Toward Heaven

I'm sitting on the back porch this beautiful late summer evening, watching and listening to the big trees blow in the breeze, and I wonder, does anybody climb trees anymore? Not the hobbyists and "professionals" with all kinds of ropes and gear, whose pictures I kept coming across while looking for a nice picture, but everyday folks, kids especially.

I can't claim that I was ever an avid or expert tree-climber in my youth, but thinking back, I have a lot of good memories of hanging about in trees. We had a very small cherry tree in our backyard (I swear I did not cut it down) and I remember one day, I couldn't have been more than seven, getting a big plastic garbage bag, scaling the tree and jumping out. Well, the drop couldn't have been more than five feet, and I couldn't have weighed more than 45 pounds, so the anticipated parachute effect, sadly, never occurred.

A friend of mine from way back then, Michael, was an expert--read, fearless--climber of trees. There was a huge maple tree a couple houses down from ours that he loved to climb. Just to get up to the first branch required Michael to stand on the seat of his propped-up ten-speed. One day after school, probably around sixth or seventh grade, Michael apparently had grown bored of merely climbing the tree; he wanted to make some money out of it.

Sure enough, who comes walking down the street but Ricky, a nice kid but sort of a loud mouth. Michael bets him five bucks he can climb the maple tree all the way to the top. "That tree?" Ricky said. "No way." ("No way" of course were fighting words among 12-year-old boys.)

"Watch me," Michael said, and before Ricky could back out of the deal, Michael was up on the bike seat, up to the first branch, and halfway up the tree.

"You got five bucks on you?" I said to Ricky in my best carny barker voice, figuring I had to have some role in this epic event. Ricky was speechless as he watched Michael climb farther and farther up the tree. Even after years of witnessing Michael's amazing climbing, I became a bit awestruck and then fearful as he reached heights in that tree I had never seen before. The branches were more like twigs up where he was now still climbing.

"There," Michael shouted down from no more than two feet from the highest maple leaf.

"That's not the top. You can't touch that leaf up there." Obviously Ricky didn't have five bucks on him, or he had it and wasn't going to part with it.

"Come on, man," I said to Ricky. "If he moves any higher, he's going to fall. That's pretty much the top of the tree."

"So." Another great kid comeback.

By this time Michael was half-way down the tree. I thought I'd soon be switching hats from carny barker to fight referee.

"Don't go anywhere," Michael said as he jumped from the first branch and immediately saddled his bicycle. "I'll be right back."

Small talk interlude between Ricky and me, something along the lines of, "I'm not paying." "You better. You don't want to make him mad."

Two minutes later Michael rides back, holding a small hacksaw. "Throw this up to me," he tells me, giving me the hacksaw, propping his bike against the tree, and hoisting himself up to the first branch again.

"Nuh unh. That's not fair." Five bucks or no five bucks, Ricky should have stayed around simply to see Michael not only climb, for the second time in about ten minutes, the highest tree any of us had ever climbed, but this time while holding a hacksaw. Maybe by the time he got to his previous top spot and started hacking off the foot or two of the contested leafy twig, Michael from his vantage point could still see Ricky somewhere way up the street, but my eyes were glued on my fearless friend, madly determined, propped against swaying, thin branches, sawing away at a tiny twig.

In case you're reading Ricky, Michael eventually cut through that branch/twig, angrily let the now-dead branch fall, and put his hand on top of the newly shorn, new top of the tree.

A singular, if vicarious, moment in my childhood.

I haven't climbed a tree in years, but I know that somewhere in Frenchville, PA, there's a nice-sized tree that's been waiting more than twenty years for me to return.

Robert Frost-Birches

Kyle Andrews-Tree Hugger


postscript to my Beatles' post of last week: the fun folks at Rock Town Hall have a great debate going on about the most underrated Beatles' song of all time. I offered "Long, Long, Long" (White Album) and got a few backers. Some of the songs being mentioned are "And Your Bird Can Sing" (Revolver), "Hey Bulldog" and "It's All Too Much" (Yellow Submarine) and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (Abbey Road)--all great songs. So if you're hankering for some Beatles amid all the recent hype, dust off these non-hits and be happily surprised.