Arborescing

I am currently reading Richard Preston’s book, The Wild Trees. It is about a group of people and the record-height coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) they have been climbing for sport and research. This group pioneered the climbing of redwoods as a ‘thing’ in northern California and southern Oregon. Before them, those 300+ ft tall trees had never been climbed. A few arborist loggers may have previously climbed smaller redwoods, or partway up giant redwoods, but they did so in preparation to cut them down. They don’t count. The book’s protagonists climbed redwoods at first purely for sport, but became fascinated by redwood growth structure and the lichen and plant species living up there. This inspired them to earn advanced degrees studying the botany and ecology of those magnificent forest canopies.

The book is well researched and written, although a little too dragged out for me in places about the personal histories of some of the climbers, which I just skipped over. Nonetheless, I highly recommend it to climbers of all persuasions, cavers who practice single rope techniques in trees (aka tree stands), botanists and other natural science buffs, and really anyone who hangs it all out for any kind of first ascent adventure.

The book’s heroes are presented as the very first to ascend redwoods for sport, but they were not the first to explore tree canopies in general. Kids have been doing that since adults came down out of trees in the dawn of Mankind. Don Perry and Nalini Nadkarni were climbing rain forest giants in Costa Rica, and I was climbing bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum) and live oaks (Quercus virginiana) in Florida, when redwoods were first being climbed and named. We are products of our time. This article is about my own experiences, not theirs. I write it because Preston’s book has precipitated a flood of wonderful memories, so I want to jot some of them down and have a hurrah, hopefully not my last.

I began climbing huge trees as a sport in my mid- to late twenties, near the close of the 1970s. I lived in the sandhills south of Archer, Florida, within walking distance – a mile or two – of karstic wooded pastures dominated by mesic semi-evergreen forests. In Florida, these are called “hammocks” by naturalists like me who were born and raised in the state. The word is very close to and derived from the word used by Native Americans for that habitat type.

The first giant tree I climbed was a bald cypress appx six feet in diameter at breast height (dbh). It was hollow from the ground up and clear through its storm-broken top, which is how it escaped being killed by 19^th Century loggers. Many redwoods also have storm-broken tops, but where redwoods then sprout new vertical leaders that continue to aspire toward the clouds, cypresses have only horizontal limbs at their tops after storm damaging. Odd that, considering the two are phylogenetically close cousins.

I climbed that first tree – solo – using a 45 lb bow and an aluminum-shafted arrow, its hollow core filled with sand to give it the ass needed to pull lines up into canopies. The arrowhead’s metal tip was replaced with a little ball to prevent the arrow from sticking into the tree. Mounted to the front of the bow was a bowfishing spool loaded with 100 lb test monofilament fishing line. My first attempts almost ended in disaster. The spool was not designed for monofilament as large as 100 lb test. I never found out what it WAS designed for, but I can tell you that the monofilament did not come slickly off the spool, instead grabbing onto the spool and rubber-banding the arrow back toward my face! Yow!

Under Plan B, I cleared small bushes and sticks from a patch of ground below the tree, spread a tarp over the spot, and flaked out onto the tarp a length of monofilament about twice the estimated height of the tree. Then I shot the arrow over a large limb, and fortunately neither the arrow nor the line got snagged in branches. After the arrow slid back to earth, I removed it from the mono, tied an eighth-inch nylon cord to the mono, and hauled that line up over the limb and back down to the tarp. Lastly, I used the cord to pull an 11 mm diameter caving rope over the limb and back down. Tying one end of the rope to the base of an adjacent tree, I used mechanical ascenders made for sport climbing to reach the treetop.

