I am not well adapted to northern winters. Let’s get that out of the way right now. Driving to work through freezing darkness is just a prelude to a frigid day with lead gray skies and biting wind. What’s the point? I run the heater at full blast and play tropical music to put my mind someplace else. It’s pure denial and that’s the way I roll in January. The way I see it, sunrise is supposed to be a biological explosion. All the night creatures are going to bed, the day’s birds and insects are awakening, and when all these living things cross paths they stake out their turf with hoots, roars, tweets, chatter, and flutelike songs. Nowhere is this more true than in a tropical forest. An hour before sunrise the heat of the day starts to burn off the coolness of the night and the birds and forest animals go bonkers. What’s even better about this is that every animal has a specific time that it makes a racket, some predetermined time of X minutes before sunrise, and the chorus is so precise that I can actually tell time by which animal I am hearing. One day in April in a lowland rain forest in Central America I recorded the sequence of a dawn chorus:
The pattern repeats every morning. Depending on how far I need to walk for work I know what time to get out of bed by the animal I hear calling. “Uh-oh. It’s the Laughing Falcon – time to get going.” Or “Half past Black-faced Antthrush already? Dang! How’d I oversleep?”
And THIS my friends is how sunrise is supposed to work. Just one of a thousand lessons learned in the ultimate school for biology: a tropical rain forest.
Come back soon for an upcoming blog “Dawn Chorus II” where we’ll discuss the biology behind the dawn chorus and how these birds know what time it is.
More about birds
To learn about any of the birds listed above and see their photos, visit Neotropical Birds by Cornell University. To listen to birds from all over the world, visit Xeno-canto.
Links to “Tropical Music” – Click on the links and set your mind free
I am a dreamer. I’d like to make the world a better place, you know, leave it better than I found it for the next generation. The planet may be going to hell in a hand basket, so I might as well try and do something about it. I am also a believer. I believe that nature is the ultimate gift to human kind, the final refuge with the power to bring peace to our collective troubled soul. Wild landscapes are the origin of humanity and in the unplugged wild places lie the secrets we need to save our collective future on this spaceship hurtling the galaxy. You can call me a hopeless dreamer all you want, and I will only agree with you.
We all have our niche, the place to which we belong. You may be most comfortable in the kitchen or the garden, the stage or the sound room. Me, put me in a forest and life is better. Put me in the top of a tree in the forest and life is best. You can call me weird, but there are a lot of us out there who find that the meaning of life pours out of tree tops and into our hearts, channeled through climbing ropes and beamed from unfiltered sun beams or rain drops. What’s more, as a believer it is my diehard conviction that there are a lot of tree geeks who haven’t been gifted the chance to find their arboreal spirit, and that there are lessons in tree tops for everyman.
Canopy Watch International has a mission: to share love and understanding of forest canopies with the world. We can’t save what we don’t love and we can’t love what we don’t know. Are you locked up at work or at school? You live in a city? Come with us. Climb high, see wild monkeys and tropical birds, camp in the forest a hundred feet off the ground, and love life. It’s a simple message.
It’s an old Chinese belief that if you look closely you can see the future in tea leaves. I tried it today. I had to focus real hard because my perception felt blurred by visions of caffeine addiction, but the more I concentrated the more I could see some tree journeys in 2016. I think there is time in the Dominican Republic climbing after the critically endangered Ridgway’s Hawk. I think I also saw time in Arenal National Park in Costa Rica. There might be some camping in old-growth forests in Washington or Oregon, sleeping in treeboats amongst the owls, eye level with the stars. You’re invited. Stay tuned.
Sequoiadendron giganteum, known in English as the GIANT sequoia, and oft times referred to as a “tree.” They are an ancient wonder in modern times that defy descriptions in words, but I’ll try. 2,000,000 pounds. That’s 1,000 tons, or 5 blue whales. 3,000 years old. A tree rooted in the ground today was standing there 2,500 years before the Roman Empire. 50,000 cubic feet. One tree could hold the equivalent of 30 school buses. Bark three feet thick. Larger than most trees growing east of the Mississippi today. 250 feet. A building so tall would be 25 stories.
But these are mere words. The only way to appreciate a giant sequoia is to visit one. Lay your hands on the bark. Close your eyes, open your touch to the feel of a being unique in the world, listen to the voices whispered across the needles and forget words. Then you will know.
