We had three giant rubber trees in our backyard and they became nests for the tree huts we built and spent many an hour in.
For no other reason than to simply sit up in a tree.
It is not an unusual thing to do.
We are, after all, part of a diverse primate family in which one large segment of that family is well accustomed to climbing trees. So I just figure that's sort of rubbed off on we of the human side.
It's like when you were walking to school and saw a giant puddle in the centre of the footpath.
It was like a magnet ... and every kid who encountered it would stomp in it whilst squealing in soggy delight.
Ditto for a small and branch friendly tree.
A little bell goes off inside the little head which signals it is time to revert to one's very distant biological ancestry.
It's like that Kevin Costner baseball film which had the famous line "build it and they will come".
In terms of a tree ... "plant one and they will climb".
And I don't think it ever rubs off.
Part of the appeal of building a slightly shabby tree-house for our kids when they were small was being able to climb a tree again.
In that case it was a giant walnut tree which had a great number of giant branch joints to fix the planking and chipboard sheeting to.
Any excuse I could come up with had me ascending the tree again to "check a couple of joints" or "fire another bracing bracket in".
After about 45 minutes the kids would start to moan.
"You going to be up there much longer?"
That would usually wake me up.
And so it has been with some interest I have been reading and listening to the health and safety approaches to this pastime, especially within the boundaries of schools.
Some schools are easy with the idea of kids clambering into trees while others are not.
The thing is though, if they can't climb a tree at school they'll just go and find one somewhere else to clamber up, and besides, most of the schools around here have trees which are, due to the thick trunk sizes, not really up for climbing anyway.
I can sort of see it from both sides.
Kids have to be kids and kids like a spot of adventure.
Hell, in my boyhood we'd walk to the end of the breakwater at the port and back ... especially when high seas were running and you had to get low and shelter from the sheets of water spraying overhead.
Crazy ... but oh it was terrific fun. "Dopey blighters," the wharfies would remark.
Also climbed that great stone monument at the main gates to McLean Park ... and the big tree that once stood nearby also received attention.
But when our lad was indeed just a lad and he'd start to clamber up the tree down the back I'd sort of suggest he just stay put at that first joint within the main trunk ... it was only about 3m off the deck but yeah, I'd sort of worry.
However, kids will be kids and they will seek adventure and they will often seek an elevated spot to seek that adventure from ... up a tree.
It is a natural thing for we have the fingers and joints not unlike the chimps and apes who are so adept at scrambling upwards.
Might as well use them.
- Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.
