DAY 257
12.17.07
TREE 181 & 182
I spent a long while on the computer today. My main goal was to job search but I did a lot of other crap too. I have been good about not playing a lot of card games though. Anyway, once I finally got off the computer I went out to climb a tree. It was sunny and I wanted to go for a walk. So I stepped out the back door and hopped over the back fence into the empty wooded lot behind the house. A little snow remained in piles here and there. I was hopeful for a good tree out here but in this dense wooded atmosphere the trees only tend to have high branches. I walked on thinking I might find something at the roadside.
And I did. A small tree that grows right next to a large poplar.
I haven’t had a two tree transfer in quite a while. I was excited for this. The little tree didn’t have any limbs I could reach from the ground but it did have some good knots to grab onto. I inched upward and as I did I could tell I had gotten more adept at this movement as I was making good distance. It didn’t tire me out as quickly and before i knew it I could reach the first limb. The climb up the rest of the smaller tree was pretty standard. Avoiding dead limbs and pulling myself up a lot. I had to get to this one spot where the trunk split in three. That was the spot to make the transfer to the large poplar limb that grows right over the top of this small tree. I got to my position, judged the transfer, and put out my left foot. When it touched down on the crotch of the other tree I felt my legs starting to split. The pressure I exerted on the big tree was bending the little tree away. I let up a bit, it bent back and I got a better hand position to make a quick transfer. It was successful. In the second tree I made it a couple steps higher before I was out of options. This tree went much higher but there just weren’t anymore limbs in my reach.
But I was satisfied. I love transfers, I was very high already. I got out my length of pink ribbon and tried to get it up as high as I could on the thick branch so that it would tie. Then I got out my camera and took pictures of the great view down between the two trees I climbed. Also some good shots of cars going by on the road.
The sun was bright and I felt really good.
I took it all in then reversed my steps back to the little tree and down to the ground. when I got back to the house my dad was surprised to see me back so fast. I told him which tree I climbed and it made me think, the better I get, the more trees open up to climbing, the less I have to worry about running out of trees nearby to climb.
12-18-08: That thought I had turned out to be so true. I keep finding more and more trees around my parents’ house. Often I think I have exhausted my possibilities, but then I’ll go out and they’ll just hit me and I’ll wonder why I had never seen them before.
I’ll also add that I have had small trees bend away as I transfer to another tree many times. Almost every time it’s a surprise and I have to readjust and try again.
So close to catching up here…. And now I am up to my climb on Tuesday of this week. The weather was pretty amazing. I only say that in retrospect. Most people would call grey, overcast, dark skies all day dreary and oppressive. Then when you add freezing rain and a mix of ice and snow every where you might call that awful and dangerous. But for me it meant bike ride. When I dressed I made sure to have all water proof layers and lots of them. On my head I had a balaclava which is a special hat that goes over the entire head leaving only a hole for the eyes. And on them I had my sunglasses which was a good thing because that freezing rain stung. First I headed to Germantown, then over to the Mid City Mall for a Skyline snack (as I discussed in my last entry). Then I went to Cherokee Park. The roads to this point hadbeen fine. But in the park the ice and snow covered the sides and middle. Basically, where ever tires didn’t hit had a crunchy layer of fallen precipitation of some cold sort. I was careful not to turn suddenly on my bike so as not to slip and crash. Thankfully I never did fall and made it to a field near Dog Hill to search for a tree. Again, I tried an oak but the branches were too high to reach. Not far from that tree was a cedar. Nice, straight, and tall and crowded with limbs all the way to the top. I leaned my bike against the trunk and looked for a way up. The limbs in this tree were also out of reach but I knew the answer… my bike. I very carefully put one foot on the frame and tested to see if the bike would slip. So far so good. I hugged the trunk and lifted my other foot up onto the frame. It was holding but I got the feeling it wouldn’t last so I reached grabbed the nearest limb and took the weight off the bike. As my other arm searched for a limb it kept finding small, dead branches that would break with any pressure. I squeezed the trunk with my legs tightly and did a one arm push up on the good branch and then got a good second hold slightly higher up. I muscled my body up to get my foot on the first branch then started to climb. As I went higher the branches got larger and stronger.
There were so many it was a challenge to maneuver through them. But that wasn’t the difficult part. All the branches had a thin layer of ice on the tops. This is not only slippery when climbing, but hurts like hell to grab with a bare hand.
The solution (which only worked since there were so many branches so close together) was to hook he inside of my elbow or shoulder around the branch.
This would act as my hold and could potentially hold all my weight if needed. As for my feet, I would place the middle of my boot down on a branch right against the trunk. This prevented any foot slippage. And this is how I climbed to the top of the cedar tree.
Except for a few branches I had to use my bare hands, I used this method most the way up and almost all the way down.
When I reached the top I was thrilled. The landscape was under a thick cloud and white snowy ice blanketed the floor like lace.
I took pictures greedily and often jumped from taking pictures of the distance
to looking straight down to the trunk
to focusing closely on the beautiful colors of the cedar bark.
Unfortunately my battery ran out of juice and I never got a picture of the entire tree from the ground. It would have helped with scale because I believe I was easily over 60 feet off the ground.
When I was finished enjoying my accomplishment and started to climb down I heard some crunching of snow. I looked down and saw a dog. Then another and two people. I was sure they would see me in the tree after seeing my bike at the trunk. Strangely they didn’t even seem to notice the bike and they walked right past the tree. I wonder about people’s ability to observe sometimes. That was fine, though, and I continued to hook my arms around the icy limbs as I slinked down towards the ground.
Once finished I hopped back on the bike for an increasingly dark ride complicated by foggy sunglasses. I made it fine and took just a few minutes to cool off before dressing up to go to the Brown Theater with the McChesney’s for holiday orchestra music. It was really fun and I enjoyed it very much. The whole day turned out to be just wonderful. It made the seemingly crappy weather a recipe for good times.