Falling From Grace by Ann Eriksson Page B

Once adults, most of us lose our ease in trees, our feet less flexible, our bodies too tall and heavy. Homo sapiens are the only primates who don’t live part of our lives in the canopy.
    â€œIs this right, Dr. Faye? Is this right?”
    â€œYes. Push your feet straight down though, not out.”
    â€œI feel like a spider going up my web. Do you feel like a spider? Does the tree know we’re climbing it? What’s this tree’s name? Can you feel the wind, Dr. Faye?”
    Rainbow’s enthusiasm reminded me of the first time I climbed a rope up a tree. My supervisor in grad school questioned my desire to study canopy bugs. “You’re not serious,” he said. “If you have to study canopy arthropods, hire a certified arborist to do your collections.” I hired the arborist—an affable man named Al—took him out to the closest old-growth forest, and asked him to show me how to climb a rope into a tree.
    â€œYou?” he said.
    â€œYes, me,” I answered. “I’m short, not disabled.”
    Al showed me how to rig the tree, how to shoot the lines, how to work them up higher and higher in stages, how to set the pulley. We hauled the climbing rope up and secured it.
    â€œYou’re not so much climbing as walking up the rope.” He demonstrated how to use the ascenders and the foot loops.
    Easy , I thought, anxious to experience the rope. Ten minutes later I was dangling in mid-air, not three metres above the ground, clinging to the thumb-thick coil of polyester and nylon, terrified to let go, paralyzed in place.
    â€œPut your faith in the rope,” Al urged from below. “Let go and lie back.”
    I released one tentative hand, then the other.
    â€œBreathe,” he said.
    I closed my eyes, listened to the air hiss in and out through my nostrils, and stretched my legs against the webbing. Tilting my head back I looked up. My body rotated around the rope; the canopy revolved above me; sunlight filtered through the ceiling of needles, the blue sky high above, flickering off and on.
    â€œYou okay?” Al called up.
    I couldn’t bring myself to look down.
    â€œTry again.”
    I took another deep breath and started my jerky passage up the rope. As I climbed, the world of the forest canopy opened up in front of me like a hidden valley on the other side of a mountain and a feeling of elation slowly displaced my panic. I didn’t make it to the top of the tree that day, but I was hooked.
    â€œI’ve never balked at heights before,” I had commented to Al at lunch beside a small stream.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he answered, “my first time up a rope scared me too. It’s the exposure, hanging in mid-air.”
    â€œIt’s all about trusting in the rope, I guess,” I concluded.
    â€œYeah, but you know,” Al replied, “if it breaks, the rope won’t save you.”
    Rainbow and I climbed to where the trunk split into a broad crotch ample enough to accommodate us both. I showed Rainbow how to secure herself to the branch with a nylon lanyard and a carabiner.
    â€œWow,” she crowed. “Paul, look at me.” She waved at him.
    â€œYou weren’t going to talk to him,” I teased.
    â€œOh, I forgot,” she said, then yelled down. “Don’t look at me, Paul.” Without a breath she babbled on. “This moss is as thick as a bed. Do you like being a tree doctor?”
    â€œI like working as a forest ecologist. And that’s not moss on the branch, it’s tree-ruffle liverwort.” The dark green shiny mat of flattened leaves hid the bark of the limb.
    â€œFunny name. I have a wart on my knee. Can I be a forest cologist when I grow up?”
    â€œWort not wart and the term is e-cologist,” I corrected. The field of canopy research won’t know what hit it.
    â€œAre there other little eeecologists?” She poked at the liverwort.
    â€œI’m the only