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Today, climbing trees seems to be a theme that’s fading from our literature, perhaps as adults and children in turn forsake the tree tops. Where still woven into fiction it is liable to become pure fantasy, as impossible as chasing dragon tails. Could this be the harbinger of a future in which, if we climb trees at all, it will only be among the pixels of our screens rather than under the power of our own limbs? I fear the day when we are so enraptured by our own invention that we no longer interact at all with the organic world. The instinct to climb trees may finally and irreversibly be erased.
Travelling around London, I find my grim vision alleviated by the cracks in the pavement beneath trees, where thick roots have broken concrete slabs and nature has outmuscled the man-made. Nothing gives me more joy than the sight of a water main ruptured in two or a new sports car crushed under a fallen branch. Perhaps there exists an alternative future in which the vegetable world reasserts itself in our everyday consciousness, trees becoming as prized as our castles and cathedral towers. All it takes is the tap of a branch to open our eyes to another world hanging overhead.
Green Fingers (#ulink_2da4d901-8dd0-5f1a-8277-5168e8adabd6)
So it is also with trees, whose nature it is to stand up high. Though thou pull any bough down to the earth, such as thou mayest bend; as soon as thou lettest it go, so soon springs it up and moves towards its kind.
Metres of Boethius (King Alfred’s prose version)
This book will not tell you how to climb trees. You are, believe it or not, a natural climber, and the wherewithal to conquer nature’s scaffold lies deeply ingrained in your DNA. Rewind the clock to the first tree you ever climbed; can you remember where it stood and if it stands today? The intervening years may have stiffened muscles and added gut but the way into the trees remains open.
Not long ago I found myself stuck halfway up a giant cedar. I had struggled up the bare lower trunk, wrestling with a thick covering of ivy. Arriving at the first branches and faced with the final ascent, I found my limbs frozen stiff. A friend, who had already nimbly picked his way to the summit, looked down on me through the fronds with a self-satisfied grin. I had one knee balanced on a branch, an arm wrapped around the trunk and my nose wedged in the bark. A buttock was braced against another bough and I was bleeding from a cut to my right ear.
Climbing trees is an all-body pursuit that engages every part of your anatomy; it’s not unusual to find your forehead pressed hard against a thorny trunk, buttressing the rest of your body weight, or your legs locked off around a tree limb. The joy of climbing trees comes from their barely ordered chaos; branches balance each other, but every tree is its own bedlam. Getting hopelessly lost in this arboreal cobweb is the whole point.
Inevitably, upper-body strength helps. If you can do seventeen pull-ups hanging from the little finger of your left hand, then you have an advantage over the rest of us. The skill-set of a seasoned alpinist can be applied to bark but the novice is not ill-equipped. When exploring trees, the finer points of technique are subordinated to the haphazard joy of the climb.
This is a book with a strictly amateur philosophy. The closest many adults get to climbing trees in the 21st century is by paying for the privilege – even something so patently non-monetary has been ingeniously commercialised. You can be parted from your cash to be winched into the canopy, a harness tightened mercilessly around your genitals and a plastic helmet fused to your hair. With the overriding pain in your crotch, and your instructor swinging like an angry pendulum between you and the tree, there is little if any time for appreciating the scenery.
Such equipment might be useful for conquering otherwise unclimbable summits, the coast redwoods of Oregon or California, but the amateur goes into the trees as his ancestors left them. The examples in this book are for the spur of the moment, to be climbed with no other tools than your own hands and feet.
We live in a dangerous age in which some of our most natural and time-honoured pursuits have been rebranded. Swimming anywhere other than a plumbed and chlorinated pool and what you might have previously considered camping are now both given the prefix ‘wild’. There is no true wilderness left in Britain, so we can assume this new perception exists to distinguish between pool and pond, campsite and moorland. More disturbingly, however, the terms imply you somehow have to be ‘wild’ to partake. This could not be less true of climbing trees, an undertaking for anyone with the time and inclination.
