Autumn leaves…
There’s hardly a breath of wind. Up here, high in a glorious beech tree, the world is a place full of awe and wonder. Birds carry on their lives all around me: a foraging party of long-tailed tits call to each other on the nest branch, the green woodpecker yaffles from behind me and I can hear a raven muttering to itself a soft, croaky, throaty call somewhere close nearby.
In this quiet corner of the world nature is doing its thing, these late autumn afternoons are ruddy brilliant for the reds and yellows and coppers in the woods around us. The sun gives a glow to the last of the leaves still attached with a thick colourful carpet on the ground far below. Those piles of crispy leaves are surprisingly good at swallowing kit and also make walking silently nigh on impossible, so it was astonishing to find myself so close to a splendid red fox as I entered the woods - we both froze and each stood motionless, gazing at each other, I at the glints of gold in its eyes in a moment of pure nature connection. This afternoon is all about reconnecting with nature so job done before I had even left the ground!
Today’s mission is a climb into one of my favourite trees to catch the last off the autumn before the trees went into their deep winter slumbers. Safely rigging for ascent, I head steadily up the climbing lines into a tree that must be 200 years old, something that’s always a privilege and gives me a thrill I find hard to beat.
As a Tree Safety Expert, I take great care to rig and install lines and climbing systems for safe access into some truly remarkable places. In 2024 alone this has included giant pines in Honduras, a great oriental plane for the BBC in Dorset, and across multiple sites with Forestry England on rare breeding raptors.
The top of this beautiful beech tree is a great place too. Twin semistatic access lines allowed rapid access to 20m with further lines used for movement within the canopy. These advanced skills are only taught by specialists here in the UK like Canopy Access so check out their courses for their LANTRA BCAP and the more advanced ACAP.
I could stay there all day but eventually the coffee runs out, the chocolate is all eaten. Grabbing a few last rays of sun for some pure tree time, I took a long, last look around at the forest and descended onto the access lines and then safely back to planet earth for a walk home in the sunset with the full moon rising, a wonderful afternoon well spent!
