Six Degrees of Separation from Primates

Yesterday, I climbed a tree. It is not a big tree; it’s probably no more than 50 or 60 feet tall with a trunk about two feet around. Why, on earth, you ask, is a 40-something year-old woman climbing a tree in the middle of winter on a quiet, well-established street in St. Louis? Have I gone crazy? Is it a sign that I’m sliding – surely, steadily, but with gathering speed – down the steep slope of dementia?

I assure you that I’ve not gone barmy! My neighbour was throwing our dog toy – which is a ball on a rope – for both his dog and mine. One wild throw sent it up and through the tree, where it wrapped itself snugly around one of the thinner, bare branches about 10 feet off the ground.

You have to understand that my neighbour’s dog is BALL CRAZY. I mean, that dog will chase a ball until her feet bleed from running back and forth. She’ll run after a ball with such abandon that she’ll crash into rocks, cars and bushes in her pursuit. So, when that ball went up into the tree, she went NUTS. She was crying and running in circles, trying to find the precious toy to return obediently to her master. The problem is that the precious toy was up a tree. How do you explain that to a dog? “Fetch”, is two-dimensional for a man’s best friend; there is no height in their fetch perspective!

So, while my neighbour ran inside to get something with which to knock the ball-on-a-rope off the branch, I studied the tree. As I said, it was about 50 or 60 feet tall with a good, solid trunk. In its early life, someone had taken good care with the pruning, because there were three thick lower branches about six feet up in a nicely spaced ring around the trunk followed by another perfect ring of branches about two feet higher and so on until the branches started criss-crossing wildly with abandon. With a scattering of knots on the trunk, it made a perfect climbing tree.

I climbed a lot of trees when I was a kid. I probably drove my parents crazy but I loved climbing. I would look at every tree as an opportunity to get closer to the sky; closer to the birds I so loved drawing and recording in my journal. I found it easy, actually. One branch to grab and a knot for a toe-hold and I was all set. If you can just get to the first set of branches – a challenge on older trees whose lower branches have fallen off or been cut – the rest are usually close enough to grab and keep going.

So, when my neighbour came back out with a lacrosse stick, I knew he couldn’t help. My brain reverted to childhood. Something came over me. I grasped the lowest branch and lodged my right foot on a knot. At first, my foot slipped. For some reason, I just felt surprised, not defeated. Not once did I calculate that it had been roughly 30 years since I’d last climbed a tree. I tried again and, this time, was able to pull myself up, where I balanced on the branch and reached for the next highest one. Holding it tightly, I reached even higher to shake the offending limb that had stolen and kept our toy. With little effort, the toy came loose and fell. Coming down was even easier, although my concentration was thrown off by my neighbour’s wife screaming at him from the front door to catch me. I’m convinced that she was more worried about the liability than for my fragile bones, but it still felt good to have an audience as I swung easily to the ground.

Search and rescue complete. Neighbours officially think Canadians are savages who climb trees. The dog loves me. Time to join a class at the local climbing wall...