In London, gaining a branch takes perseverance. Many of the finest specimens are impossible to scale with the simple gifts that Mother Nature bestowed upon us. The city’s trees have been clipped and coppiced, pruned and pollarded, shorn of their bottom branches and trimmed to a fault. London’s councils and park keepers do a noble job of hair-dressing, often vital to the tree’s health but at a terrible cost to the aspirant climber.
How many trees I have longed to climb and left regretfully: the silver lime by London Wall, high among Roman ruins, or the soaring arms of a copper beech in Kensal Green, shadowing the cemetery. Walking through Ranelagh Gardens or London Fields, I look longingly at centuries-old trunks, bereft of a single handhold. All across the city, countless London planes elude the climber, their complex crowns arching out of reach above the roof line.
The first and greatest challenge is reaching the lowest branch of any given tree. This is the key that opens the trapdoor to the attic, and the toughest part of almost every climb is found right at the outset. In order to gain the canopy no method is too unorthodox. Grapple and grope, claw and haul your way in; I have used tooth and nail in desperate bids to ascend a coveted tree. Sheer bloody-mindedness will often prevail, and no true tree climber gives a damn about their dignity.
The greatest single aid is a tall friend, a running jump being no substitute for a reliable shoulder. Pick climbing accomplices of a sizeable stature and you’ll transform your reach, elusive branches becoming easily attainable. Elevated from my humble five foot seven to the realm of a giant by taller men, hundreds of remote tree tops have fallen within my grasp. Many of these friends have no inclination to follow me into the trees, but for every unwilling climber there’s a committed pedestal.
There are, however, benefits to climbing alone. Just as the solo walker absorbs more of their immediate surroundings, so too the unaccompanied climber. The triumph of helping one another into a tree is a binding experience, and I like nothing better than sharing a common branch with a good friend. Yet there is something sacred about being solitary in a tree top. On my own I’m more likely to escape detection, whether by man below or beast above, and there is no compromise over which branch to choose or how far to climb. Dissecting life’s problems with an airborne friend is a fine form of counselling, but the same can be said of a tree-unto-yourself, where there is no need to have the raw experience affirmed by another. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of walking: ‘You should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes you; and because you must have your own pace.’ I have often followed ‘the freak’ into the trees, reliant on no other agenda but my own.
I do not want this to be a technical manual. The decision to climb a tree is spontaneous and every encounter different. Rather than laying down a set of instructions, below are a few aerial insights picked up along the way.
One of the principal advantages of climbing trees over rock or ice is that a straight drop rarely confronts the climber. Unlike clinging to a cliff face, a latticework of branches intervenes between you and the ground, offering a real (or imaginary) safety net. In high summer the leaves of a tree obscure the earth below, lessening our exposure to vertical falls. The ground is glimpsed but, climbing close to the trunk, a ready anchor is always to hand.
Use the natural geometry of the tree to aid your passage. Branchless sections often provide other means of ascent, burrs for leverage or a woodpecker’s hole, and some species have bark sufficiently hard and fissured to act as a hold in its own right. The way is not always obvious and few trees grow straight. In the course of a single ascent sloped stairways can transform into vertiginous overhangs. The climber must adjust to their warp and weft.
Exploring uninhibited by surplus clothing and gear is an essential freedom. You need nothing more advanced than the skin you were born in, and there are plenty of handy nooks for depositing briefcases and handbags on the way up. To further blend with a new environment, shades of grey and green lend camouflage to the climber, distancing the city below.
There are many advantages to climbing trees in bare feet. We were all born with splayed toes, perfect for balancing on branches, but our parents’ insistence on stuffing infant feet into footwear undid this great gift, narrowing digits and flattening arches. A short stint of baring your soles to the elements and the old connection between skin and bark can be re-forged. Adopt a kind of ‘four-hands’ philosophy – our ape forebears retained opposable toes on their feet for good reason – and remember that the lighter you climb the further you’ll go.
