Climbing the Amazon
FSB reporter Mina Kimes recounted her tree climbing experience in Brazil. Have you tried tree climbing? If not, would you try it?
From Allan Wikman, Kingston, UlsterCountyUSA [There's only one: NY] I'd been pulling the short hairs off my head unsuccessfully trying to find your article, "100 best places to live and start a business," when suddenly "AMAZON" blazed before me…"TREES" close behind.
As a college student one summer I was a tree surgeon with the Monmouth County, NJ, division of Davey Tree Experts. We had no "cushioney" seats in those days: each morning we'd MAKE our "seat" from rope, alone, sling it over our shoulders like a knapsack, climb to the top "V" of the tree, slip off the harness, drop it over the "V," step into it, tighten it, knot one end to the main drop rope and, we were off! Mina talks about her fear of coming down: we'd leap out into the air, hold the knot lose, so it wouldn't grab (that's the safety of it!) and descend like a smooth elevator all the time controlling our rate of drop by more or less tension on the "knot." By September: never in better shape before or after!
Five years later I took a job at an ad agency in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Travelled extensively: once not too far from Manaus – Recife, Fortaleza, Salvador da Baia, Natal, from which (relatively short over-water distance) during WW II they'd ferry warplanes to Europe via Africa.
One of my greatest pleasures living in Middletown Twp., NJ (Monmouth County) years ago, over a two-year span) was building a (I'm NOT a carpenter) over-kill-safe treehouse for my kids…in the "V" of a tree on the 60 degree slope of our three acre property, 20 feet off the ground on the uphill side; 40 feet on the downhill. HUGE nails into those trees, thank you!
I bought my life's favorite toy: a gasoline powered Homelite chain saw…even (foolish!) climbed up to trim our (and neighbors') trees.
Is Mina Brazilian? Tell her a state is named after her: Minas Gerais ("General mines") (Brazil's diamonds, amethysts, etc.)
So, I was transfixed reading her article. Thoughts raced thru my mind: (1) gotta DO it (2) maybe I'll [lol: at age 76!] open a school here in the Hudson Valley (3) for darn sure NOW I'll be motivated to buy those 200 feet of climbing rope I've always yearned for.
Allan Wikman
PS: How may I find that piece on "The 100 best….?" I wanted to learn whether the writer was travelled sufficiently to have included Kingston.
Maybe Fortune passed because Business Week celebrated us as, as I recall, the nations 4th most attractive artists' colony!
I grow trees. I have planted 15,000 trees on my land and will double that this year. I have some older trees on my land which are at least 100 years old and which I would like to save by cutting out the dead wood. However, they are 60-100 feet high with no branches below 50 ft. I have an arborist's climbing harness. Where can I get the additional equipment to do the climb and descent?