Jay Geaghan. Classified as Homo sapiens, and oft times referred to as a “man.” Jay has been climbing big trees since the time that many climbers alive today wore soiled diapers. Alone. He likes to pioneer 300 vertical feet of wild tree on his own. Respect. Before a climb thanks are given to the tree that shares its secrets. Quiet. Jay has an honest laugh and can tell a good yarn, but at 6 feet tall his silent presence simply towers over others. Simply stated, Jay has the heart of a sequoia. His physique isn’t far behind either. The skin on his back flows over supple contours like the bark of a tree, and is equally hard. Hands. I know his hands can’t crush boards, but after many thousands of hours gripping chain saws it looks like they could. And his eyes. That is where the strength and the spirit shine out. In Jay’s eyes are the light of a thousand summer days, and the wisdom of a thousand winter eves.
But these are mere words. The only way to appreciate Jay is to climb with him. Jay has this weird instinct that knows what feelings lie in the hearts of men. Climb with Jay and he will know why you are there, and what you need before you leave. It’s true. Don’t try and hide anything from the guy. He knows your limits, your strengths, urges, and fears maybe even before you do. And then this magical thing happens. Without telling or asking, Jay leads the way, taking the climber in you to a higher place than you knew. Climb 200 feet with Jay one day, and you will know things you didn’t realize you were learning about climbing, yourself, and most importantly, about life.
Canopy of old-growth forest – preferred habitat of Jay Geaghan. Photo by Jay.
One day on a drive through the Olympic Peninsula I asked Jay why he climbs trees. Pause, while conifers whiz by and Jay collects his statement. “It’s good for me. It’s good for my body, mind, and spirit.” Bam. Jay goes on. “When I was still young I thought about what made me a living being. I realized I was just like an animal and I have needs. An animal has to feed, and it has to move and be physical. But I realized that I also have a soul, and I have to take care of that too. Climbing feeds my body and my soul.”
When Jay “was still young” he lived on Okinawa in the Japanese archipelago. His father was military. Jay yearned for the ocean, yet feared what he might find in the water, or what in the water might find him, to be more accurate. By watching the native Okinawans he learned he could free dive out in the reefs and gradually he explored farther and farther from shore. Jay is like that. Give him a mile and he will want to cross a continent, because there is always something new to learn just over there. He once rode a motorcycle across South America. These are the types of life experiences that are bound to grow wisdom from a soul.
All of this is cool, but it misses the essence of being Jay, and that is his humility. Tree climbing is “macho”, and it has an effect on some people where the climber (in his mind) becomes bigger than the tree itself, as if climbing a giant makes us one. The perspective can get, well, lost. Jay knows where his place is. At 150 feet off the ground Jay can get overwhelmed with humility and hug a tree for being his friend and giving life back to a man. In a recent conversation Jay told me that he is “just an ordinary guy.” Let me be honest: Jay has the respect of everyone I know. A sequoia, after all, is just an ordinary tree.
Heard enough? Not yet – I have one more to add. Jay is in his seventh decade. By the laws of the U.S.A. he meets the definition of “senior citizen.” At an age when men his age are content to tour the U.S. in motorhomes equipped with air conditioners and satellite dishes, Jay still seeks out 250-foot tall trees to climb, often alone and other times with friends, where he shares soul, inspiration, and wisdom. Listen to the wind, my friends, and listen with care so you can learn. After all, the voice of a sequoia speaks softly.
Author’s note: The real Jay Geaghan asked not to use his actual name.
Author’s Note: This essay describes an April 2010 trip to the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in the Moskitia wild region of northeastern Honduras, subject of Paul Theroux’s “Mosquito Coast”, once a land of uninterrupted rain forests, pine savannas, tropical rivers, and lagoons. I lived in the village of Las Marías for a year, a transformative time that changed my life and how I look at the world and at myself. The letter is addressed to a friend who is a nationally recognized writer, and a person that members of the trip had been trying to convince to go along.
I have but a few minutes to reflect on our recent trip to the Río Plátano headwaters. We all wish you had come on what was indeed the trip of a lifetime. James and I talked many times about how you could have written the trip, and as we floated down the waters or rested in camp we wondered each day about why you didn’t come. The only thought we had was that you doubted you could conjure a publishable story from such a journey – what would you write about, and could you make the trip financially viable? How do you sell a trip down the Plátano? What’s the literary and financial potential? Let me try and reveal a few ideas, and attempt to explain what this journey really meant.