Climbing bare-footed is an altogether more immersive experience. Where shoes divorce you from the tree, skin attunes you to the feel of different types of bark and is well worth the odd stubbed toe or splinter. In wet weather a rubber heel can send you sprawling to the ground, and bare feet do less damage to the trees themselves. Sap is a wonderful natural glue and before long your naked feet will stick to bark like a gecko to a wall. If you must wear shoes in order to feel your toes in the depths of winter, don’t try shimmying up a trunk in a pair of snakeskin brogues. The espadrilles once used by pioneering rock climbers are an ideal compromise. With these you can judge the camber of a branch and still avoid slipping off.
Remember to be wary of dogs. Have you ever seen the way a spaniel watches a squirrel? To the canine race, tree climbers are objects of rabid fascination, legs dangling appetisingly from on high like a line of sausages above a butcher’s counter. Often I’ve crouched, paralysed on the groundmost branch of a tree, with ferocious terriers circling below, baying for my blood.
Climbers can also become predatory themselves. Watching people from the vantage of a branch leads to a hunter’s disposition; a feeling of omniscience arising from seeing all and yet remaining unobserved. One summer’s evening in Victoria Park, I found myself descending a pine after sundown. Nearing the bottom, I spotted a glowing cherry through the branches – two teenage boys sharing a joint at the tree’s foot. I waited in silence for them to finish and leave. After ten minutes, when they showed no signs of moving on, my patience wore thin. In spite of the very real danger of sending them both into cardiac arrest I sprung from my branch and flew the remaining ten feet to the ground. Two priceless screams rent the silence of the park and the boys fled in opposite directions, so fast that I never saw their faces. In my vainer moments I hope they still talk of the devil that dropped from the sky.
Whiling away an hour or two in a tree top, other awkward confrontations can await the climber on descent. I have gate-crashed picnics, ball games and baby showers, arriving like an angel of ill omen from above. Epithets given me on such occasions have ranged from ‘It’s a fucking monkey’ to ‘Call the police.’ These encounters are a necessary hazard of exploring the high land above London.
The more we climb, the easier it is to envy those animals better suited to the trees. Watch a squirrel sprint across the bridge of a branch before leaping with gay abandon over a bottomless drop. Observe songbirds, alighting soundlessly on the upper reaches while you sweat through a maze of branches below. We can spend many wasted hours mourning the loss of our primate dexterity, those biaxial ball-and-socket wrist joints and elongated arms with which we might climb higher and farther. But consider the less fortunate members of the animal kingdom, those poor beasts with no prospect of ever attaining the emerald heights. The horse, the hippo, the humble cow; what hope have these of escaping their earthbound condition?
Above all, wear your scars with pride. Nothing commends a person like a jacket torn at the elbow or trousers greened at the knee. Bruises and cuts from the whip of high branches are badges of honour to parade among well-tailored ground dwellers. Turning in after a day exploring the city’s trees, I once found my entire buttocks covered in a constellation of savage bites. I was eager to know what poor invertebrate had been stirred into such a frenzy of retribution. On another occasion, sitting down to a meal in a Greenwich pub, a cedar cone dropped from my hair into my neighbour’s pint. This wonderful specimen had attached itself to my crop by means of some highly adhesive sap. Although forced to swap my untouched beer for his now somewhat resinous brew, I was immensely pleased that a token of the day’s adventures had followed me back to earth. Stepping into a beech, cedar or pine brings us closer to nature than a thousand safaris, and has as much to teach us as an entire zoo viewed through Perspex panels.
A Warning to the Curious (#ulink_170db9b6-587c-5aba-a153-a0c461618e05)
Bonae actionis uir, incautius in arborem ascendens deciderat deorsum, et, contrito corpore. (A worthy man, having incautiously mounted a tree, had fallen down, and died from the bruise.)
Life of Cuthbert, Bede
In many ways you are never safer than when up a tree. The moment you climb into one you remove yourself from many of the city’s everyday dangers. You are, for instance, unlikely to be mugged at altitude. Pickpockets operate far below and, generally speaking, haven’t hung out in trees since the highwayman’s heyday. You’d be equally unfortunate to be hit by the number 91 from Crouch End, the five o’clock from Waterloo or a lycra-clad cyclist with a death wish. Tourist scrums, crowded streets, screaming schoolchildren: many of a city’s most frightening phenomena are confined to ground level.
