Tree Climbing

"Leaves rustle softy and whisper and sway: Can you see in the tree who is hidden away? Green branches, green birds' nest, green grass or green sea, there's nothing so green as the world of a tree."

This is a page from one of my most-treasured childhood books, ‘A Child’s Book of Seasons’ by Satomi Ichikawa. Her enchanting illustration shows the wonder of tree-climbing, one of my favourite pastimes as a child. My young son has suddenly become fascinated by climbing trees and, for me, watching him scrambling up amongst the branches has been bringing back so many memories of special trees I delighted in exploring. Each tree offered unique gifts - a spectacular view, a hiding place, a thinking spot, even fruits to snack on at the right time time of year.

The tree in my primary school playground really stands out for me - a huge evergreen, tall but stout with numerous sturdy branches projecting out on all sides. The lowest branch gave the platform to scale the tree, requiring us to hang from it and haul ourselves up. The large number of branches provided multiple pathways up and also allowed for large numbers of children to be up the tree at any one time. We must have been quite a sight and sound each playtime, like enormous chattering birds or a band of noisy monkeys!

When I think about it, climbing a tree truly is a multi-sensory experience. Crystal clear in my olfactory memory is the smell of each tree I enjoyed climbing and the particular feel of it’s bark and branches. Once up and into a tree the climber is offered a different way of seeing and sensing the world. Of course, height gives a new perspective, but also a new sonic world opens up with faraway sounds sometimes muffled and sometimes unexpectedly clearer, leaves rustling and branches creaking. The ways light filters through the foliage is one of the real treats of being up a tree. It comes through in shafts, dappled, and producing an otherworldly glow so that within a few scrambles it feels like you are in another place altogether.

I’m so glad that my son has taken so enthusiastically to this pastime and also that his crèche teacher values it so much, allowing her brood to clamber up and amongst the branches of the numerous trees on our wonderful school campus. Her enthusiasm is noteworthy because tree climbing had, for some time, gone a bit out of fashion. It was deemed too risky, and with these crazy days of perfect parenting, had been replaced by soft play centres and other organised activities. However, the pendulum is apparently swinging back again with the perfect parent brigade embracing the benefits of outdoor learning, risky play and unsupervised activities. A brief search online produces all sorts of interesting tree-climbing related hits - tree-climbing therapy, courses, vacations and even research-based evidence proving that climbing trees improves hand-eye coordination, creativity and problem solving.

All fascinating indeed, but anyone who has been lucky enough to spend their childhood days up in trees simply knows that this is a wonderful, thrilling, joyful activity which all children deserve to regularly experience.