Bruce “Sleazeweazel” Morgan and I further modified that technique for use in places where there was too much low growth, such as in hammocks overrun with catbriar (Smilax spp.). I would hold the bowfishing rig and the arrow firmly, a hundred feet or so from the target tree, and Bruce would take the monofilament in hand and slowly walk to the tree while I played out the mono as it slipped through his fingers and off the spool. He had to be very careful to keep the line from draping down into the briars. Upon reaching the tree, there would be a double line of mono between us, half of it going from the bow to him and the other half going from him back to the arrow. I would aim the arrow and do a countdown, three… two… one… FIRE! He would release the mono simultaneously with the arrow’s release. The latter would fly toward the tree canopy so fast that the mono didn’t have time to drop into the catbriar vines. As you can imagine, I had to be very careful with my aim. There was a lot of trust going on there.

Caving rope works better for this than climbing rope. Caving (static) rope stretches very little under load, so it is excellent for climbing with mechanical ascenders. Climbing (dynamic) rope OTOH stretches a lot, as it is designed to catch falling climbers without snapping their spines. Being a caver, I have a bunch of caving ropes, ascenders for going up ropes, racks for rappelling down ropes, sit harnesses to attach ascenders and racks to, and other vertical gear like carabiners, rescue pulleys, and slings made of one-inch tubular webbing.

The bowfishing rig is a pain in the bum to carry through the woods and a pain in the other bum for launching monofilament line. Thick brush and dense tree foliage often require multiple arrow shots before the line goes where you want it to go. So, I developed a different system of using three lassos to get off the ground. I would reach as high up the trunk as I could, wrap the first lasso around the tree trunk, and climb the lasso’s tail using ascenders. Then, while still hanging on the first lasso, I would reach up and tie a second lasso above the first. Then I would move my ascenders over to the second lasso, remove the first lasso from the tree, and repeat. The third lasso was a safety, to be used if I accidentally dropped one of the other lassos. I would attach the main rope to my harness as I ascended the lassos, trailing it as I climbed. Upon attaining the canopy, I would drape the rope over a limb and hand-over-hand one end back down to the ground. Its other end would be tied to a solid anchor before I began climbing the tree. I would rappel back down to the ground on the standing (loose) end when I was done for the day. I could also use the rope, lassos, or slings as belay safeties.

The lasso method is best suited for solo climbing, which I did a lot of because it was hard to find others wanting to explore treetops. I did a lot of first ascents in those days. I was unaware that tree climbers in California named trees, and I didn’t think to do that. Later, I learned that another caver in my hometown had independently invented the exact same lasso system, also for climbing large cypress trees. Maybe others did that?

I didn’t like calling what I was doing “tree climbing.” That phrase seemed boring. I felt that “tree climbing” was an appropriate way to refer to low-limb hanging out, arborist tree work, and kid stuff, but what I was doing was too technical and sophisticated for casual-speak. Sniff. I mentioned this to woods buddy Tom Morris, and he suggested the word “cypressing.” It was a take-off from other climbers inventing the words “bouldering” and buildering,” respectively used for climbing boulders and buildings.

But “cypressing” was not an appropriate word for climbing trees that were not cypresses. By then, I had bought and studied Basic Rockcraft and Advanced Rockcraft, two books by Royal Robbins, to learn climbing techniques not taught in technical caving books. The two most popular of the latter are Alpine Caving Techniques by Georges Marback and Bernard Tourte, and On Rope by Bruce Smith and Allen Padgett, both of which I own and have read. But trees are not built like rocks or caves, so I modified some of Robbins’ tricks and created others for climbing Southeastern species like pines (Pinus spp.) and oaks (Quercus spp.). I used vertical caving methods to ascend and rappel in trees. As it turns out, huge old cypresses are simple in structure, so while rock-climbing techniques and technology are helpful in the monkey-gym canopies of middle-aged pines and oaks, they aren’t really needed in elder cypress trees.

I finally came up with a word that I liked: “arborescing.” That word can be applied to all species of trees climbed, and is within the tradition of other climbing eponyms. It surprises me that other tree climbers do not use that word; it seems so obvious and righteous to me.