This is not to say that trees are without their inherent dangers. What follows is some friendly advice, most of which is common sense. I want to encourage people to climb, but to do so knowing their own limits and those of the tree. The joy of exploring canopy is too precious to throw under the health and safety steamroller; climbing trees involves a managed risk and, with due care, we need not fall to an early grave.
It is easy to forget that what goes up must come down. In a fit of cloud-chasing exuberance you might shoot up a tree paying little, if any, attention to your return journey. It is always harder to descend; instead of springing up off bended knee you are lowering yourself on tired arms, while blindly feeling for footholds. Sitting pretty in a tree top, you might be sky high with confidence. Look down between your knees and this momentary elation can swiftly change to crippling fear. However high you climb, always remember the way back.
On emerging at the top of a tree you might get the urge to jump and shout, wave frantically and generally draw attention to yourself in any manner possible. When confronted with a panoramic view of the city and a host of tiny people wandering far below, the human ego is prone to inflate to regal proportions. I call this ‘king-of-the-castle complex’ and strongly discourage it. Not only does such showboating distract from the important task of balancing on a branch, but you are disrespecting the noble practice of climbing trees. If you had lived in prehistory any large passing predator would have instantly devoured you. In medieval times bored archers might have used you for target practice. Today people will probably just think you’re a jerk. There’s a lot to be said for silent appreciation.
Remember to take a friend, at least to begin with. Exploring with a companion not only drastically expands your climbing remit, as outlined in the previous section, but also provides you with a handy insurance policy. In the unlikely event of falling from on high and injuring yourself, it’s vital to have someone on hand to be a hero and help out. Lying at the bottom of a tree alone and in pain is not advised; you will only attract the attention of passing vultures.
Climbing trees is sadly no longer a national pastime, and in the city it’s a rare sight. Because of this, park authorities and other powers-that-be might show surprise at finding you dangling from a branch. There is no natural law that prevents humans from climbing trees but there are a fair few man-made ones. Many of these lie open to interpretation but you may not have an inalienable right to be in your chosen tree. Be polite and find another if needs be.
When in the canopy try to resist taking endless reams of photographs. Confining the sum total of your experience to the eye hole of a camera creates memories more unreliable than your own. The camera becomes the moment itself and the joy of the climb is forgotten.
The trees themselves deserve due veneration; they’ve all lived here longer than you. Ancients that have survived many centuries of city life should be allowed to retire gracefully in old age without the strain of climbers on their world-weary branches.
The trees profiled in this book are mature specimens. All are sturdy plants and, if treated with respect, should not suffer from your passage from root to tip. When exploring other trees to climb, it’s best to avoid those that are not yet fully grown. Rather than damage a young sapling, chart its growth over the years and return to climb it when you are both older and wiser.
Trees are host to intricate ecosystems with thousands of dependants. One of the delights of perching in tree tops is meeting a cornucopia of wildlife in the heart of the city, and your attention to detail is sharpened by focusing on every branch you climb. Bark-coloured beetles, lime-green aphids and tree-dwelling spiders cross your path. My former arachnophobia was overcome by an encounter in a horse chestnut, a large spider crossing my arm as I clung to a high branch, giving me the choice of putting up with it or breaking a leg.
Many of these creatures are easily disturbed, however, and won’t take kindly to your trespassing. Squirrels give as good as they get, but other more fragile occupants should be avoided. Nesting birds are particularly vulnerable and, if you’re climbing in spring, try to give a newly built nest a wide berth. Imagine if you had flown a thousand miles, spent a week courting the love of your life and persuaded her to bear your children, only for your entire home and progeny to be crushed by a climber’s clumsy foot.
As you ascend, new shoots may try to blind you or impale your armpits, but avoid breaking off healthy limbs just because they stand in your way. Trees don’t always submit to your will; a sprung branch or a slippery foothold might suddenly cast you to the ground. By climbing close to the trunk you give instinct a chance to save you from a fall, your limbs latching onto this dependable mast.
