Natural Amber

Tree branches seeking sunlight strong-arm their way into the lane where they scratch or interfere with vehicles, and while pruning them one morning this caught my eye. It couldn't be. It was. Amber. Gooey as caramel. Sticky as maple syrup. Natural amber 50 feet from my door.

People wore amber as far back as recorded history goes: there's an amber pendant about 13,000 years old. Amber doesn’t require mines or miners or advanced technology or expensive equipment. It grows on trees. Like finding pearls in oysters, finding amber in nature is a matter of luck, and very lucky for the finder. Those who wear amber align themselves with the Sun’s power.

Amber is not tree sap. Sap runs in the tree's veins. Amber is a resin, more like tree lymph, originating in cells, not veins, and seeping only when the tree is in crisis, filling a non-lethal wound and maybe protecting it against an insect invasion or a fungal infection. For this reason amber has always as been associated with healing. Well, this was my lucky day.  I plucked off the hanging pieces that were not still encasing the wounds, which were positioned as to make me think they had been made by bagworms. The amber drops could have been rolled all together into one, like clay, but I wanted to study the shapes and also the inclusions: bits of bark, and how some pieces were smooth and some ridged, possibly meaning different rates of extrusion, but all concentrated in one area of the tree. I looked for more. None. Once in a lifetime? I spent half an hour trying to identify the tree (which has no leaves, currently, and most books identify trees by leaf shapes), but I do know that amber is most commonly found on evergreens, and this wasn't one.

Up an 80-Foot Tree: The Canopy Climb

The Canopy Climb event at the Shaw Nature Reserve consisted of myself and two other people (everyone else in the world was too scared) and John the instructor, who'd slingshotted pulley ropes up into a venerable 80-foot White Oak deep in the woods, gave us safety gear, and invited us to hoist ourselves up there.

Uh huh.

Coordinated movement is required. One's right foot is placed in a loop of rope. Push against that, straightening the leg, while hoisting yourself  on a rope with a "magic knot" whose magical element was not explained, but I had faith. Arborists ascend into the forest canopy all the time to study the environment or trim branches; John said that advanced canopy climbers can cozily sleep on branches or swing from tree to tree, provided the proper outfitting.

When the three of us were strung up, John ascended and took our photos; here I am 60 feet above the earth repeating to myself, "Faint heart never won fun." John swung me a bit to see how I'd like it. I said, "Tone it down or I'll probably throw up."

I beat my lifelong fear of heights to do this. After a while I rather enjoyed dangling in the air in a forest. John said this sport was invented in the 1980s and there was something very 1980s about it: aggressive outdoorsmanship. I'd do it again.