How many trees I have longed to climb and left regretfully: the silver lime by London Wall, high among Roman ruins, or the soaring arms of a copper beech in Kensal Green, shadowing the cemetery. Walking through Ranelagh Gardens or London Fields, I look longingly at centuries-old trunks, bereft of a single handhold. All across the city, countless London planes elude the climber, their complex crowns arching out of reach above the roof line.
The first and greatest challenge is reaching the lowest branch of any given tree. This is the key that opens the trapdoor to the attic, and the toughest part of almost every climb is found right at the outset. In order to gain the canopy no method is too unorthodox. Grapple and grope, claw and haul your way in; I have used tooth and nail in desperate bids to ascend a coveted tree. Sheer bloody-mindedness will often prevail, and no true tree climber gives a damn about their dignity.
The greatest single aid is a tall friend, a running jump being no substitute for a reliable shoulder. Pick climbing accomplices of a sizeable stature and you’ll transform your reach, elusive branches becoming easily attainable. Elevated from my humble five foot seven to the realm of a giant by taller men, hundreds of remote tree tops have fallen within my grasp. Many of these friends have no inclination to follow me into the trees, but for every unwilling climber there’s a committed pedestal.
There are, however, benefits to climbing alone. Just as the solo walker absorbs more of their immediate surroundings, so too the unaccompanied climber. The triumph of helping one another into a tree is a binding experience, and I like nothing better than sharing a common branch with a good friend. Yet there is something sacred about being solitary in a tree top. On my own I’m more likely to escape detection, whether by man below or beast above, and there is no compromise over which branch to choose or how far to climb. Dissecting life’s problems with an airborne friend is a fine form of counselling, but the same can be said of a tree-unto-yourself, where there is no need to have the raw experience affirmed by another. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of walking: ‘You should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes you; and because you must have your own pace.’ I have often followed ‘the freak’ into the trees, reliant on no other agenda but my own.
I do not want this to be a technical manual. The decision to climb a tree is spontaneous and every encounter different. Rather than laying down a set of instructions, below are a few aerial insights picked up along the way.
One of the principal advantages of climbing trees over rock or ice is that a straight drop rarely confronts the climber. Unlike clinging to a cliff face, a latticework of branches intervenes between you and the ground, offering a real (or imaginary) safety net. In high summer the leaves of a tree obscure the earth below, lessening our exposure to vertical falls. The ground is glimpsed but, climbing close to the trunk, a ready anchor is always to hand.
Use the natural geometry of the tree to aid your passage. Branchless sections often provide other means of ascent, burrs for leverage or a woodpecker’s hole, and some species have bark sufficiently hard and fissured to act as a hold in its own right. The way is not always obvious and few trees grow straight. In the course of a single ascent sloped stairways can transform into vertiginous overhangs. The climber must adjust to their warp and weft.
Exploring uninhibited by surplus clothing and gear is an essential freedom. You need nothing more advanced than the skin you were born in, and there are plenty of handy nooks for depositing briefcases and handbags on the way up. To further blend with a new environment, shades of grey and green lend camouflage to the climber, distancing the city below.
There are many advantages to climbing trees in bare feet. We were all born with splayed toes, perfect for balancing on branches, but our parents’ insistence on stuffing infant feet into footwear undid this great gift, narrowing digits and flattening arches. A short stint of baring your soles to the elements and the old connection between skin and bark can be re-forged. Adopt a kind of ‘four-hands’ philosophy – our ape forebears retained opposable toes on their feet for good reason – and remember that the lighter you climb the further you’ll go.
Climbing bare-footed is an altogether more immersive experience. Where shoes divorce you from the tree, skin attunes you to the feel of different types of bark and is well worth the odd stubbed toe or splinter. In wet weather a rubber heel can send you sprawling to the ground, and bare feet do less damage to the trees themselves. Sap is a wonderful natural glue and before long your naked feet will stick to bark like a gecko to a wall. If you must wear shoes in order to feel your toes in the depths of winter, don’t try shimmying up a trunk in a pair of snakeskin brogues. The espadrilles once used by pioneering rock climbers are an ideal compromise. With these you can judge the camber of a branch and still avoid slipping off.
Remember to be wary of dogs. Have you ever seen the way a spaniel watches a squirrel? To the canine race, tree climbers are objects of rabid fascination, legs dangling appetisingly from on high like a line of sausages above a butcher’s counter. Often I’ve crouched, paralysed on the groundmost branch of a tree, with ferocious terriers circling below, baying for my blood.
Climbers can also become predatory themselves. Watching people from the vantage of a branch leads to a hunter’s disposition; a feeling of omniscience arising from seeing all and yet remaining unobserved. One summer’s evening in Victoria Park, I found myself descending a pine after sundown. Nearing the bottom, I spotted a glowing cherry through the branches – two teenage boys sharing a joint at the tree’s foot. I waited in silence for them to finish and leave. After ten minutes, when they showed no signs of moving on, my patience wore thin. In spite of the very real danger of sending them both into cardiac arrest I sprung from my branch and flew the remaining ten feet to the ground. Two priceless screams rent the silence of the park and the boys fled in opposite directions, so fast that I never saw their faces. In my vainer moments I hope they still talk of the devil that dropped from the sky.
Whiling away an hour or two in a tree top, other awkward confrontations can await the climber on descent. I have gate-crashed picnics, ball games and baby showers, arriving like an angel of ill omen from above. Epithets given me on such occasions have ranged from ‘It’s a fucking monkey’ to ‘Call the police.’ These encounters are a necessary hazard of exploring the high land above London.
The more we climb, the easier it is to envy those animals better suited to the trees. Watch a squirrel sprint across the bridge of a branch before leaping with gay abandon over a bottomless drop. Observe songbirds, alighting soundlessly on the upper reaches while you sweat through a maze of branches below. We can spend many wasted hours mourning the loss of our primate dexterity, those biaxial ball-and-socket wrist joints and elongated arms with which we might climb higher and farther. But consider the less fortunate members of the animal kingdom, those poor beasts with no prospect of ever attaining the emerald heights. The horse, the hippo, the humble cow; what hope have these of escaping their earthbound condition?
Above all, wear your scars with pride. Nothing commends a person like a jacket torn at the elbow or trousers greened at the knee. Bruises and cuts from the whip of high branches are badges of honour to parade among well-tailored ground dwellers. Turning in after a day exploring the city’s trees, I once found my entire buttocks covered in a constellation of savage bites. I was eager to know what poor invertebrate had been stirred into such a frenzy of retribution. On another occasion, sitting down to a meal in a Greenwich pub, a cedar cone dropped from my hair into my neighbour’s pint. This wonderful specimen had attached itself to my crop by means of some highly adhesive sap. Although forced to swap my untouched beer for his now somewhat resinous brew, I was immensely pleased that a token of the day’s adventures had followed me back to earth. Stepping into a beech, cedar or pine brings us closer to nature than a thousand safaris, and has as much to teach us as an entire zoo viewed through Perspex panels.
Bonae