Nearly all trees carry deadwood. The seasoned climber is like a doctor with a stethoscope or an old tracker tapping the branches one by one as they go. Look for the outward signs: an absence of leaves, peeling bark or a difference in shade. The necrosis of a tree limb is not always obvious, so test each rung of the ladder as you travel up the trunk. Casting deadwood onto an unsuspecting head far below is like throwing a spear at someone from the third floor of an office block; equally, being knocked cold by a phone falling from a pocket is grounds for litigation. Take care when descending a tree that you don’t arrive to find a corpse at its foot.
Keep an eye on the elements. Nothing ruffles the machine of the city like a strong south-westerly. Try to avoid climbing high branches on windy days as they come under strain when bending in a gale. Leaves scatter, branches snap, and whole trees are uprooted. A sudden gust might unseat you from a perch and, unless you catch a miraculous thermal, it will be a long tumble to earth. What appears sturdy from the ground might not cope with your added weight. Don’t risk damage to branch or bone; batten down the hatches and wait until there’s a lull.
Never climb beyond your comfort zone. If you find yourself twenty feet up a tree with your legs frozen, your confidence evaporating and your palms wet with sweat, climb down. Involuntary tree-hugging, through fear not devotion, has nothing to recommend it. Remember, you are taking your life in your own hands, so value it accordingly.
Climbing trees is the antithesis of cotton-wool conservation; it is wilful engagement with nature rather than careful avoidance. We must not develop into a generation stapling ‘Keep off’ signs to every trunk, no longer knowing the names of the trees we’re trying to protect. If we fail to connect with nature in a visceral way, a day will come when we are only capable of feeding squirrels store-bought nuts from our car window. The seminal step of reaching for that first branch turns scenery we take for granted into a living companion. The experience of climbing trees, and the curiosity it engenders, outweighs any damage done.
(#udf41fb2a-f1eb-52f6-83eb-cd32609bd22a)Canals & Rivers (#ulink_dbbf91ef-2a80-53ac-b5ca-7236ca614ca9)
London’s skin is deeply sewn with watercourses, though many now conduct silent passage underground. The once mighty River Fleet runs invisible beneath office blocks, and the noble Westbourne is piped under London, confined to the ignominy of an iron tube. Like the roots of the trees, rivers have hidden subterranean capillaries, channelled and culverted beneath the modern city. London buried its waterways when they became a hindrance, and long gone are the days when we might have paddled from our front door to the corner shop. The rivers have become mass sewers, and tributaries that once served as transport links now ferry human effluent and the floating fat of restaurant and home.
Trapped and ignored, it is easy to suppose that, like the tree falling unheard in the forest, if a river flows unseen it has ceased to really flow at all. Yet these waterways are older than the city – older than England even. While their springs still flow, a thousand years interred is a fleeting moment in the life of a river. They surface in secret, running in concrete channels or narrow ditches, and a line of trees is the surest way to trace their covert passage. Where there’s water there will grow life, even if that same water is choked with plastic bags, shopping trolleys and sunken glass.
There is a strong compulsion to climb trees over water. Drawn to long branches above rivers and canals, we are imbued with a misplaced confidence, something in the brain associating water with soft landings and summers past. Inner-city streams conceal submerged dangers and still pools stagnate, but these are superficial deterrents. A tree overhanging the current combines the two fundamentals of wood and water, an elemental landscape in the midst of the man-made. These mesmeric haunts tempt the climber like few other urban spaces.
Perched over water, whether in the arms of a weeping willow or a straight-backed alder, networks of branch and leaf reflect upwards, enshrining the climber in a double image of the tree. The play of shadows and light hypnotises the most care-worn commuter as the water wages an endless battle to lick the city clean.
All London’s streams flow into the wide blue artery of the Thames. Look at a satellite image of the city – snaking lines of trees hug the great river’s bends, clinging to the water’s edge as if trying to escape the metropolis altogether. Some of these are being toppled by riverside development, while others stand proud, like the uninterrupted march of London planes that edges the river from Blackfriars to Fulham. Climbing branches over the Thames we hang over the heart of the city and, if we listen closely, a rare natural sound can be heard – running water.
