I like being slightly high up. Not too high: I occasionally get vertigo. But standing on a stool or a library ladder is perfect. When I worked in a bookshop, many moons ago, I would linger a little when doing stock checks on the higher shelves, observing the shop floor from a slightly different perspective, in the midst of it but also, ever so subtly, removed and unavailable.
I also really like trees. Not from a botanical point of view: primary school outings gathering leaves for identification left me unmoved. I still can’t tell trees apart aside from the very obvious (silver birches, weeping willows, horse chestnuts at a pinch, cherries when in bloom…). But I grew up right by a forest, and I really believe the landscape of your childhood leaves its mark. Trees make me feel at peace.
Put all this together, and you might think I’d spent my younger years tree climbing. I didn’t. Until this week, I’d never climbed a tree. My brother and I often visited a friend across the road for playdates when I was little, and there was this one perfect tree to perch on in her garden. But they were both three years older than me, and while they’d climb up, it remained beyond my reach. I was left to stand under the tree as they sat up there. As the youngest in the neighbourhood’s band of kids I was used to being on the margin of games. But it was very frustrating. I would have liked to climb that tree. Of course, by the time I would have been big enough to follow, they had moved on from tree climbing.
I’d had my eye on this one tree by the river, not far from where I live, for years. The way its trunk bends down makes it not just inviting but, clearly, an easy climb (in fact, while this post is all about climbing a tree, I’m not entirely sure this even quite qualifies as ‘climbing’), and it’s just isolated enough to avoid looking a little silly in public, with the associated risk that I get clumsier when watched. I’d walk past, think ‘someday…’, but it never seemed the right time. This week, I put it on my to-do list.
Coincidentally, the day I’d planned to go tree climbing I found myself in a very pensive mood. Rather than work, I felt the need to think. I packed my camera and set out towards my tree, ready to take my thoughts on a walk and a climb.
I didn’t get very high up that tree, and didn’t do so very elegantly. But I clambered up, and sat, and had a think, under a canopy of green, the river in front of me. It did not disappoint. Now, what I’d really like next is… a treehouse.