Climbing Cherry Trees

There’s no good reason to climb the old cherry tree in the backyard. At least, there’s no good reason that I, as an adult, can bring to mind. I can remember clearly enough a time where I was small, light, and somewhat impervious to injury. I know that “the reason” that boy climbed the tree at least once a day was just a collection of barely related pieces of information. Raw statements about reality floating in a mind so light and motile that it could not really be thought of as a very cohesive string of consciousness. These "reason" pieces were related in that they had something to do with trees, but not necessarily with climbing them or not.

One of those gems of purpose that shines clearly to this days is that my mom did not really want me to climb the tree. She was not small anymore, and knew enough of injury to fear it for the both of us. She had also, by that time in my life, already dealt with me being hurt enough to be hospital worthy, and even though I could always forget the experience within a week, those types of crises clearly left a lasting impression on her. This particular piece of information lent weight to the desire to climb the tree. Something in us thrills at getting results of a greater intensity out of our large, stolid guardians. Is it cruelty? It certainly isn't anything very well reasoned, as, more often than not, that outburst of parental annoyance and worry tends not only put an end to the current unwanted activity, but to things like future desserts and play times.

Another tree climbing reason fragment was the thought that it would be nice to move from larger branches to smaller branches. From the dense to the sparse. Moving up through a tree. Knowing a skywards vector would increase the scope of distant scenery. That the very state of matter, on a representative large scale, could be witnessed changing. The context effervesced. The close at hand, each branch, each foothold, became less and less solid. To move up the tree, was to get closer to the heavens in many ways. Of course there was the simple elevation, but somehow the increasingly ephemeral nature of the supporting substance made you feel like you just might be able to step off that highest twig and perhaps find purchase on the clear blueness of the boundless aether. This piece of information neither increased nor decreased the desire. Perhaps it is better filed away in a category called “coinciding experience.”

Something else that drew me to the activity was the sheer physicality of it. Not just the ease—the complete, unthinking freedom of movement of youth—but the exertion. It takes effort to climb, and in those short moments of pulling and pushing, you can experience the joy of your successes easily and in a playful, yet meaningful context. On top of that inner bliss there was also the outer. The smell of the garden as a whole, and of the cherry tree in particular. The roughness of the bark in one's hands or, more painfully, across one's shins. The colors of that bark; both the grays and lines of black on the older outer layers, and the browns and tans beneath that were sometimes exposed. While the difficult stickiness of the sap was generally a nuisance, it did add to the overall sensational experience.

It is true that the tree is no longer there. While I might believe, in moments of calcified age, that I did not understand the reasons to climb the cherry tree, the truth is I didn't need to know. Not in the way that my adult self wishes to know things in order to sort through a world of dubious responsibilities and existential crises. In that immediate present there was a tree, I was a child, and I could climb it. Why or how were so far from my mind back then. In all my years scrambling through that garden and up that tree, before I was told it was dead, before it was dug out unceremoniously and burned, I never needed to know the reason to climb a cherry tree. It was there, in a sacred place, green and pivotal to my growth. Its mere existence was an exhortation to do. To grow along with it. To taste of being.