Canals, brooks and creeks offer an alternative environment, tight channels shaded by trees whose roots thread the water like long white eels. The Thames forms an abrupt gulf between north and south, while these smaller, circumscribed rivers are fissures in suburbia, boundaries crossed by irregular bridges but numberless branches. Many species of tree crowd the long, empty stretches of their straight-sided banks.
When storms lash the city the old waterways show their wrath, heavy rainfall swelling their channels and leaking into our streets, bubbling over manholes and seeping through brick and mortar. Sometimes I long for London’s waters to burst their artificial bonds, purging themselves of their sordid cargo and making islands of bank-side trees. J. G. Ballard imagines such a future in A Drowned World, where the city lies buried in silt beneath a deep lagoon and a primordial hierarchy has re-established itself, rampant plants colonising the stairwells of tower blocks. Floating over a street still visible sixty feet below the water’s surface, the narrator describes the sunken lines of London’s buildings, ‘like a reflection in a lake that had somehow lost its original’. Suspended on the long arm of a London plane or in the tresses of a willow, it would be easy to forget a city ever existed on these banks.
Waterside trees are prime lookouts, places to watch canal boats, Thames Clippers, and the tide of objects lost to London’s current. Whether clutching a high branch over the river or perching above a creek, we enact a two-fold escape, climbing off the ground and then leaving the land altogether. Traversing branches over water allows us to cast off in our imagination; the current takes us with it on a journey, floating past long rows of riverside houses, shipyards and factories, beside green fields and long sandbars and then out into the open ocean. The climber is like lost timber, fallen from the deck of a container ship and set adrift.
Brothers in Arms, Bishop’s Park (#ulink_279ba6e4-46ab-56e2-81c0-11b53ec6cbda)
Platanus × acerifolia/London plane & Ilex aquifolium/Common holly
An avenue of London planes runs along the riverside at Bishop’s Park. With their branches curling over the path, you walk under the arms of a cheering crowd. In season, great curtains of leaves cascade over the embankment wall, seeming to stretch out towards the river. Where these branches join the trunks, perfect saddles are formed for the climber.
One of these planes shares its soil with a holly. Hollies are well adapted to thrive in shadow and this one has made a deep impression, stiff branches embedded in the side of its overlord. I use the holly as a mast to step up into the plane, taking a seat in the elbow where the two cross. Beneath me is the freckled wood of one; all around and above the leaves of the other.
At this height the holly’s leaves are smooth, not spined, safe from browsing animals, although the only passing threat is an overweight Labrador. Shuffling along towards the river, I find that a holly branch has crossed the plane, rubbing up against it. The branch shifts in the wind, its underside like a flat tyre from the friction.
Beyond the footpath I edge out over the wall and the long drop down to the river. The tide is out and the sand exposed, a beach littered with lumps of stone from the wall and a scattering of flotsam. What looks like an anchor lies half-buried in the mud. Other pieces of rusted metal could be forgotten treasure or scaffolding; near the waterline the clay pipes of Victorian London are a scattering of white shards, roll-ups from another era.
A crow pecks on the foreshore at a flash of silver – foil or a bottletop – while a black-headed gull dive-bombs it from above. Leaves drift down the river and I make a promise to return in autumn, when the plane will shed its burden to make an armada on the water.
Retreating to the landward side of the tree, I see the branches are covered in lichen and the wood has a curious pitted appearance, whole sections with fossil-like indentations where the bark has flaked away. I climb higher and lean my back against the trunk. On the opposite bank the London Rowing Club’s slipway is jostled with cars parked at steep angles to the water, only their hand brakes saving them from immersion. Out on the wind-ruffled river, four women pull hard against the waves in a yellow scull.
The Helping Hand, Regent’s Canal (#ulink_6147224f-fa6a-5722-9eb4-4e2a580447cc)
Populus alba/White poplar
Standing in a narrow corridor of grass by the canal in Mile End Park are two poplars. Behind them the single chimney of a Victorian brick kiln rises above a wall of graffiti. The chimney is mirrored in the canal’s green water, and drifting clouds join it in the depths.
