Across The Savannah
Some Trees Weren't Meant to be Climbed - or Cut
By TOM POLAND

Some of my finest childhood memories come from climbing trees. When I was growing up in Lincolnton, we just had two TV stations to watch and video games and computers were light years away. Climbing a tall pine or sweetgum gave me something to do and it gave me a new perspective too. Life among the boughs inspired the imagination. One day I was a pirate up in the crow's nest, a fighter pilot among the clouds, or a cowboy on a cliff overlooking Apaches.

In this era of websites, digital this, that, and the other, I'm glad to see people still climb trees. Tree Climbers International (TCI), a worldwide organization of people who love to climb trees, makes its home in Atlanta. TCI promotes the sport of "rope and harness" tree climbing (no harm to trees) so everyone can experience the joy and wonder of seeing the world from the treetops, literally a bird's eye perspective.

Peter "Treeman" Jenkins, a retired rock and mountain climber-turned tree surgeon, started TCI. He understands that tree climbing isn't just for children. It's for people of all ages who are young at heart and ready for the enjoyment trees provide. TCI touts tree climbing as a way to make all your senses come alive. In a book of mine I wrote about life in a treehouse. "Up there I can hear the sun burning. The winds bring me a thousand scents … blossoms, tree ferns, mosses, flowering plants, and I can watch butterflies and birds like I'm one of 'em." Climbing does, indeed, bring a new perspective to life in a tree moving with the wind.

To this day, I am proud of my one perfect record: not once did I fall from a tree and I climbed some tall trees. Some trees, though, were never meant for climbing- trees at least 17 stories tall. In 2004, I wrote a piece for Smiles magazine about a miraculous tract of forest- the country's largest and last significant old-growth bottomland forest- the Redwoods of the East. It's a bona fide national park and it's not that far from Lincolnton.

Not long ago, I took a canoe trip down its mirror-like blackwater creeks, and it proved relaxing, inspiring, and educational. You just don't find places like this anymore. Want to see what your ancestors saw? Want to forget your worries for an afternoon? Then travel back in time at a cypress-vaulted cathedral called Congaree Swamp National Park just outside Columbia.

South Carolina's last virgin forest stands as tall as any temperate deciduous forest the world over. As civilizations rose and fell, Congaree's trees have grown outward and upward, some for 800 years, silently pushing their leaves toward the sun. Reflected, refracted, and filtered to a shimmering green, light resonates among the boughs of one of Earth's highest canopies.

Ninety protected tree species- half the number Europe boasts- bequeath their green, carbon-dioxide-inhaling ways to us in a place where worldrecord trees stand beside California's redwoods and Yosemite's sequoias as legends. Three-hundred-year-old loblolly pines, exceeding 15 feet in circumference and 150 feet tall, tower above the earth. Some trees are close to 180 feet tall. It's hard to imagine why people would want to cut every one of these giants but they nearly did. Some 24 million acres of lofty bottomland beauty once carpeted the East Coast. Congaree Swamp- the one bottomland refusing to go quietly in the night- saved itself. Some trees just weren't meant to be cut.

In the 1890s, loggers felled some bald cypress monarchs at Congaree Swamp but the water-soaked logs sunk in revenge rather than float downriver to sawmills. Then the often flooded swamp, too waterlogged for road building, frustrated the loggers who abandoned their quest. Only nature has touched Congaree since. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo toppled several national champion trees.

Nature set this green-variegated gem- the country's 57th national park and South Carolina's first- along the Congaree River's north bank some 20 miles southeast of Columbia. There, the interplay of sunlight, minerals, and water sustains a 22,200-acre biome- the country's largest contiguous tract of oldgrowth bottomland hardwood forest.

It's there. The dawn of creation. Walk the boardwalk. Take trails deep into this primeval forest. Canoe where river otters braid through cypress knees and kaleidoscopic shadows burst across blackwater as birds and butterflies flutter through this leafy paradise. Go. Inhale the same rich forest scents prehistoric foragers breathed. See what your ancestors saw. Then let out a thankful sigh a relic of the great forest primeval endures, one that's not that far from you.

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol@ earthlink.net

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