For me, tree climbing is very much a focused activity – I mean, your life is on the line every time your feet lift off the ground.
Katy Up In a Tree - Laughing!
This April Fool’s day got me thinking about how recreational tree climbing is not really the best time to play jokes on yourself or your climbing partner. But it really struck me; I mean, I climb for fun and there’s no laughing? And that got me thinking about the last time I laughed in a tree and discovered it was a rare event indeed but I’d like to share about the first time I laughed in a tree.
My first serious climb was in an old growth Douglas fir down in Oregon with the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute. On the way up to the top I stopped to take a breath (read “gasping for air”) and started to look around. Yeah, I’d been so focused on the top I had no idea what was going on around me. I was up around 175 feet or so. Yeah, high!
Mushroom Growing in the Tree Canopy
So, I twisted around inspecting the limbs as big as logs, hearing the breeze in the trees, seeing what birds were up as high as I was … and then I spied it – a tiny mushroom growing in a pile of moss and lichen. I just started to giggle. Admittedly it could have been the adrenaline. I mean, it blew my mind – a mushroom all that way off the ground! Well, why not? There were also bugs and ants and piles of raccoon poop … and this tiny mushroom living it’s life at a cool couple hundred feet above sea level. Or ground level. Whatever. I was still laughing.
Moral of the story is that, this year, I think striving to say this more often is a, well, lofty goal: “A funny thing happened while I was in the tree the other day …” I hope you can find a way to enjoy the trees too, even if from the ground!
Read more Festival of the Trees Submissions here.
