Reflection 2

Last Thursday I climbed a tree. During a particularly tedious lecture my mind wandered to the beautiful day outside. I thought about an article that we had read for Earth Lodge about nature being in your own back yard and I resolved to climb my favorite tree on campus as soon as class let out. Although this is a different reflection spot than the one I wrote about earlier in the semester, I feel it is right that I write about it.
Climbing a tree is a wonderful experience. It reminds me of my childhood, much of which was spent exploring the maples and pines of my suburban landscape. Suburban trees are generally good for climbing as their branches grow out wide. Trees in the forest grow in tight competition with one another. Often their lowest branches don’t sprout until far from the ground, and then they grow strait upward. Effective for gathering light, but not conducive to creating a climbable path. Trees without competition grow wide, opening their branches like a spiral staircases for children or rambunctious college students to scramble up.
My particular favorite tree is a pine tree in the center of the Westhampton Green. Its lowest branches are out of reach from the ground, but it offers footholds in the bark of the trunk that allow you to reach up with your arms and latch on to the lowest branch like a koala and twist your body around. Once you climb above that first hurdle it becomes easy, branch after branch like a ladder. When you climb you feel your body wake up, using muscles in unusual ways. You twist and turn, pull and push and strain and feel like an animal, like a part of nature. You become aware of the strength in your limbs and in the tree limbs around you. I climbed strait to the top, to where I could have poked my head above the branches. I felt the quiet rhythmic swaying of the tree in the wind and peered down at the dizzying height. I was at the height of the roof of a building, three stories up. I was in my own world, the blue sky opening up above me partially obscured by branches and pinecones. No one ever looks up. Even when you sit in plain view no passersby seemed to notice unless you move and made noise. I watched students oblivious to my existence walk by underneath and caught snatches of their conversations as they hurried from place to place. I know that if I hadn’t come here with this purpose I probably would not have peered into these branches either. Nature truly is in your back yard. It is just a matter of noticing it.