JUMPING FROM TREES WITH JOE

There were two towering blue spruce trees in the back of our house. When I was in junior high school I found a friend, Joe Giglio, who liked to climb trees as much as I did. We got this crazy idea in our teenaged heads to see who could climb the highest. I have a picture in my mind of Joe touching the very top branch, the one, which the tree sends straight up towards the sun.

I don’t know how we invented the process—maybe one of us lost our grip and slipped—but we invented a game where we’d climb to the top and slide down the tree. It wasn’t quite as smooth as it may sound. The game was to let go and, more fall than slide, down through the branches all the way to the ground.

Sometimes there’d be a branch below which would stop the fall which meant you’d have to crawl back out to the end and continue until you reached the dirt below.

Somehow, thinking of trees reminded me of this—those carefree days where letting go, and letting nature take its course, was way more fun than being inside watching TV.

When we told our friends about the game and they came to watch, and we dared them to do the same, as I remember, they never would. It was a skill that only Joe and I had mastered and maybe the two of us were the only ones crazy enough to try.

A few times some of the lower branches didn’t comply and let us fall through but luckily neither of us ever broke a leg or anything else. If you think about it, if the trees knew what we were doing, I’m sure they would’ve thought of us as crazy—or maybe just annoying.

One of us, at some point, planted a shirt over one of the top branches—I think it was Joe. I remember I could see it from my bedroom window. Whenever I saw it, it made me feel proud of our great accomplishment. It was like we'd conquered Mt. Everest.