Field Notes—

Climbing Trees: A Place In Between

By Curtiss Clark

You could make an educated guess that it is the end of May by watching my dog, Boon. He is a skilled napper, adept at finding the perfect spot for snoozing after a few moments of nose-in-the-air assessments of time of day, position of the sun, temperature, and untold intangibles carried on the breeze to the olfactory oracle residing in the throne room of his bloodhound brain. For ordinary days, he has his favorite spots on the lawn and in the garden beds, contoured and worn thin by his world-class weariness. And for days of rare or unique circumstance, including strange or uncertain shifts in the weather, or too many motorcycles on the road, or the intolerable taunts of snarky crows ensconced in his favorite shade tree, Boon will take refuge in special backup hideaways under a shrub, in the crook of a stone wall, or in his rarely used but closely guarded dog house. But at this time of year he is peripatetic in his pursuit of rest. He never quite arrives at where he needs to be. The sun is too hot; the shade is too cool. There is a great unsatisfied need in him for a place in between.

His problem is that dogs cannot climb trees. To sit in a tree, is to be neither here nor there — not in the air nor on the ground, but in between. It is a place you can usually find right in your own backyard. Yet without a certain amount of drive and agility (or in the case of my dog, opposable thumbs) it can be an extremely difficult place to get to. Up in a tree the air is fresh, the views are extraordinary, and a presence of mind is indispensable. Of necessity, the world comes into balance, and the inner ear exerts a power over ordinary sensibilities that is exhilarating. Sadly, among humans this exquisite province is solely visited, with rare exception, by preadolescents and arborists who possess, respectively, blind courage and skill.

Ask any earthbound adult, however, and memories of a favorite climbing tree won’t be far beneath the surface. Kate remembers a row of cherry trees at the Pennsylvania farmhouse where she grew up where she and her siblings established, of all things, a lending library serviced by ropes and pulleys for the conveyance of books from tree to tree. I remember a particularly commodious cherry tree at a great aunt’s house up the street with a view of the town green to the east and a rolling hay field to the west. And when the sweet cherries were full and ready for picking, I would spend hours there spitting pits with the precision of a B17 bombardier through a web of branches to the ground below.

My favored climbing tree, however, was a Norway spruce in our side yard where a “tree house” had been installed — really just a platform not much bigger than a seat. It was where I would retreat after some trivial affront or misunderstanding, thinking I was running away from home. I remained in full view of my mother through the kitchen window, but it felt to me like a place where I could temporarily “go missing,” giving family members some time to reflect on my unfair treatment and to wish fervently for my quick and safe return. (Upon my return they would take no notice of my reappearance in true Yankee form, but I knew they were both thankful and chastened.)

A friend remembers a “large, low-slung, smooth-barked magnolia” as her personal Dreaming Tree, where she, too, would resolve issues or just daydream in a place somewhere just above reality. The recollection, she suggests, is bittersweet because we all climb down from our dreaming trees somewhere on the way to our maturity.

At this time of year when it is not spring nor summer, when it is too hot or too cool, and the fulcrum of seasonal change makes everything a little too tippy for comfort, we all could use a climbing tree to bring the world back into balance.

(More than 85 Field Notes essays by Curtiss Clark can be found at www.field-notebook.com.)