Activity 3-3: Climb a Tree

Motivation
Climbing a tree literally gives you a new perspective on the park. From a higher vantage point, you might notice things you wouldn't see from the ground. Being up in a tree can give you a glimpse of how squirrels, birds, and other creatures experience the park. You also create an intimate connection with the tree, trusting her with your weight and studying her branches to find a way up (and down). Finally, tree climbing is generally considered a kids' activity. Climbing a tree as an adult is decidedly unconventional. But by stepping outside the boundaries, choosing to stray off the marked path, you can tap into playful and creative energy.
Things to Try
Find a Tree
As often as tree climbing was mentioned in the books I read as a kid, it seemed that climbable trees should be everywhere (especially outside bedroom windows). In reality, I have found good climbing trees few and far between. In most maples, oaks, ashes, and other common deciduous trees, the first branches are simply too far up to reach. ​The easiest trees to climb are those with nearly horizontal branches that start relatively close to the ground and are spaced a comfortable distance apart. These characteristics tend to be more common in evergreen trees (at least in Minnesota), so keep an eye out on the pines and firs around the park. I was fortunate that Horton Park has a Scotch pine that is seemingly made for climbing, with limbs like a spiral staircase twining around the trunk. Our house in the neighborhood also had a very climbable white fir in the front yard. Of course, always be careful to ensure the branches can bear your weight. You don't want to hurt yourself or the tree!
During the year that I was following a practice of composing a moment in the park every day, I almost always found the spark for them in the course of my regular daily activities. I discovered that best way to find inspiration was to stop looking for it, and simply pay attention to what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling. Almost invariably, something would prompt me to pause, to look closer, to utter a mental, “wow,” or, “huh, that’s odd.” I had learned to latch on to those instants and explore them further, as they often led to creative fruit. 

There was only one occasion on which I set out for a walk specifically looking for a moment. It was late summer, wildflowers had begun to fade, the trees were much the same as they had been since they finished leafing out, and the weather was unremarkable. I decided a change in perspective was in order. On most of my walks I had been accompanied by our dog or our small children, so tree climbing was not feasible. But this evening, I was alone, and free to climb. Up the Scotch pine I went, feeling the rough, flaky texture of the bark and the flex and bounce of the branches as they supported and released my weight. Eventually, I turned outward, finding a seat where the angle of a branch against the trunk cradled my back. I watched the sunset over the rooftops of houses across the street. But the “wow” from that perch turned out to be more subtle than the flashy colors in the sky.
Climb, Observe, and Create
See the resources below for tips on getting up into a tree.

Once you are up in the tree, even if you only make it to a perch on the lowest branch, look around. How does the park look different from up here? Do you see anything you never noticed before? How do the branches give under your weight? How does the bark feel? What else do you notice about the tree now that you are among her limbs?

Either while you are in the tree or after returning to the ground, create something that conveys your experience. It might be a moment in the park, a poem, a sketch, a photograph, or something else. 
I climb the ladder-like limbs of a Scotch pine, finding a perch where the angle of the branches cradles my back as I watch the motion of my breath ripple out through the points of thousands of needles.

July 30, 2016
Resources
How to Climb a Tree (WikiHow) - This practical guide includes important safety guidelines, tips on selecting a tree to climb, and helpful techniques.

UMN Urban Forestry Outreach & Research (UFOR) - The UFOR Team Tree Youth Program offers tree climbing classes for youth in the Twin Cities area. Their classes go beyond casual climbing with ropes and other equipment to really explore a tree's canopy.
Suggested Reading
Braiding Sweetgrass chapter: "Old Growth Children" - Among the patchwork of clearcuts and commercial timberland around Mary's Peak in the Oregon Coast Range, Franz Dolp set out to nurse a bit of old growth forest back to the land. Anchored by the Western Red Cedar, known to the Salish peoples as Maker of Rich Women, old growth forests are wondrously complex ecosystems. Amidst the years of clearing opportunistic berry brambles and hand planting some thirteen thousand seedlings of the forest's many species, Franz wrote in his journal, "The exercise in finding the right distribution of trees feels like revising a poem." Not coincidentally, Franz also co-founded the Spring Creek Project, which brings together artists and ecologists to inspire new ways of imagining humanity's relationships with our ecosystems.

I attended graduate school at Oregon State University, in the shadow of Mary's Peak. When my parents came to visit, we would hike up Mary's Peak, and I remember the dismaying view of clearcut scars etched along the flanks of the mountains. But it seemed the land still held the memory of old growth forest. Even in town, our neighbor's yard hosted a magnificent Mother Cedar, well over a hundred feet tall. (We would give directions to our house by saying, "Look for the big tree. You'll know which one when you see it.") Some of the faculty members in the interdisciplinary Ecosystem Informatics program I was in were also affiliated with the Spring Creek Project. As someone who has always straddled the realms of art and science, the work of the Spring Creek Project resonated deeply with me and formed part of the inspiration for Start with a Park.