One day, Robert “Bob” Simons called. He was another of my woods buddies. Bob was a forester and an absolute expert at identifying tree species in northeast Florida. He is the person who taught me about champion trees: what they are, who keeps tabs on them, how to measure them for nominations, and the best places to look for them. At the time, he had made the second-highest number of successful champion nominations in the USA, with only one other person nominating more. I helped him measure several trees for national champion and state champion status, including two species of hawthorns (Crataegus uniflora and C. pyracanthoides). I took up the hobby of nominating champion trees at Bob’s urging, all but one of which by now have died or been deposed by larger findings. The exception is a fringe-tree (Chionanthus virginicus), which is normally a medium-sized bush. This champion is a true tree, almost a foot in dbh and 30+ ft high.

Bob had called because a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission named David Maehr had found a black bear (Ursus americana) den in a hollow cypress tree. The tree was 5-6 ft dbh and perhaps 60 or 80 ft tall, with a storm-decapitated top. Dave wanted someone to climb the tree and collect information about its top. He assured me that the bear was not in the den at the time. There’s that trust thingy again. I used the simple tarp and bowfishing rig to attain the treetop, collected the data, and rappelled back down. Buddy bear was not there. That was the last cypress tree that I ever climbed.

One fine early summer morning, I hiked out from my home in the Archer sandhills, walked about 1.5 miles, and found myself in an old-growth mesic hammock dominated by live oaks up to 7 ft dbh. The hammock had a winged elm (Ulmus alata) about 3 ft dbh and >100 ft tall, the largest I have ever seen. This hammock also had a moderately large Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora). At the edge of the hammock was a Southern red-cedar (Juniperus salicicola) that was 17+ ft cbh (circumference at breast height). The then-national champion Southern red-cedar was in a nearby town and had a 15+ ft cbh, but the 17-footer was open-grown and thus not as large overall as the champ. Of course I climbed it.

I was particularly enamored of the live oaks. They were “forest-grown,” as opposed to “open-grown.” A forest-grown tree sprouts within a preexisting forest where it has serious competition for sunlight and other resources. Such seedlings can remain small for years, even decades if they are shade-tolerant, until an overstory tree dies. This allows more sunlight to reach the ground, so the seedling can then race its siblings skyward, growing fast and with a relatively straight trunk and compact canopy. Open-grown trees OTOH are often seen in pastures, and have short, thick trunks topped with long horizontal limbs. Open-grown trees have most of the sunlight and groundwater that’s available, as their only competition is puny grass, so they don’t need to grow tall. One of the hammock’s 6 ft dbh forest-grown live oaks was still more than 4 ft in diameter fifty feet above the ground. It is my favorite live oak of all time.

After discovering this hammock, I later climbed several of its live oaks and the big winged elm, all using my bowfishing rig. But you can’t just climb up a rope and then clamber onto the limb it’s draped over. Their limbs are more than a foot thick and clothed in a dense carpet of resurrection fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides). The rope has to be hung from a limb above the one you want to explore. It can take some time to figure out where you want your rope to go and then get it there successfully, so binoculars are useful. I got into the habit of carrying a bag lunch for when I could finally relax on a brontosaurian neck of a limb fifty or eighty feet above ground. By the time I finished my climb and my lunch, I had become so accustomed to the limb swaying in the breeze that I wouldn’t even notice that I was sitting on a soundless metronome.

And I don’t care who knows it – I would take a small jar containing red wine up there to celebrate first ascents. This was a time when Russian cavers proposed that cavers all over the world, on the Fourth of July (in deference to American cavers), should raise a toast (vodka, in deference to themselves) within a cave to all the world’s cavers. It was a woke idea – one big, happy, global caving family. I liked it, and politicked for it at my local caving club meetings, but my American comrades were so safety prudish that the very idea of drinking alcohol in a cave was scorned. But I am an omega male.

