To Climb a Tree

Between the ages of 7 and 12, I lived on a dead-end road two miles south of nowhere. There were only eight houses on the gravel road, and none had children except ours. We had something like three acres, but at that age I thought our yard went on for miles and miles. We picked blackberries that grew along the barbed wire fence to the west and ran from the snakes that sunned themselves in the overrun, empty lot across the street. But what I remember most fondly was the tree.

There grew one climbable tree in the back yard. It was of indeterminable species; I only know it was the kind with thick bumpy bark that grew lacy, pale green lichen throughout the year. I dragged to my tree two old boards from a deconstructed picnic table, wedging one in the deep V that split its trunk into two Siamese twins. The other I balanced precariously among some larger branches about halfway up. I spent most of my hours playing there in my wildly complicated imaginary life. I had multiple imaginary sisters (the product of only having one big brother in real life), and I killed off my first imaginary boyfriend. True story. His name was Craig, god rest his soul. We had had an imaginary fight, and he was on his imaginary way to beg forgiveness and ask me to imaginary prom, when he was imaginary killed in an imaginary car accident. It was tragic. In retrospect, maybe I was allowed to play by myself a little too much.

Fast forward 25 years, and we live in the vast lands of suburbia -- where they tear out the trees and name the streets after them in memoriam. Although we are fortunate to have acres of woods behind our back yard, most of the trees appear to be thin maples and birches still relatively young, in tree terms. They are draped in striking colors in the fall, and are starkly beautiful etched in black against the white snow in winter. But they're not fit for climbing. Fighting each other for thin beams of sun, the branches shoot almost straight up. There can be no danging from those limbs to see if you're brave enough to let go, or shuttling from branch to branch to see how high your courage will take you.

Most, if not all, of the homes in my neighborhood are in the same tree-less predicament. How will our collective children learn the important skills of climbing trees? And if they're not out climbing trees, where are they going to learn risk assessment and physical dexterity and the thrill of seeing your house from above? How are they going to learn that sometimes you slip and scrape the whole of your inner arm with sandpaper bark while holding on for dear life? (Don't worry, I don't have any permanent scars, physical or psychological. Except for that whole dead imaginary boyfriend thing.) Where will they learn that sometimes, god help you, sometimes you fall? And you live! You brush yourself off, a little wiser and with a few bumps and bruises or maybe a good concussion like my brother, but you're okay. You live to tell the tale to your friends about that time you fell out of that tree like it was nothing at all. Where is my son going to learn these precious life skills if not in a tree?

Learning to climb a tree is on the blog Risky Kid's list of 50 Dangerous Things (Your Should Let Your Child Do). As soon as my kiddo is old enough, I'm going to go find a tree and teach him how to climb. I've got 25 years of catching up to do with my imaginary family, and some imaginary flowers to put on an imaginary boyfriend's imaginary headstone.