Climbing Trees

Almost to the top…just one more limb, Roy Junior thought. The allure of the Titan of all oak trees tempted him.

He overstretched his reach, ignoring the risk. His hand grasped a brittle branch, and his footing slipped on the green mossy limb. He swung out into the empty air and dangled there. His feet kicked, treading the nothingness beneath.

His 10-year-old life hung helplessly for brief seconds from the pinnacle. He remembered his father’s advice, “Son, don’t climb to the top of THAT tree.” Now he knew why. Eternity waited below.

The Mt. Everest Oak is massive. No one has yet succeeded in scaling it. The tree is on lands settled by the Simian clan who had branched out, so to speak, from New Jersey. They settled in the swamps of the Low Country.

The family scion, Colonel Roy Simian (Colonel, his name, not his rank), taught his son to climb from birth. The boy was a prodigy. By age 10, he had climbed the largest oak trees in America. But, he became obsessive, wanting more.

The Everest Oak is a shrine. National Geographic photographs it. Some say the face of Mother Mary appears in its highest branches. Baptist pilgrims hold tent revivals in its shade. The mammon of gate receipts has made Colonel Roy rich.

It’s undeniable…children love to climb trees. After 12, who climbs trees? The risk-reward ratio is not worth the effort. Even dogs find an allure to the highest point attainable. Dogs on furniture, children in trees. What’s the attraction, what’s the charm? The question demands an answer.

Roy Junior became a tree-climbing cult icon after the Babel County Gazette had published the account of his ascent. Buses of texting teens came to hear the perils of getting, uh, climbing too high. Unemployed beggars set up hovels outside the gate. The scene was Woodstock déjà vu.

Colonel Roy reaped profits by pontificating on Oprah his theory of “Why” people like to climb. Simple, he preached. “Monkey Genes.” The Gazette reporter needed details. Colonel Roy obliged, saying that amorphous forms oozed from the ocean and crawled ashore. They evolved into prehensile knuckle-draggers, then to cave-squatting Troglodytes. He averred that the aberrant gene lays latent in humans.

Such profane blabber from a member of the Simian tribe lacerated the old wounds of Evolution, polarizing the community. Churches debated the subject endlessly. Heated verbal exchanges ensued.

The reporter extrapolated in metaphorical terms the concept of climbing. There’re many “trees” to climb, he asserted. The Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses remains a favorite to climb. It’s loaded with limbs at the bottom. Likewise, the Money Tree. Its limbs are illusionary. Both these trees are slippery and neither has a top.

The Academic Tree is mossy. Tedium is required to ascend. The Athletic Tree has brittle limbs. Only the deranged and deluded attempt to scale beyond its lowest base. The Who-Do-You-Know Tree is more vine than tree. It entangles the climber in confusion. The list of metaphorical trees is long.

Things can sometimes go sideways when climbing trees, just as Roy Junior discovered. Climbing is not necessarily bad. It’s exhilarating to reach new heights. But at the top the air is thin, the consequences of disaster are great.

The debates finally concluded. Babel County was at peace. The Baptists and Methodists settled their differences by shooting pool at the Am Vets Club. They reached a consensus on Evolution, agreeing unanimously that Darwin could have saved a lot of time and expense if he had simply studied the habits of young boys…proof positive of the Monkey Gene.

Things ended well for most. The reporter became a political speech writer, Jesse Jefferson returned to Harlem to quell the genetic issue, the KKK dispersed and Colonel Roy inked a movie deal and moved to Hollywood.

Roy Junior no longer climbs trees. The fall inflicted a massive head injury which caused his brain to swell. He’s now the reigning World Chess Champion.

Unfortunately, he sustained a permanent speech impediment. Like a mechanical toy, he stutters incessantly the words, “Just one more limb, just one more limb.”

Bud Hearn
January 12, 2012