First of all, we know you said that you don’t care for rafting, but this was anything but a raft trip. This expedition, journey, voyage, was the trip of a lifetime, an experience through time, a meandering in the soul. It could only be a raft trip to a person who sees the Grand Canyon as merely a canyon, to someone who lacks connection with emotion, or grandeur, or peril, or sheer wonderment at the heart of the world. Rafts were a means to travel, and a cornerstone of the experience, a daily flavor in the taste of it all, but this was not a float down rapids.
Each day took us on a travel through time, starting with a back-breaking, break-neck truck ride across northern Honduras to Bonanza, a village beyond lights, almost beyond roads, accentuated at night by a million stars, cloud forest breezes wafting over pastures and our mud house, the smell of coffee beans toasting on a fire and their grinding in a hand mill, and the silence one gets on the edge of a forest.
Our second day we hiked up and down mountains through mud and forests, slogging toward the river, keeping an eye out for White-ruffed Manakins and listening for the piercing call of Three-wattled Bellbirds, until we crossed a newly burned and grazed pasture on the shores of the Río Plátano, where 10 years ago the campesinos had been lawfully removed by the government from the buffer zone of the reserve, only to return this month and sew anew the seeds of destruction along the headwaters of this place.
What else did we see on our first days, as we floated into the nucleus of a World Heritage Site? We saw dozens of illegal fisherman camps, lined with scaffolding drying racks for cuyamel, gallows for the last population of an endangered fish. We saw a giant tapir carcass strewn along the river bank, killed by the fisherman whose wasteful slaughter served a banquet to 20 King Vultures, enormous white birds who hung their purple, red, and orange heads over the feast.
We hiked to a limestone cave deep in the rain forest, where we entered through a stream portal to what was once a secret to the outside world filled with hidden artifacts of a lost culture, and found it ransacked.
We passed over hulking shadows of fish darting through occult waters, fleeing the silhouettes of men, hints of a former time slipping away. And one day we entered the mighty Subterraneo, the ultimate rapid, where an entire river plunges under boulders the size of fire stations, where we portaged rafts and gear around the stone gates guarding the last pristine rain forest in Central America. After the strenuous hauling of all the barrels, packs, gear, and rafts over jagged, crystal edged and water slicked rocks, we returned to the water to raft around a bend of the largest, most angular rocks I had ever seen in my life, turned a corner to view a silver waterfall on one side of the river and a purple-flowering tree shining on the opposite shore, and all of us felt the clock turn back 2,000 years in that moment to a place where no people ventured, to where the animals held dominion, and it was in that precise and magical spot that we pulled up to camp.
It was in camps like this that the flavor of the daily journey held sway. One raft pulled into the forest served as dining chairs, and as a bed for our guide Jorge Salaverri. All the delicious food crafted by Salaverri and our Pech Indian guide Humberto was flavored with the smoke of tropical woods and the ardor of the day’s travel. We lived without watches, our days timed from sunrise to sunset, complete in that span, needing no human constructed distractions like jobs or traffic to govern our moving, sleeping, eating. Unseen birds squawked, hooted, shrieked, and whistled all around accompanied by a deafening drone of cicadas. We saw troops of monkeys so unaccustomed to people that they watched us pass with no alarm. We washed off the daily paste of sweat and sunscreen every evening in the untamed waters. Our tents were soaked when it rained, hung to partially dry every evening in a vain battle with an environment unneeding of man and that could have crushed us all had it decided to.
Our final day before we reached the Pech and Miskito Indian village of Las Marías was a long paddle through almost unmoving waters. It was a slog. We paddled hard with a pure desire to get the hell out of the sun and rafts. A few hours before Las Marías we came upon some local Indians in a camp of tarps and smoke, panning for gold in muddy holes along the riverbank, barely surviving in a squalor that would shock most Americans. I recognized the family as that of Melba, one of the Pech matriarchs of Las Marías, and when I ran up the slope to greet her this woman of the forest cried on my shoulder for the joy of seeing me and for the pains of the hard years since we had last met.
How do I describe her? Melba has a face that has been thousands of years in the making, that is nearly black and leathered from all the years in the sun, rain, and smoke, yet with hair as soft as silk and still as black as in her youth, and standing barefoot in the mud and rain she broke down and cried with me. As a welcoming this desperately poor family served coffee (2 parts sugar, 1 part each water and coffee) to all our crew. And we were off again, racing the night to Las Marías.
I always thought of Las Marías as a world forgotten by time. Houses were built along the river where life centered on dugouts, washing, hauling water to houses. Houses were widely spaced and screened by trees left to their will. In any other Honduran village the houses are clustered and all the trees slashed down by people who fear the forest and see no need for nature. The riverbanks of the Plátano were always lined with clean gravel, and the waters ran clear, perfect for splashing and relaxing.