In the beginning, I would hike to the hammock on Saturdays. It was a way to put my job firmly behind me for the weekend. But I went out there one Sunday instead and encountered something that blew me away. While munching lunch up in a live oak, rock-and-roll music suddenly blasted out from somewhere below. It seems that there was an African-American church only a hundred yards or so away from my tree, and after the sermon, the church-goers began making wicked good music! Bo Didley lived then in nearby Archer, so who knows? All I can tell you is that congregation rocked out. Taking advantage of yet one more reason to wander around in the woods, I started hiking out to my fav trees on Sundays instead of Saturdays. I could tend my garden any day of the weekend, but I could listen to fantastic live rock a mile from my home only on Sundays.

One neat memory of being up in the live oaks is of a Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata). It landed ten feet away from me there, out on a limb. It cocked its head and looked me up and down, and made a weak, rising call that sounded like “Whaaaaaaa?” I’m sure it had never seen a human up high in a tree. Preston mentions similar experiences with a spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) and a western flying squirrel (Eupetaurus cinereus) in redwood canopies.

Another favorite arbor memory concerns resurrection ferns growing on live oak limbs. From the ground, it looks like ferns grow over the top and both sides of limbs, being missing only along limb bottoms due to low amounts of sunlight and rainwater there. However, sitting up in a live oak, you see that the center of the top of the limb is also devoid of ferns. They are trampled into well-worn trails by mammals traveling around in the oak’s canopy. Looking closer, you see the trail accumulates feathers, hair, seeds, dust, soil, oak leaves, acorn hulls, maple seed wings, arthropod exoskeletons, feces, and whatever else is deposited by the wind. Live oak canopies are not just treetops; they are ecosystems fertilized and inoculated by myriad biota.

Redwood climbers also mention plants growing in soil that has accumulated in nooks and crannies in redwood treetops. Preston claims that redwood canopies harbor only a few animals due to the tree’s harsh resins and distasteful leaves. However, wildlife is common in the hardwood trees of the tropics and subtropics. Epiphytes like orchids and bromeliads are popularly listed in warm climes, but I have also seen prickly pear cactus (Opuntia sp.), dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), pokeberry (Phytolacca rigida), and other ground plants up there. Preston mentions bonsai rowan (Sorbus sp.) trees in Scotland’s pines.

In Costa Rica, Nalini Nadkarni found roots growing out of tree canopy trunks/limbs and into deadwood wedged in branch forks. I read her report of that back in the day and went looking for it here in the States. I never found such a thing in live oaks, but did within the hammock’s above-mentioned Southern magnolia. Visiting my mom in the Appalachian Mountains, I found the phenomenon also in a Great Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum).

Preston’s book is as much about the explorers of redwood canopies as it is about redwoods and tree climbing. The hero of the book is a tree canopy biologist name Steve Sillett, who earned a PhD studying redwood canopies. Sillett realized something that I never did until reading Preston’s book, and I thank them for pointing it out. Up in the hammock’s live oaks, I assumed that the dense growths of resurrection ferns and their accompanying green-fly orchids (Epidendrum conopseum = E. magnoliae) and lichens were taking advantage of the trees’ large sizes. Sillett, however, learned that many plant and lichen species are in redwoods not because the trees are big, but because they are extremely old. He found that some lichen and fungus species occur only in multi-thousand-year-old trees, and that some of them have circum-boreal ranges in similarly ancient trees in North America, Europe, and Asia. He wonders how and if, in our warming biosphere, they will ever find their way into the vastly younger second-growth redwoods that are replacing the lumbered titans.

I paused my reading of Preston’s book to write this article. I got excited while reading about redwood arborescing, so spending a day to get all of this off my chest has been something of a catharsis. I will now go back to the book. Maybe when the weather cools in September, I will finish setting up a rope stand in a 100 ft tall black oak (Quercus velutina) that I started arborescing a couple of years ago but stopped due to an ankle injury. I just wish I could skywalk the way that redwood climbers and professional arborists do. There is an old-growth mixed hardwood forest near where I now live; maybe someday I can get up into some of its ancient trees and for some citizen science.