DAY 163

A frustrating day. I stayed up till 5am the night before hanging out with friends in Louisville. I got up this morning at 10:30 just feeling exhausted. I got nothing done and wasted time and it just makes me feel worse. After learning how to do the coffee service at the Friary for my upcoming weekend job, I headed to Louisville’s downtown waterfront park. I parked by the playground next to Tumbleweed and walked over to the path along the river. Just as I got there the U of L women’s crew team was going down the river for practice.

Not very fast though, because as I walked I was staying pace with them. Soon I was to my collection of trees to reclimb. Again, without Will today, I was out alone. I stepped up to the first dead limb of the dying and leaning tree. Then up into another smaller tree. I worked my way up on some small branches snaking through to avoid getting poked by all the little twigs. The bark of this second tree is extremely rough and the ridges protruded like miniature mesas on a grey dessert floor. Then up to some stronger branches right next to the third and largest tree of the three. I stepped a little further out on a limb and grabbed the large branch that was my final destination point.

I pulled myself up, moved out to where the limb began to wind downwards to where I had tied my ribbon.

I pulled it off and took a seat. I shot some pictures then got up to my feet, walked toward the trunk and got some shots of the river.



I examined the large tree for a path higher up but found nothing. So I hung out low down to the middle tree and lowered myself down. The climb down was quick and poky. I stopped when I got a call from Norman. I couldn’t answer it when he first rang but I repositioned and called him back. As we made plans to meet for dinner three ants suddenly attacked my hand. The one hand holding me balanced on this tree. I tried blowing them off which only made them run frantically. A few more blows and I finally got them off. Good thing they didn’t bite. Then I hung up an climbed the rest of the way down. The rest of the night I felt great. Climbing a tree can really turn my mood around.

9-18-08:  Man, I have got some catching up to do.  Tropical Depression Ike really has screwed things up around here.  The wind storm hit Sunday afternoon and my parents still don’t have power.  Almost 300,000 homes were without power and half still don’t today.  I’ll tell you more about the experience in the following entry.  
As for the entry above from last year… that image of the crew team is obviously not mine.  I give credit to the U of L rowing site.  I just thought it was so perfect because the trees on the left of that picture are exactly where those three trees I climbed are located.  I couldn’t have found a more relevant image for this day’s journal.  And I was not trying to discount the women’s rowing abilities since they were probably just coming back to the dock.  

So, I have been staying at my parent’s place a lot lately to work on an art project since I have no studio to work at in Louisville.  Saturday night I chose to stay in and work and watch the new Saturday Night Live.  But before doing so I went out just after dark to climb a tree.  I went down my parent’s street and in the new development neighborhood saw two trees silhouetted against what light remained in the night’s sky.  They looked like two trees I could climb and possibly transfer from one to the other.  But as I got closer I couldn’t find their trunks.  I finally realized that they were branches from a larger poplar tree that had been severely cut back away from powerlines.  The result was very large horizontal limbs with vertical offshoot branches.  

I pushed through some weeds and got some minor scraped after getting entangled in some thorny vines.  One of these limbs bend down close enough for me to grab and pull myself up. 

I cat crawled into the collection of three trunks.

Then I transferred across to another large horizontal branch and walked out towards those two vertical limbs I thought were trees.

Here is a view from the the middle of the two branches looking up:

And without flash I was able to capture the distant light on the horizon:

As I was taking pictures I could feel the bugs, probably mosquitoes, landing and biting me all over.  They were thick and really starting to make me uncomfortable.  I looked for a way to get up those two branches but I found nothing I decided to climbed back down.  I walked back towards the trunks and debated whether to go down the way I came up on the limb or to see if I could get down the trunks.  Not wanting to go through more thorny weeds than I have to, I chose the trunk.  I lowered myself down to the smallest one and slid down the trunk squeezing tightly since I had no idea where the ground was.  Eventually I figured I was close and just dropped onto some uneven ground.  I pushed back through getting some more bloody scrapes then finally was out and onto the road.  It was an interesting tree and a decent climb.  I was glad I did it in the dark because it made it more of a challenge.