Christal Cooper – 612 Words
Facebook @ Christal Ann Rice
Cooper
HER PLEASANT COMPANIONS
“The tree sways ever
so gently.
It’s not a building;
it’s a living thing.
Trees have their own
personalities,
and they are very accepting and comforting.
You’re up there and
you are a part of it.
It is just you and
nature.”
Naomi
Ruth Waggener Rice
Active Tree Climber and Tree Climbers
USA member Naomi Ruth (which means Pleasant Companion In Hebrew)
Waggener Rice fell in love with trees at an early age. As a six year old, the shy Rice did not feel
as comfortable with people as she did with trees. She lived in Alabama and considered her
backyard of woods her own playground, and the trees her playmates. Later, something happened that changed her
perspective on trees.
“When I was six I was bouncing on the branch in
this dogwood tree. The branch broke and
I broke my femur and fractured my jaw.”
The active six-year-old was
constrained into a half body cast. The
accident also resulted in her not climbing trees for the next three to four
years. She still spent her time
exploring the woods and its animals and taking walks with her cat Smokey. Smokey
would kill animals and the animals he didn’t kill Waggener tried to
rescue. Flutter, a small bird, managed
to escape Smokey’s claws. Waggener fed
the bird with an eyedropper tube and made the bird a little hammock from cloth
to ease the bird’s suffering. When Flutter
died she was crushed until she moved to the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia at
the age of ten.
“One
day I was looking at the tree in our front yard and thought, ‘Why did I stop
climbing trees?’ I don’t remember too
much (of the accident) because my brain tends to delete my bad memories. I told myself, ‘I do love climbing trees.’”
Waggener took the trees as her
pleasant companion once again. Her love
and interest in trees grew even more when, at the age of twelve, she spotted
her brother Tim reading an article about tree climbing. After reading it herself, she was thrilled to
learn that the experience the article described was exactly what she
experienced while climbing trees. She
contacted the tree climbing club mentioned in the article and attended their
classes. When she was thirteen she bought her own equipment and has been
climbing trees ever since.
“Tree climbing is a lot freer than rock climbing
because with tree climbing you can stop, rest, swing, and bounce off the tree
from branch to branch.”
The necessary equipment for tree
climbing is not as expensive or complex as mountain or rock climbing equipment:
a tree climbing harness; a long rope; a “D” shaped tool that clicks the climber
to the rope being climbed; and a throw line which is a small yellow line with a
bean bag attached. The double rope
technique, where the rope goes up and over the branch and then is tied by a
series of knots, is the most common technique used in climbing trees.
Waggener says climbing trees is not
always a bed of roses. When she starts
on the ground she is sometimes attacked by swarms of hungry mosquitoes. On the other hand, Waggener prefers the
bottom part of the tree because the rope is at its longest which enables her to
get the best and widest swing. There are
also those times when the tree’s inhabitants stalk her. One such evening Waggener fell asleep in the
tree boat (hammock connected to two limbs) only to be awakened by squirrels
squawking, and spitting pieces of acorns on her head.
“Tree
climbing is like a dream. I can do this
all the time.”
Photo Description and Copyright Information.
Photo 1.
Naomi Ruth Waggener Rice. Copyright by Namoi Ruth Waggener Rice.
Photo 2.
Scrapbook page of Maya Angelo poem
and image by Christal Cooper. Copyright
by Christal Cooper.
Photo 3.
Naomi climbing a tree. Copyirght by Naomi Ruth Waggener Rice.
Photo 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.
Married couple Jody Rice (left) and
Naomi Ruth Waggener Rice climbing the Naomi Tree. Copyright by Naomi Ruth Waggener Rice.
Photo 9.
Naomi in the tree boat. Copyright by Naomi Ruth Waggener Rice.
Photo 10.
Squirrell. Photo by David Iliff. Licnse:
CC.BY.SA 3.0
Photo 11.
Naomi sleeping in the tree boat in
the tree. Copyright by Naomi Ruth
Waggener Rice.
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