No more. A few years ago the most massive flood in a lifetime nearly destroyed the village, sparking fear in the locals. Houses were moved back a hundred yards from the river, the forest between them nearly gone, the once clean river banks oozing mud and goo. But the people were there, and just like you or I ten years has changed them. The children I remembered had their own. The parents were grandparents. The ancient ones were gone. At every house I visited I received embraces and more coffee. In a place where people can’t even afford shoes, coffee is the ultimate gift, practically the only luxury, an expense that is hard to bear, and shared freely with friends. It would be like giving furniture and jewelry to friends in America every time they came to visit. I drank enough coffee in one day to last a week. I couldn’t have carried an equal serving of jewelry. One of the hardest visits was to my old friend Abraham.
This man was one of the first Miskito pioneers to move to Las Marías from the coast and marry a young Pech bride, to raise a family in the wilderness amongst the Pech. He was once one of the strongest men on the whole river, and even though he was elderly when I met him in 1993, the power in his oar strokes was second to none, his extensive knowledge of the river only subtly displayed by this modest man. This day he lay unconscious in bed, racked by a stroke, breathing heavily on his side, frail, his mighty soul hanging onto his bony shoulders and hips. His son Julio was there to care for him, Julio who also possessed some of his father’s strength and his art for making dugouts from ancient mahogany trees, was now reduced to a cripple from a diving accident. So many men from this region chase money in the form of lobster, diving to great depths without any training in scuba, to satiate the palates of diners in Red Lobster and other chains. And so many men find God in those waters, not knowing the dangers or how to avoid them. Julio spent 22 days in a decompression chamber after his accident. He lived, but he’ll never work the forest again or spear another fish, and now he cares for his father. I remember more than anything his soft voice trying to roust Abraham, trying to tell him that David had come to visit. “Papá, Papá.” It was gentle, loving, pleading. A call to one who was not hearing, from another who didn’t know the illness, only his undying love for a dying man. “Papá, Papá.” Abraham slumbered on. I returned the next morning at sunrise, the time each day that Abraham wakes for a few hours, when sometimes he recognizes his neighbors from a distance, and other days not even his family. I waited for the morning changing, and entered the room. There sat the man, propped against his Pech bride, his eyes shining with the memory of my face. “David. Es David.” (“David, it’s you.”) He held my arm, and I his. I was never able to speak, not over the memories, not through the present, nor toward the future.
On the final day we dumped rafts, gear, and burnt rafters into massive 30-foot dugouts for a final, outboard-powered trip to the coast. Again I was seeing a changed river. The flood that had nearly erased Las Marías had cut through all the meanders and oxbows typical of a lazy tropical river and left a channel. What was once an 8-hour trip to the lagoons was cut in half. But that matters little. We also saw ladinos, Hispanic land invaders, along the river. In the front of one dugout sat a man with a rifle laid crossways on the bow. It was a simple message: “I’m here to take your land.” This Biosphere Reserve was proclaimed by the United Nations, ratified by Honduras, and accepted formerly as a World Heritage Site, partly to protect its forests, and partly as a safe harbor for its native peoples. It is being absolutely overrun by an invasion of outlaws who take what they want and kill whoever doesn’t flee fast enough. With a bible in one hand, a machete in the other, and a gun strapped to the hip, they are transforming the forest. They are raping a world heritage, and murdering the native peoples who this reserve was delineated in part to protect.
We passed our final night in the hamlet of Palacios, doorway to Theroux’s Miskito Coast. Once a forgotten backwater with a grassy runway lined by bamboo shacks, Palacios has been converted to ground zero for everything that is evil in the world. Palacios is now the doorway for Colombian cocaine to the North. A few years ago I used to eat fried fish in bamboo shacks with sandy floors, where the greatest danger was the fleas on the mangy dogs. On this day I saw jet skis, motorcycles running the sandy streets between cinder block hotels, and massive boats with twin 200-horsepower engines, every type of equipment needed to run and hide drugs. It seemed every man old enough for a moustache packed a sidearm, one fellow boasting a clip that looked larger than the pistol it armed. The pool hall where we drank our evening beers was lined with posters of undressed women. It was a frolicking orgy of moral, cultural, and environmental devastation. It was the hounds of hell being unleashed on a forgotten paradise. It’s the end of time.
Harpy Eagle, largest raptor in the world, photographed in the Honduran Moskitia. Persecution by humans is the number one cause of decline of this species.
