Tree climbing weekend

[luzula]

I went out to climb trees with three other people this weekend. The forecast was good, but on Friday the skies opened and it rained. Nevertheless, we headed out into the woods, but when we got to the shelter we'd planned to use, it was gone, looking like somebody had burned it to the ground. May the people who did it be cursed to also find themselves without shelter in the rain.

So we improvised Plan B, which was to sleep at my parents' house, just a few kilometers away. And the next day we headed out again to a lovely beech forest, climbed trees all day, and the three of us who had hammocks with us stayed overnight, while the fourth one headed home. We made dinner on a promontory by the lake; it was a windless, quiet night, not cold at all. I had had plans to spend the night up in a tree, but in the end just put my hammock up as usual between two tree trunks at ground level. I always forget just how much time it takes to find a good spot up in a tree where it's possible to put a hammock, and then to get everything settled, and after a day of climbing I was just too tired.

The next day we went into town and put up a banner between two trees in a park. There is a military practice operation going on right now, and a corresponding amount of peace activists in town, one of whom was among our climbing group. She'd made a banner saying "practising war leads to war; practising peace leads to peace" and while we were up in the trees to hang it up, a march went by and cheered for us! I felt a little bit like an action hero, which is not a feeling I think I have had before. *g*

Comments

[brigantine]

Good for you!!! \o/

And good for your friend with the banner, too!

It sounds like a lovely couple of days - minus being drenched, and the shelter having been torched, of course. Sheesh.

I love the photo!

[luzula]

Thanks! I've been meaning to climb more this year, but have been a little frustrated by not having enough people nearby who climb (I don't want to do it alone) so it was good to get to do it for a whole weekend.

[riverlight]

Aw, how lovely! Beeches are some of my favorite trees.

[luzula]

Beeches are my absolute favorite tree to climb in--they have substantial branches that are close enough to make for interesting climbing and that have good angles to the trunk, and the bark is so smooth.

[seascribble]

you look like a happy action hero!

[jesse_the_k]

You are an arboreal action hero, how tall is that tree in the picture.

[luzula]

Very happy, yes! Although it was all quite slow, would have looked boring as an actual action movie.

[luzula]

The tree is a little more than 20 meters high, which I know because the banner was five meters long and I used it afterwards to estimate the tree's height.

Probably not that impressive to you, given that everything is bigger in the US. *g*

[jesse_the_k]

That's plenty impressive.

You were wearing a safety harness, yes?

[luzula]

I remember being in the US and boggling at blueberry bushes taller than I was, at how big the beds were, and finally that even the squares on the waffles were bigger. *g*

Yes! Definitely.

[toft]

Oh, lovely!

[luzula]

It was! Beeches are such beautiful trees.