We didn’t do it to prove anything, we just climbed trees for the thrill. We were country girls. The land around us had trees. Oak, maple, cherry, apple. Cherry and apple rewarded you with fruit to eat—right from the branch. But the best trees to climb were the very old oaks and maples. Their branches lifted you into the sky.
The trees near grandma’s house were Silver Maples. When grandma looked out her upstairs bedroom window, she could see us in the tree tops. When we saw her in the window, she was smiling with pride and waving to us. We waved back to her, then quickly grab onto the branches as the wind blew, swinging us back and forth. We knew we were safe in the hands of giants.
One day, cousin Betty came to visit grandma. We took her to the side of grandma’s house where the Silver Maples stood. “Watch us, Betty, see what we do!” Betty was from the city and she had never climbed before. It was a beautiful summer day and we wanted to share our joy. Soon we were reaching up and swinging our legs around the tree limbs. As we moved higher and higher, we laughed and teased cousin Betty. “Why don’t you come up with us? It is fun!”
Soon, we were so high up that the leaves and branches made it difficult to see Betty’s head. Finally, by leaning a bit over and looking down, we could see her brown hair combed back with white plastic barrettes, her pretty pink dress drifting in the breeze. We heard her whimper then turn her face upward. “I can’t see my cousins. Where are you?”
We laughed and teased her. “You should come up. It is magical up here!”
“You don’t understand,” she cried, “Girls are not supposed to climb trees! Why do you climb up so high? It’s dangerous. What if you fall?”
We looked down at her with doubt and disgust. “We never fall. We always hang on tight and we know which branches are safe and which are not. Besides, who says we shouldn’t climb trees? Who makes these rules?”
Betty looked down at the ground, tiring from the effort of looking up. “I don’t know, it’s just the way things are, girls aren’t supposed to climb trees. And I agree with that. I don’t want to climb trees.”
“We’re country girls. We climb trees!” we said defiantly. “That’s just the way it is.”
From the top of the trees, we saw the world in such a different way.
The world can look different, depending on where you are from.
Those days of the late 50’s early 60’s
were the beginning of real change for
girls/women…Perhaps it was happening earlier
for country girls…I remember my Grandma who lived in the small Market town of Hedon near Kingston upon Hull where I live here in the UK…Their house was in a country area and had a large tree outside Grandma’s bedroom window…On Friday nights after being told by her Dad she wasn’t allowed out, she would climb down the tree outside her bedroom window to go to the local Barn Dance! So the country girls spirit was alive and kicking over here too!
Best wishes,
Diana…🌿
I liked the saplings that had reached 20 feet tall. I would climb to near the top and they would bend. They would bend all the way to the ground where I would gently get off and let the tree whip back up into place, totally unscathed. Me not having to climb back down, always harder… but take a smooth and sweet elevator ride. Shorter, but a precursor to the zip lines of today.
Ron