Back in the city of La Ceiba at the luxurious Lodge at Pico Bonito I tried to return to being in a room and on a schedule. Walls? Lights? Why? At the airport I found that my flight reservation to New Orleans had been cancelled. Yes, this happens in Honduras. I booked the last seat on the flight, cash. I couldn’t know what to say to passengers returning from a sunny jaunt to the Caribbean, unchanged but for their tans, unaware of the rampage sweeping over tropical Latin America, travelers whose greatest concern is which celebrity gets eliminated from Dancing with the Stars. Jet liners are time machines in their own right, as much as rafts, only much swifter. Board one of these tunnels in a crumbling terminal in any third world nation, buckle into a reclining foam-covered seat, and after a few hours of flashing lights and metallic voices, you exit into gleaming terminals of people hurrying, bags clutched in their hands. Is this where I’m supposed to take someone in a uniform, wrestle them into a headlock, and shout, “The Plátano is being destroyed, fools!” I wrestle instead with myself. Weeks later I am shopping for rain gear for my new job in the temperate rain forests of Oregon. My rain pants don’t fit quite right. Maybe I can find a better pair. I have two rain jackets, neither of which is really suited for what I’m doing. I wander the aisles and look at price tags of $175, $325, on items to replace what I already own. “Papá, Papá.” I leave with a pair of socks.
Before this trip I believed that the Honduran Moskitia was hanging on by a thread, and that it would be saved by the good intentions of Honduras and other nations. Las Marías for me used to be something like a shiny Christmas tree ornament, a promise of everything that is good in the world, a little symbol of peace and happiness that we take out once a year and display to remind ourselves that good will conquer evil if we only let it. That ornament has been swiped from the tree by a malicious hand that doesn’t respect hope or peace. The thread that used to suspend the Moskitia has been slashed. That gleaming ornament is hurtling toward the floor to be dashed into peaces and trod over by the armies of corruption, greed, and neglect. What we don’t know is whether some hand will be there to catch it at the last moment, and save it before it shatters. Will it be yours?
Postscript – 22 May 2010
Last night I watched Avatar, the movie of the year, a mere story about blue-skinned aliens on a string of bad luck, as much as a virgin rain forest is merely a grove of trees, or perhaps sensational for its portrayal of an innocent people besieged by greed and evil. It’s only a movie, of course, simple fiction, except that the story is real every day in tropical corners the world over like Las Marías, except that there are no heroes and no magic in tropical jungles, only real people with no choices and no escape. The only ones with a choice are we, the privileged. Avatar, a movie, sparks an awareness. Can we direct this awareness and use it to confront the tragedy that is real, the suffering, the wave cresting over the last great places? Las Marías only a few years ago existed beyond the edge of the world and felt like a time out of place, where time itself was measured as yesterday, today, and tomorrow, where sunrise and sunset bookmarked the day, where the pace of life was smooth like a dugout sliding silently over water. Now Las Marías is a place out of time, thrust into the 21st century. How do we esteem time when it is measured in drugs, money, and guns? There is no need for a clock such as that. Midnight has passed. Sleep Abraham.
post-Postscript – 7 October 2015
I just learned that Melba passed away a few weeks ago. I was not there for her. She was the last of the old ones. Las Marías is now completely surrounded by clearcuts that will be turned to pastures, as the destruction of the forests rages unabated.
VISIT THE PLATANO: To see and feel the Río Plátano and Las Marías on film, watch the documentaryParadise in Peril by clicking here. For glimpses of the people and place, take a photo tour by clicking here. Click on individual photos to read the captions.
Call to action
If the loss of one of the world’s great places concerns you, then please share this blog, and please write some of the people listed below. Suggested text is provided in English and Spanish.
Mr. Roberto Alejandro Ramirez Aldana, Honduras’ Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, [email protected]
Sra. Hilda Muñoz Tábora, Permanent Secretary – Honduras Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO, [email protected]
Mr. Mauro Rosi, Chief of Unit, UNESCO Latin America and the Caribbean, [email protected]
Dr. Jeremy Radachowsky, Wildlife Conservation Society Assistant Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, [email protected]
Dr. Peter A. Hearne, Mission Disaster and Environmental Officer, USAID Honduras, [email protected]
Estimado [nombre]: La destrucción continua de la Reserva Biósfera del Río Plátano en Honduras es una pérdida para el mundo de la cual no podemos ni debemos ser meros espectadores. Los inocentes indígenas Pech y Miskito de Las Marías son víctimas de persecución y están siendo arrancados de sus tierras ancestrales quitándoles así su futuro. Además, numerosas especies silvestres en peligro de extinción están perdiendo unos de sus últimos relictos en Centro América. Le rogamos que, haciendo uso de todas las atribuciones inherentes a su cargo, nos ayude a salvar este lugar único a nivel mundial.
