People Climbing Trees
“I didn’t know anybody climbed trees anymore. That takes me back.” The author of The Tree Climbers Guide, Jack Cooke, would I imagine have been pretty smug to hear that the first comment by the first person, a fellow dog walker in his 50’s, that Austin and I bump into, say this to us, as we are climbing trees. It’s exactly what the author was talking about. People love climbing trees but it’s a forgotten art, even amongst Austin’s friends, not just when we become adults. Two of his friends can climb trees but the rest either don’t have the passion for it or find they can’t. As a child I’d treat it like an Olympic sport, with timed ascents and descents on the trees I knew best. But even back then I know some tree climbing was left unfinished. In fact often I look back on my childhood and feel some living of it was left unfinished because handheld games and computer games arrived in the mid 80’s and captured much of my time in a tense thumb bashing, eyes transfixed life of gamin