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Contributed by: Harve Teitelbaum on 2/27/2006

I always wondered if I would be game for the Scandinavian practice of going back and forth from steaming sauna to icy water. Maybe if the sauna wasn’t so hot, the water not so cold, and the time in each not so long, then maybe.

But as I sat in a 185ºF, wood-fired sauna, looking out at the springtime fjörd I had just dipped into several times, I began to appreciate some of these old traditions. Traditions such as taking the entire family out into its woods for an afternoon of thinning, burning, and, in this case, tree climbing.

I was in Sweden visiting my son Ben and his girlfriend Käjsa, students at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, and her family on their farm near the Sweden-Norway border. I brought my climbing equipment, of course. Ben had told me of these tall and very climbable pines they had in Sweden, some over 100 feet called, as it turned out, täll in Swedish. Scots/Scotch pine, our domestic variety, doesn’t normally grow that tall in the US, so I was skeptical at first.

But there they were, emergents towering over the surrounding firs, spruces, and björk (birch). The gray bark of the täll begins peeling away to brown about halfway up, and the trunk is often clean for about three-quarters of the height, where begins an open,
domed canopy. The pine’s height and fire-resistant lower bark allow it to thrive and seed following the ground fires which infrequently clear out the shorter species. All in all, a fine tree for climbing.

The day of our climb we packed up our picnic supplies, chainsaw, pruning saws and matches, and slogged out into the woods with the Border collie, Ahbë, in hot pursuit.

When I found the pine that was to be our climbing tree for the day, the rest of the family immediately set about thinning the scrawnier trees in the area, and pruning the lower branches of the bigger ones. A thicker section from one of the harvested trees was bucked and lit as maintenance log, keeping the boughs and slash laid on top burning throughout the rest of the day. Being from drought-stricken Colorado, where many uncontrolled wildfires have devastated thousands of acres at a time, the sight of an open fire in the midst of dense forest almost sent me running back to my home. But these woods were practically dripping, and I was confident in the knowledge that local traditions tend to co-evolve with local ecology.

After I climbed into the canopy and took some shots of the surrounding forests and fjörds, I took each member of the family up for a climb. I hope the pictures convey some of the magic of that day. My only regret was not having enough time to climb all the inviting täll and björk I found. Next time.

Harv is a TCI-certified tree climbing instructor and runs Tree Climbing Colorado in Evergreen (www.treeclimbingcolorado.com). He suggests that tree climbing should not be attempted without proper education and equipment.

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