Dear (name), The ongoing destruction of the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras is a loss to the world that we cannot bear to stand by and watch. The innocent Pech and Miskito Indians of Las Marías are being driven from their lands and left without a future. Critically endangered wildlife are losing a last great stronghold in Central America. We urge you to please act with the utmost powers of your position to save this special place.
Another relaxing Sunday at home, mowing the yard, reading a book, playing with the dog, and resting. Or not. I went out to search for a fabled grove of old-growth fir trees in the mountains near my home. Hours of driving, hiking, mapping, and the grove is still a mystery. But this one tree, at least, is better known to me. It is about 170 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter, so it is no giant, but is it a relic that escaped the saw nonetheless. I climbed with my friend Mike, and we made our peace with this gentle almost-giant, enjoyed some fresh air filtered through the needles, and some really nice views.
Why do I climb? You got me. I don’t always have a ready answer to that question. I could have stayed home and done nothing, and I guess that is the point. A Sunday spent mowing grass is like any other and is forgotten. A day in a tall tree is one I’ll remember, always. It’s about fresh air, and a climb up a rope that numbs the fingers, a combination that makes me ALIVE. Do I climb because I am alive and I need to feed my body and soul, or am I alive because I climbed and my body and soul are fed? I never know if it is the ends that justify the means, or the means that justify the ends. Either way it was a good day.
Mike on rope. It takes a dedication to living to put yourself in this space.
A view from the top of a tree is like no other, because the emotions are just so much larger.
People who don’t climb like to tell me that tree climbing is really dangerous. Many of these same people drive in bumper-to-bumper 80 mph traffic in big cities. When surrounded by a swarm of high-speed vehicles, it only takes a second of distraction by one person and a lot of people can get killed. One driver 10 cars ahead of you reaches down to pet a small dog and 30 cars are in a pileup. You have no control over that. When you go climbing you are in control and your safety depends entirely on your decisions and the information that bases your decisions. Sure, there’s this little thing called gravity, but as long as your knowledge is sound and you are following approved tree climbing techniques, you should be OK.
Here’s the catch: tree climbing is like a lot of things in that there is a lot of advice out there on how to do it, some good, and some really bad. Unlike a lot of things, bad advice in tree climbing can definitely get you killed. Where does this information come from? I’m glad you asked. Four friends and I set out to look at all literature that has been published on tree climbing since 1970 with the goal of weeding out the bad advice from the good. We reviewed over 50 papers published in scientific journals (papers written by climbing scientists for the benefit of other climbing scientists), plus books and book chapters written for everyman. Our paper was just published in the prestigious journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Here is what we found.
Fatal Flaw #1: Tree climbing is not the same as rock climbing, plain and simple. Articles that don’t make this distinction are setting you up for injury. Tree climbing and rock climbing are similar disciplines but they are not the same. The two differ in really important ways: rope installation, use of anchor points, movement of the climber over the tree or rock, and more. The whole setup to climb a rope in a tree differs from what one does to climb rocks with ropes. Therefore, the equipment used in trees and on rock – harnesses, ropes, hardware – is not the same. The climber who does not realize this and tries to climb a tree with a rock climbing harness, carabiners, ropes, and methods is putting their life at risk.
Fatal Flaw #2: Safety equipment exists for a reason. Wear it. The quickest way to get hurt in a tree is by not wearing a helmet, glasses, and gloves approved for tree climbing. Real men have brains, and they use a helmet to protect their brains. Is your helmet approved for tree climbing? If you got it at a local sporting good store then probably not. Helmets for tree climbing are stamped ANSI Z89.1 on the inside. We were surprised by the number of photographs we found in the published information sources that showed climbers without personal protective equipment. It sets a bad example.
Observation #3: We thought old sources would be outdated and therefore tend to offer bad advice, whereas newer sources would be conform to modern principles and tend to be better. False. What we found is that good climbers who know proper tree climbing methods tend to write good material, regardless of how long ago they wrote it. More importantly, the opposite is also true: just because an article is new does not mean it is good if the author is not experienced in tree climbing.
There is a reason why all of this matters. A person who makes a mistake in climbing risks their own health and safety. The author who writes unsafe advice for others to follow is putting at risk the lives and safety of others. The novice climber reading all this material doesn’t know what is good, bad, or downright ugly.
