Climbing Trees

Today I was in the garden by 8.30, despite it being a Sunday. It was to be a sunny day and, while impetus was there,  I needed to complete the wattle fence as well as the crazily paved front path.

By 4 all was finished, rubble delivered to the local dump.

I was happily knackered and yet wanted to stretch my legs and lungs in the forest, to feel strong and healthy for another week of challenging dynamics at work.

Returning from Scrogbank (where you`re almost guaranteed to meet nobody), I veered down into the copse above our field, which marks the borderland between farmland and "wildness".

Inspired by Robert Macfarlane, though (more significantly) giving into my own wish: I sized up the gnarled oak tree by the upper corner gate: plenty branches, not too many of them treacherously dead. I stepped from the drystane dyke onto a strong-enough branch and wound my way up the tree`s broad dinosaur hide. At twenty feet I stopped; didn`t wish to go further as I was cogitating difficult emotions, ancient but unarticulated. Didn`t want my equilibrium off-kilter while balanced amongst these branches of variable dependability.

I thought of The Wild Places: "I walked up through the wood, and midway along its northern edge I came to my tree - a tall grey-barked beech..." [clean limbed, strong branched !] "...whose branches flare out in such a way that it is easy to climb. I had climbed the tree many times before, and its marks were all familiar to me..." 

This is how MacFarlane introduces his book - touching base with his own private bit of wilderness a stone`s throw from his city home. 

I live at the edge of a tamed and industrialised wilderness of trees and moorland. To scramble into a tree is to be intimate with its own particular presence, and it requires focus and a degree of nerve, strength and agility. It is to be reminded that I am alive and that life is a balancing act.