The dried grass beneath the southernmost poplar is thick with crickets, a raucous mating song in the July heat wave. There exists a city all of its own in the shade of the tree, replete with ring roads and intersections among the roots. As I step into the shade, the building site beyond the grass fades to a dull rumble under the canopy’s thrall.
I stand on a fairy ring of carved logs at its base, staring up at the cut-diamond patterns that decorate the bark. One great suckering root passes between my feet – I can almost feel the tree’s thirst.
The upsweep of branches above me ends in great clusters of leaves, their contrasting sides of green and white giving a sense of motion, even without a breath of wind. I try to flat-foot up the poplar’s slope and retreat dispirited, having moments before fallen from the first branches of another close to Limehouse Basin. Drenched in sweat, I begin to question the merits of climbing in thirty-degree heat.
Then an angel appears on the tow path, a man in a hi-vis jacket carrying a spade in one hand and a lunch bag in the other. He watches me repeatedly sliding down the trunk, then hops the railing and walks over. I turn, expecting some kind of mockery, but instead he drops the spade and asks, ‘Need a leg-up?’ This remains the sole occasion I’ve been helped into a tree by a total stranger.
Up in the bole, hoverflies molest my hair as I shuffle out along the length of a branch until I too am hovering, ten feet above the canal. Higher tiers of leaves protect my scalp from the sun, but I still have to fight the temptation to dive into the water. A solitary condom drifts past languidly, and the urge evaporates.
A black crow alights ahead of me on the branch. Perched unmoving on the poplar’s white skin, it looks like a chess piece. Beneath it, Water Rat – a canal boat – glides by and the woman at the helm waves up at me.
On my way down I defrock the poplar of a plastic bag. Returning to the tow path, I stagger to the Palm Tree pub, a precious oasis in a landscape levelled by the Blitz.
The Hideout, Beverley Brook (#ulink_74789100-ca50-5827-b6ae-7a81ccc5ecd8)
Fraxinus excelsior/Common ash
Wandering away from the riverbank in Putney, I follow a small stream that strikes out across Barnes Common, wrapped around by a protective hedge of sycamore, oak, willow and ash.
Birds call everywhere along the brook and broken tree limbs twist in the wind, creaking loudly. The stream is surprisingly clear and, aside from a couple of beer cans, no rubbish floats along its course. The path I follow is bordered by blackberry bushes and great stands of nettles; in among these a St George’s Cross has been spray-painted onto the flank of a young sycamore, an unwilling patriot.
Further on, past a bridge that leads onto Putney Heath, a magnificent oak rises, stag-headed, with huge white coils of dead ivy wrapped around its trunk. The tree seems half-suffocated and bent out of shape by this creeping garrotte. The ivy’s dead hair is deeply cobwebbed and I wonder what kind of arachnids haunt the maze. At its base an orange ring has been daubed. Perhaps this is a mark of death and the oak has been condemned to be felled. It seems an unnecessary fate; away from the dead branch tips, leaves are sprouting from the tree’s thick limbs.
I break out into Rocks Lane Field and then back to the treeline where the brook lies concealed. Stepping into a hidden clearing, the bankside is a warren of exposed roots. I climb an ash straight as a flagpole to get a better view of this intricate carpet. Below, the brook is fast-flowing back out to the river and the sea, and the sandy bottom is yellow in the afternoon sun. Two seagulls wheel overhead before turning east.
This secluded haven is the perfect schoolboy’s hangout, a place to smoke stolen cigarettes and play cards. Where the brook disappears under Rocks Lane it’s worth turning south behind the adjacent tennis courts to explore the remains of Old Barnes Common Cemetery. In among a host of beheaded angels and fallen crosses is a stand of tall yew trees, shedding their poisonous crop of leaves on the dear departed.
The Old Mill, Ravensbourne River (#ulink_94c9b4ba-377b-5f42-8eaf-6534de6705b9)
Fagus sylvatica ‘Purpurea’/Copper beech
Crossing over the bridge from Coldbath Street Estate, I catch my first sight of the Ravensbourne. Although it passes through the arse end of Deptford Creek on every tide, the river runs clear in a high-walled channel through Brookmill Park. Alongside, the tracks of the Docklands Light Railway hug the embankment on their way south.