We set out to fix that. We established criteria to rate the material found in every source that we reviewed. We identified 10 potential safety deviations and 7 positive recommendations. For every source we identified every single safety deviation or positive recommendation and listed the page number for each. All this information is contained in a table and is color-coded to make for easy reading. One look at the table is enough to say, “Whoa, there’s a lot of red on that publication.”
So, how can you trust that we know what we are doing, and that our review constitutes good advice? The five authors of this paper have close to 100 years of experience as tree climbers and tree climbing instructors. Plainly stated, the four arborist co-authors are the best of the best, the top guns of North American tree climbing.
You don’t have to trust me; you can judge for yourself. Click here to preview and download the article from the journal. OR click the link below to open a PDF on your computer.
Many thanks to Paul Colangelo who contributed the cover photo to the journal. Check out his website for more great photography.
Reference
Anderson, D. L., W. Koomjian, B. French, S. R. Altenhoff, J. Juce. 2015. Review of rope-based access methods for the forest canopy: safe and unsafe practices in published information sources and a summary of current methods. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 6:865-872.
Some of my friends and family think I am nuts because I climb trees. Bonkers. Lost in the proverbial woods. At work I get shrugs, the telltale sign that the topic of tree climbing doesn’t matter to a lot of people. I beg to differ. I think tree climbing has a lesson for everyman, whether you climb trees or not. Well, I have canopy blog, and the burden is on me to defend why climbing and trees matter. The best metaphor I can think of is going to bed in a treeboat.
Sleeping in a treeboat: all harnessed up and ready for bed.
If there is one word that captures climbing big trees it is “deliberate,” and nothing epitomizes this better than treeboating. When climbing big trees you take nothing for granted. There is no room for error because one mistake could mean death, and death is the one mistake with no recovery. Every action has to be planned and reconsidered before being taken. You take only what you need and nothing more, and you take everything that you need and nothing less.
Me, I like to relax before bed. Take a shower, have a bowl of ice cream, and chill until I’m drowsy. But when bed is hanging 165 feet high in a tree it’s a different story. Imagine climbing 165 feet on a rope that is the diameter of a dime. Every single muscle is on and every neuron firing. You have to trust your gear and your skill, or else you are completely, totally forsaken. And when you are up in that glorious tree, you are surrounded by life.
165 feet to bed.
In other words, climb a big tree and you are alive. When bed is a treeboat you are 100% dedicated to living life fully and totally. It is the opposite of most everything else in our daily lives. Who relishes driving to work as the high point of a day? You are passive and it is dead time, something to get through because of what is on the other end. The word we use for watching TV is “vegetating” because you don’t participate, you let it happen to you. Climb a big tree and you are taking life to the bank. You own it! When in our lives are we most engaged and happy? Usually on vacation, because we take charge of what we do and when we do it, and we live large. Why are adventure vacations like zip-lining and mountain biking so popular? Because of the thrill we get from living. That is the essence of tree climbing and treeboating: own life, be thrilled, take charge, live large.
Dang. It’s a long way to the bathroom.
Therein lies the message for Everyman. Trees bring us life, whether we climb them, just look at them, or breathe the air they make for us. Tree climbing is fun and delivers us to living. You don’t even have to climb a tree to participate, just visit this blog and enjoy. Thanks.
This post is dedicated to my climbing brothers and sisters: Jamz, Brian, Will, Scott, Damien, Aaron, Augie, Jason, Julian, Luke, Kt, Soman, and many more.
Jamz Luce suspended between two ancient Sitka spruce. He is 100% dedicated to living large.
I have always wanted to fly. If I were ever granted by divine gift the superpower of my choice, I would choose flight. Let me soar over the forests, give tail-chase to the birds, hover at every sunset, and heaven would have me wrapped in wings. Most of my best dreams have taken me flying. One day I am fidgeting with a mundane object like an umbrella and by total accident I discover the secret move needed for it to fly. Or else I am running pell-mell down a steep and incredibly high hill when my feet catch in the grass, and falling forward I open my arms only to suddenly swoop into the sky, forever released into my fantasy.
Only in my dreams.
