DAY 168

This morning I returned to Joe Creason Park to climb the red cedar tree in the playground.

I felt like I had a lot to live up to in this reclimb, specifically for pictures since so many turned out so nice the first time. Especially the one with my foot in it.

But I think it was the light that day and the fact that it was rainy. Today is all sunshine which can make for nice pictures but often shadows and highlights are too strong and the colors suffer for it. I walked up to the trunk and took a seat on the picnic bench just next to it. I waited as these two men slowly collected the trash from the playground trashcans. I figured they wouldn’t care but I waited nonetheless. I didn’t like drawing attention to myself. I’ve had enough hassles in the past to know to avoid it. As I sat waiting I contemplated trying to climb this tree using only my arms as a challenge. When I finally started I tried it, got two branches up and realized just how important my legs are for climbing. Even one is vastly easier than none. So I just climbed as usual. Really nothing spectacular to write about. Just so many limbs to choose from.

Towards the top I had to snake through a little and finally got to my ribbon.

I took a long time taking shots trying to recreate some of the previous successful ones and also some new ones.



My arm that was holding me up began to fatigue. I had to keep adjusting my grip. I climbed slightly higher to try to get a view above all the limbs but was just off by a few inches. The top was really skinny and the weight of my body hanging off one side was bending it a little.

After I was satisfied with my pictures I climbed back down. At the bottom I transferred from limb to low limb 360 degrees around. It is fun to do so when the tree allows it. A pretty good climb, but it is just hard to compare to that rainy day when all the needles sprinkled me with cool, refreshing water at every step.

9-20-08:  In some trees it’s just hard to take bad picture.  In a completely unrelated comment, I think this entry is okay but it doesn’t tell me anything about what was going on that day.  A lot of my entries are like that.  Later in my entries, like around all and winter, I put my climbing into a context of the day.  For example: how I got to the tree, what happened before that day, what happened afterward.  Much more diary-like.  Part of the fun is to relive that day, to remember what happened.  I hope I’m not making this up, but I am pretty sure I get there. 

On Thursday I had a day off from working on the deck.  As you all may have noticed, that was the day I caught up on my blogging.  It felt like a full time job.  I sat with my laptop for easily 6-8 hours.  And I didn’t even get all the way caught up since I am still an entry behind.  At one point I just had to take a break and go for a ride and climb a tree.  I headed to Cherokee Park but didn’t go in.  By Cherokee Triangle there is this massive oak tree with a large limb that arcs over an entire two lane road.  


I had noticed this tree in the past and was saving it for a good day.  Well Thursday was that good day.  The sun was shining, I felt good and had the time.  I locked my bike up to a small tree and took a long ethernet cable I had in coiled up in my shorts and climbed another mid-sized tree to hide the cable on a branch.  It may seem a little paranoid but it would suck to get it stolen.  Why not take the effort to secure you belongings?  Plus I got to climb an extra tree in the process.  Anyway….

I walked to the end of the long branch and pulled down the small end.  I walked towards the trunk and went hand over hand until it was pulling my feet off the ground.  At this point I could tell the branch was strong enough to hold my weight so I lifted my legs and crawled further along upsidedown.  When I got to where the split limbs came together I pulled myself up to my feet.  Then I began to do a combination of cat crawling and butt scooting over the road.  I always looked into the windshields of the passing cars to see if they had spotted me.  I don’t any of them did.


I scooted and crawled all the way across this moss and fungi covered branch until I could finally get to my feet and walk the last 6 or so feet to the trunk.  I navigated around the large branches to the other side of the tree and checked out my options for going higher and my view.  That is when I noticed that I had been noticed my some people at the nearby playground.

It may not look like they are watching me in this photo, but they definitely were and I even heard them say some things like, "look at that guy in the tree."  I couldn’t tell what their reactions were however.  I decided to ignore them and focus on the rest of my surroundings.



Then I noticed that I could get much higher.  It just meant that I was going to have to climb back down a few branches and crawl out one to an offshoot limb that almost looked like a small tree itself.

If you follow the lowest left branch in the above picture you can see the vertical branch in the center of the image that I then climbed all the way to its top.  It felt like a tree climb within a tree climb.  And I had a much better view.




Then I noticed that the one woman in the playground that was paying the most attention to me was now standing and just staring at me.

I don’t know about you, but that body language doesn’t scream approval.  Mom’s generally respond the strongest to my tree climbing.  They must have a lot of empathy for my mom.  

That is also when I noticed that my biking hat had fallen out of my back pocket and was sitting in the middle of the road.  There was nothing I could really do so I just hoped that people chose not to drive over it.  But I did figure that it was time to climb back down.  So I went back down the vertical branch, slid on my butt backwards to the trunk, worked my way around to the other side of the tree back to the first long, arcing branch.  I then crawled and scooted back the way I came stopping where the limbs split and took one last picture.

I lowered myself underneath and hooked my heels over the branch to crawl down to the end then hung straight and dropped the few inches to the ground on the other side of the road. 

I felt really good besides all the cuts and scrapes and the itchiness from rubbing all over the growth on those branches.  I then scurried back up the smaller tree to my cable, took it down, and then unlocked my bike and road away.  I could feel the eyes burning into the back of me.  They didn’t say anything to me and I was half tempted to walk over to the playground and ask them what they thought.  But I didn’t.  Oh well,  a damn good climb and an accomplishment I am very happy with.