I follow a path along the bank and pass a mighty three-pronged plane rising from a lawn by the playground. The fat bole has something stuffed into a crevice at head height. Curious, I walk over to find a tree fungus spreading inside the trunk like foam filler.
At the north end of Brookmill stands a copper beech, hard by the riverside. I grab the lowest branch and struggle clockwise around the trunk, before lifting myself through a tangle of limbs. Higher up, a curling horn of a branch provides a useful hook to rest on.
The river seen from the air seems low in its concrete channel, running back towards the Thames. Lumps of wall from some bygone structure sit deep in the silt, and ripples appear around them, dragging against the current. On the far side I glimpse the red-brick vault of the James Engine House through the leaves, an imposing Victorian pumping station.
Brookmill’s ornamental gardens fan out to the west. The herringbone brick paths run towards a round pool with a fountain at its centre, the water conceivably drawn from the river itself. The park is deserted and no one sits on the red tubular benches that look like the requisitioned hand rails of old Central Line carriages.
Climbing as far as the branches will permit, I find an arcane symbol hacked with a knife into the uppermost part of the trunk. The pattern is impossible to decipher, more hieroglyph than 21st-century tag. I wonder how long it’s been here and whether this old scar has shifted with time, the bark contorting in its annual growth cycle. Lichen proliferates where the blade incised the tree, colouring the hewn bark a gaudy yellow.
Descending, I place my hand in a kind of double arch in the wood, one inverted on top of the other like the famous scissor divide in Wells Cathedral. The interior of the beech is a labyrinth and I slip back to the ground as if through a ball of wire mesh.
As I retrace my steps along the bank two morbidly obese rats cross my path. They bob out of sight behind a fence, off to pay homage to their king.
The Crow’s Nest, King Edward VII Memorial Park (#ulink_488945c1-7357-5711-bd70-ead28d55bf61)
Alnus glutinosa/Common alder
In Shadwell one winter’s evening before sundown I find a lofty alder by the riverbank. Dwelling in a corner of the King Edward Memorial Park, the tree borders the Thameside walkway and its roots ply the river water itself, seeping through the mortar of the embankment wall.
Ducking behind the park bandstand and a row of shrubs, I pause at the alder’s foot. A single long branch curls out over my head and I follow it to the point where it strays closest to the ground. I leap to catch it, and a desperate arm wrestle with the tree ensues. Climbing hand over hand, I try to swing a leg over the branch, finally gaining the relief of the trunk.
The bark above me is covered by a black film, the residue of the dual carriageway that thunders north of the park. As I climb, the river plays out between bare branches. The last light burnishes the water silver and sets small fires in the windows of Dockland towers.
Soon the ground has become nothing more than a glimpse of shadow, and the view is opening on all sides. I pass two bird boxes pinned to the trunk, then draw level with the highest balcony of a riverside block of flats. Resting beneath the last branch, I imagine myself the lookout on a tall ship. Perched here it’s easy to indulge in maritime fantasies, replacing passing Thames Clippers with the steamboats of yesteryear and the clear evening with a thick morning smog. The alder shifts beneath me, a rolling ship heavy with foreign cargo. I imagine sailing out to sea, perhaps in the company of Conrad. ‘We live in the flicker – may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!’ So speaks Marlow, afloat on the Thames in the opening chapter of Heart of Darkness. He refers to the passing ages of London, the brief moments of civilisation between long years of wilderness. From the tree top the climber can envisage a different landscape, composed of nothing more than marsh.
I turn west, and the fantasy evaporates; the megaliths of Bishopsgate stalk the skyline and the Gherkin seems close enough to reach out and polish. Descending from my panoramic seat, I glimpse a commuter crossing the park, waving with one hand, a phone in the other. From this vantage all human gestures seem exaggerated and the man is just another player in the pantomime.
The Sidewinder, Hertford Union Canal (#ulink_33f2af63-9bb0-50d1-a040-ea951c61b8a8)
Quercus cerris/Turkey oak
