WriterGirl Does Research, Climbs a Tree, and Gets Scratched

Current Theme Song (aka what's playing on my ipod right now): The Voice by Celtic Woman/Lisa Kelly.


I haven't climbed a tree in five years, or more. Loved it as a kid (for some reason, I do not have the "fear of heights" gene in me at all, much to the dismay of parents, college roommates, and anyone who has cared for my welfare at any point). I still love climbing trees. And with my newest project I've been editing/writing, I have a little boy who loves to climb trees. So who am I to deny an authentic experience for better "research purposes" (i.e. having fun). :)

So off to the park I went, gallumphing all the way. I scouted out for the perfect tree. After fifteen minutes, I found it. It was tall, it was beautiful, and had just the right spacing to climb up, in, and around.


What I didn't count on was the little branches.


You know the kind I'm talking about, the little twig-like ones you use for kindling in campfires and poking bugs. Well, they had to grow on a tree at some point. Somehow, in my mind I imagined all my trees without them (hence why doing the fun, nitty-gritty research is so important). Silly, silly me. That plus the fact I tried to move a dead limb and push it out of the tree while I was still in it. I was afraid it would fall on some poor unsuspecting kid. Wrestling a dead tree limb from live tree limbs is like trying to wrestle an alligator one-handed. That was how I got this scratch.



Of course, being fascinated by just about everything, I took notes of the color, texture, and everything about it. I didn't want to wipe it off at all. That and the fact that I hadn't even considered bringing band-aids and I certainly wasn't climbing down thirty feet for such a simple thing as that.



Sadly, no picture from up in the tree. Trust me, there was no way I could have climbed that with a camera. Managing all of my body parts was hard enough. But it was incredibly fun, I got a ton of research in, and I got to feel like a kid again, scratches and all. :)

(me in a different tree. And one of my favorites to climb in the whole wide world).