Until now. I found that mundane object that lets me fly, and if you promise not to tell anyone else I will show you how it looks, like this:
This, dear friend, is a treeboat. The unenlightened may believe the treeboat to be a simple hammock, and we can leave them with their poor vision, but you and I, friend, we know better. Treeboats are designed and built for sleeping in the tops of trees. A hammock is a platform for drinking cold alcohol over sandy beaches, and any parrot head can hang one while standing on the ground. Treeboats are made with heavy canvass and straps strong enough to tow a truck. In the hands of an expert they are slung hundreds of feet above the ground. Choose the tallest tree, recline amongst the branches, close your eyes to half-open, and the sway of the canopy and the kiss of the wind will fly you over the forest.
Fantasy in bed is the hunger that unites all young boys until one passionate night they are released into manhood. In a single moment longing turns to swagger, wonder to knowledge. I lost my treeboat virginity suspended 165 feet high in a Sitka spruce. A non-believer, I thought a treeboat to be some sort of a hammock, and my biggest concern was falling to death. A much greater fear is living an experience so pure and so vital that there is no looking back. I was rocked by a Barred Owl calling its mournful “who-cooks-for-you” in the light of a full moon. I floated through moon beams on a bed of fresh air high above the forest floor. With my eyes snapped wide open I found the secret of flight. It was a night of pleasure that divided my whole life into the before and the after. Before I experienced treeboating it was enough to hide under blankets and spy the glossy pages of tree climbing catalogs. After I learned to fly I would never again be content to sleep on the ground.
Some poor doubter is going to think that this is just a bunch of hype, artistic license designed to get attention. Let me give you some perspective. I remember the night I slept on the plank floor of a palm-thatched house of a Miskito Indian family, as Caribbean waves lapped the beach under my head. I remember the night in Glacier Basin when the light of the stars was so huge that I could have performed brain surgery on my backpacking partner Phil, no external light source needed. Some nights are unforgettable and their memory never fades. Sleeping in a treeboat went beyond all that. It was magic. Let dreams take flight.
I’m biased. I love Bald Eagles. There are those who will say they are just lazy eaters of carrion, glorified vultures as it were. I think they’re awesome. The white head and tail are brilliant against the brown back and wings. And lazy? I once saw a male Bald Eagle spot an anchovy floating half a mile away on the Pacific Ocean. In one long swoop, without a single wing beat, he dropped from his cliff perch, glided low over the water, and clutched that anchovy with a massive craggy foot. It was an in-your-face demo of grace and power, a display of total confidence. When I saw that I jumped up whooping and hollering.
When was the last time you got to observe Bald Eagles at the nest? If you’re not a biologist, the answer might be “never.” Unless you have friends in the right places. Early this year Bob Christensen, president of the group Friends of Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge, asked Canopy Watch to install nest cameras at Deer Flat. He had two nests that were out of sight and whose annual fates were a mystery. Happy to oblige, Bob. Who would have guessed that simple trail cameras would take such great photos! I won’t kill the buzz of these great pics with a lot of talk. Enjoy.
What an incredible image! One eagle, probably the male, delivering nest material in his talons.Can you believe this?! One eagle perched, one flying, and three eggs in the nest. Incredible view of eagles at home.
The eggs never hatched. By 19 May there was only one left in the nest.
There are lots of Hollywood movies these days about humans with supernatural powers. Then there is Chris Sharma, who is a real human with real superhuman powers, and you can read about it all over the Internet if you haven’t already. Chris recently climbed a 253-foot (77-meter) redwood tree in California with only his bare hands and feet. And I mean no branches. He just climbed by holding onto the bark.
Chris Sharma clings to a redwood. The black rope is for safety only, meaning he didn’t use it for ascent.
Let me help put this into perspective. First, most trees you find in a forest near you are only half that tall. I have only been 250 feet up a tree a few times. Second, when I climb a big tree it takes a ton of gear: a crossbow to shoot a line over the tree, special ropes and harnesses, carabiners, ascenders. It takes an expedition-sized backpack just to haul that stuff in there, and a Sherpa would be a nice addition. Sharma? He just climbed the damned thing.
Please check out the video below. If that doesn’t get you high on tree climbing I don’t know what can. When you are able to clamp your mouth shut again and wipe the drool off your shirt, you can Google “Chris Sharma climbs a redwood” for more photos and stories.
I am a dreamer. I’d like to make the world a better place, you know, leave it better than I found it for the next generation. The planet may be going to hell in a hand basket, so I might as well try and do something about it. I am also a believer. I believe that nature is the ultimate gift to human kind, the final refuge with the power to bring peace to our collective troubled soul. Wild landscapes are the origin of humanity and in the unplugged wild places lie the secrets we need to save our collective future on this spaceship hurtling the galaxy. You can call me a hopeless dreamer all you want, and I will only agree with you.
