Keeping the Climbing Tree

Easter Sunday was perfect spring weather.  It was perfect for kite flying, egg hunting, corn hole games, barbecued meats, potato salad, cookies, home made wine sangria, spontaneous musical performances (using horse bones, a broken harmonica, and a pvc flute, even), hide and seek, and discovering the perfect climbing tree.  

I recently realized that a large fallen cedar tree was laying across the small stream in the narrow strip of trees on the east side of our property.  I was pondering the uses of this potential source of cedar wood, and discussing with folks the likelihood of ever harvesting this cedar wood for fence posts or furniture.  It's quite a large tree, so I thought it might be valuable to us as wood in some way.  Not that I have a strong desire for cedar wood, but I was trying to look at this fallen tree with usefulness in mind.  

But then I took my nephew to see the fallen tree, and he opened my eyes to it's full potential.  It's perfect for climbing!  It's wide enough for walking, has cool trumpet creeper vines and multiple branches for hanging on to, and even creates a bridge over the stream.  And, it's still alive, so it's likely to rot very slowly.  

It even has a nice seating area for me to relax on while he did the climbing.  Not that I could relax really, since I was afraid he was going to fall despite his reassurances that he is a very good climber.  He also reminded me that it was less dangerous to climb on a tree that was laying down than one that was standing up.  Good point.   

We discussed the potential uses of the tree as wood, but he said since it was still alive and good for climbing, we should just leave it alone.  I agree!  We now have an official climbing tree.  

Later that evening, just before dark, mom, dad, Jamie, Brandon, and I took a walking tour of the property, and we stopped by the climbing tree to admire it.  We also identified the tree in the photo above as the largest tree trunk on the property.  

We located the corner pins in our back fields, took a bunch of blurry photos of each other in the tall grass, and decided that this cedar tree on the fence line was the most perfectly shaped of them all. 

And then we had the very first campfire of the season.  We're still burning wood scraps from the work we're doing on the house, but it won't be many more season's before we'll be harvesting sticks and logs from the tree lines.  I don't have any plans to burn the climbing tree.