DAY 277
01.06.08
TREE 108
The quest for the ring renewed! I woke up at Drew’s parents’… not hung over. Good news. And I got out of there pretty quick. I saw it wasn’t raining outside so I thought it’d be a good idea to go back to Cox’s Park and try to conquer the wooden beast.
When I got there a car was parked right in front of the tree and had people in it. Go away, I said. And, miraculously, they did. Which is amazing since I said it in my head.
I got out and went up to the tree and touched it. Still a little damp but better than yesterday. I tried a few run ups but wasn’t getting anywhere. I tried shimmying but that was worse. There was a picnic table nearby and I thought I could use it as a ladder, but it was too heavy to move. I looked for other objects. Ah! A steel barrel trashcan. Perfect! I glanced around me for cops and then rolled the can to the trunk.
Carefully I stood on it’s edges and considered my entry. I reached my left arm around and wedged it, then jumped sideways into the split between the two main branches. It was quite awkward but I wriggled my body up inches at a time until, finally, my foot had a hold and I could get to my feet. Then it was time for the cat crawl. But the branch was too steep and slippery so I lay down on my stomach with my legs wide and wrapped. I bent my knees and dug my toes in, and kind of like an inch worm, made my way up the massive limb. At the first offshoot branch I returned to my feet. From there I could cat crawl. I paused to see if I could find the small ring I had used as a marker. I couldn’t so I moved on. But how? I thought. I wasn’t sure how I got past a pesky little limb right in my way the first time. But then as I carefully climbed over it, hooking my left foot on a lower limb and stepping with my right, I realized that was how I did it the last time. A person in a car at the far corner of the lot watched me.
I think. I couldn’t be sure. I got to my feet again and there it was… the ring!
It had turned a beautiful bronze from its original silver color.
It went well with all the red bud clusters on the tips of the branches. I got a good seat and let my legs dangle.
I took lots of pictures
and then removed the ring. I looked for a path to a higher point but decided against it.
I felt good in that spot. It felt like a nice accomplishment even the second time. I had to use a trashcan to help me get in the tree but circumstances were different this time.
Then I climbed down.
The backward crawl was slow but once I got to open limb I sat slid, nice and quick. A white truck drove by at that point and suddenly slowed to a near stop when it passed me. I can only assume I had gained a fan and was not enduring silent ridicule. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I have the ring. I jumped from the split over the trashcan and rolled. Good work!
1-10-09: Looking back I wish I would have tried to write this entry with a bit more creativity. Maybe style the writing after The Lord of the Rings, you know, Tolkienesque. I guess I didn’t because I was questing after the ring, not trying to destroy it. Sometimes I look back and wished I would have experimented more with my writing. But it got to be this habit and I wrote about each climb in a very straight forward way. I just wanted to get the task over with really. But I still write everyday here. We’ll see.
Oh, and a funny story about me sleeping at the McChesney’s. I was the only one that slept there. Drew didn’t even stay there. For some reason everyone else had a ride or just drove home and I slept on the couch, that was really weird. Ok, that wasn’t much of a story, and you might not even laugh… but it is what it is.
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Now to discuss the climb from Monday, January 5th, 2009. I was back home after the holiday trip to grandma’s and I really wanted to get out and do some parkour. I didn’t want to wait till Wednesday night. I needed to get out my pent up energy that was building all week. I called Josh and we biked over and short session with Jeremy. Then Josh and I hung out for a while. He was getting hungry and wanted to go home but I convinced him to join me in a climb first. We happened to be biking past one of the trees I had climbed a long while back, Day 78 to be exact. It is the basswood tree right across the street from the skate park downtown.
It was the one I marked with an orange lighter.
I suggested Josh climb that one, and I planned to climb another basswood just a few feet away. I had never considered climbing it before because it just looked too hard. But, as with many tree choices I have made lately, I figured I could now climb it with my increased shimmying capabilities.
I got started on my climb after explaining to Josh how I entered the tree he planned to climb. He tried my technique and chose to just run up the trunk and grab the first branch. Since he’s so freakin’ tall he can do that. I would not have ever been able to do that.
Anway, I started to shimmy up my tree pausing only shortly when there was a branch or stub to rest on. Then I finally reached the limbs near the top but still had to do a little more shimmying to reach my high point. I looked over at Josh and he had made it about half way up and looked stuck. So I tried to help him get higher. It was really hard to talk though, since the rush hour traffic on the interstate right next to us was very loud.
Josh took my suggestions and climbed higher
and I started to take pictures. I pretty much took a picture from every angle out,
one up
and one down.
Then my battery ran out of power. We both sat up in our trees for a little while longer enjoying our accomplishments and our views, and then I decided to climb down. I slid down all the way to the ground skipping all the branches along the way. It’s my new favorite way to go.