The willows of the Poudre River Trail are a great place to start. They often grow in tight groups and some of the older ones create a massive network of crossing trunks. Occasionally a branch will arch gradually back to the ground, allowing for one to walk across it and arrive at a different place on the ground from where they left. This is exciting to me that a tree might serve as some sort of transport, if only to a destination a few feet away. The possibility of different routes is also exciting. These trees not only provide a place to sit and spy on the world, but a jungle gym for pure playing.

The bark of the willows is not as rough as cottonwood’s, but still provides plenty of grips, and plenty of abrasions. The closeness of the trunks and the tendency of the trees to divide at ground level or a low height provide easy access for beginning climbers. The branches often run nearly parallel to the ground and are tempting to treat as balance beams.

There are a few particular trees in the area between Lee Martinez Park and the Poudre River Trail that are worth mentioning. While climbing a smaller tree I received a tip about this first tree, which is fascinating in itself. Many people around town can point you in the direction of great trees. I don’t believe that everyone is climbing them, but we all see them and think about it. This tree is just west of the bridge leading from the bike trail north past the rope swing over the river. This is a tree with wonderful routes and easy access. A perfect jungle gym tree.

I scamper up a portion of dead, fallen trunk, using a variation of the front foot technique, to the point where the tree diverges. Ahead of me a branch leads to a perch above the river. To my left and right, large limbs shape into bridges leading back to the ground. I take the branch to my right and half crawl, half scoot my way across. I work delicately over a young, vertical, epicormic branch (the type of small, green branch that grows out through the bark of a mature branch or trunk, in this case pointing uncomfortably toward my crotch). I am not confident enough in the low light with my camera around my neck to walk the bridge. I climb easily down the branch and return to where I started, looking for another route. I take off my camera and begin again.

The second tree is just off the Hickory Street Spur. West of the trail is a thick wooded area surrounded by tall grasses. In this dark wood there are several massive willows. The southernmost tree provides the easiest access and potential for most vertical gain. What I particularly like about this tree is the combination of high traffic and absolute anonymity. If the tree previously described is the perfect jungle gym, this tree is the perfect perch.

Perching in a tree and looking at the world I have only just partially left can be meditative, investigative or depressing. I look down at the surface of the moving water and see the light ripple differently. People seem smaller as they pedal by. The slight change in angle gives me a sense of objectivity. This might come from being partially removed from the scenes and conversations below. Voyeurism is a strange practice.

The conversations overheard, like those in a coffee shop, on a bus or in a restaurant, have the ability to confound, amuse or disparage me. The sheer ridiculousness of some conversations is enough to make a person throw oneself head-first from the highest limb. I could share examples, but I have no doubt you’ve been confronted by the idiocy of other people and all but swallowed your tongue to keep in your response. Yet, being able to observe this teaches me that we are all in some way(s) ridiculous. I imagine that at my least eloquent or most self-absorbed moments I am being overheard or eavesdropped on by someone even more critical than my worst me. I can’t judge people from the trees; after all, I am a grown man perched just over a dozen feet up a willow.

The trees also offer a quiet escape. Places to read or think if you can find a secure and comfortable position. I do not recommend sleeping in trees. I am a tosser-and-turner so the waking up could be sudden and painful. I remember an anecdote in Ray Kurzwiel’s “Age of Spiritual Machines” in which the physicist Heinz Pagels writes at the end of his book “The Cosmic Code” the following:
I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock but it did not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

The book was published just a few years before Pagels died in a climbing accident on Pyramid Peak near Aspen, Colo.

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from “Tree Climbing in Fort Collins: A Lyric Guide,” published last fall as a stand-alone booklet that was part of a boxed set of woods-themed literary material produced by Matter Journal out of Fort Collins. Wolverinefarmpublishing. org. Used with permission of both Wolverine Farm and Mr. Malone.

Charles J. Malone writes and edits for Wolverine Farm Publishing’s Matter Journal and other publications in Fort Collins, Colo. His poems have been recently featured in Phoebe, Harpur Palate, The Laurel Review, Permafrost, Indefinite Space and Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac.