I had to pull down an overhanging limb and monkey inward to get to the trunk.  From there it was pretty slow going.  There was no definite highest point since the large limbs branch off low and spread wide.  I just chose the limb that I thought I could get the highest on.  Will and Basil waited patiently on the playground below and I took pictures and then made my careful descent.  I had cut my knee earlier that evening and it made it a little difficult to maneuver easily.  I was also quite sore from yesterday’s parkour session.