Why adults should go tree climbing in London

There are some practical tips but it’s more about changing the way we think about trees than specific techniques for scuttling up them. Cooke’s adventures in climbing began when he looked out of the window of his office near Regent’s Park at the canopy of trees and felt an overwhelming desire to clamber up into it. My afternoon of tree climbing on Hampstead Heath began with Ben Medder, a natural-movement coach and personal trainer from Beckenham whose classes in London’s open spaces focus on the sorts of primeval movement we might associate with our early ancestors: jumping, crawling and climbing.

It might seem contradictory to take a lesson in tree climbing when its exponents claim it is a natural instinct for humans, but either by fear, shame or simply our perception that certain things are only for children, what was once completely intuitive has been repressed, and we might need some extra help to uncover it. At some point a grown-up said to us: “Be careful there, you might hurt yourself,” and thus began our journey into becoming cautious adults who nurture what Medder calls “a database of stories and fearmongering to draw upon when imagining what could go wrong”.

Indeed, it says a lot that my first question when I was asked (told) to go treeclimbing was “Am I allowed to do that? Is it legal?”

Cooke points out in his book that there is a law relating to trees inside the Royal Parks: “No person shall, without reasonable excuse, climb any tree.” For him, just wanting to is reason enough.

My lesson is like learning choreography: repeating movement sequences which become steadily more complicated until the transitions are seamless. Medder says: “We all have this innate play drive and somewhere along the way it atrophies as an adult. Play isn’t valued and is often deemed a waste of time or frowned upon. It is also compounded by a culture of being motivated to exercise out of shame about how our body should look instead of doing something we enjoy.”

As soon as I’ve mastered one route up the tree Medder tells me to find a different one. Compared to the monotony of many forms of exercise — reps and circuits — this is about constant variation. It means that different muscles are being worked in different ways and meeting different resistance (which I can confirm by some unusual aches the next day).

But it’s not just the body that benefits from the diversity of movement, it’s also the mind. If there is any activity that is in sync with the mindfulness movement, it is climbing trees. One moment spent mentally running through your shopping list and you might slip or misjudge a branch. You are forced to be absolutely present and in the moment.

Medder says: “Having to focus on such complexity, and at times exercise caution, keeps you in the present. Unlike mindlessly peddling on an exercise bike while reading a magazine, you think with your whole body as you should.”

I didn’t imagine my tiny Donald Trump hands would be particularly effective at finding grip and I would not list balance and agility as my strong points. But climbing is a leveller. There can be no side-eyed glances to the spin bike next to you or disheartened sighs as yet another better runner passes you by. I was forced to make my body work for me.

Medder demonstrated this by challenging me to try “bridging” — moving between vertical surfaces — using that old chestnut of “the floor is lava — you touch the floor, you die” tactic. He went first to demonstrate and I pulled a horrified face as I watched him leap across the boughs athletically. I donn’t have the upper-body strength or length of limbs to copy exactly what he’d done so I had to come up with my own route, bracing myself against the trunk and edging along until I could reach the next branch. It certainly wasn’t pretty but I made it (and may or may not have shouted “In your face trees!” at the end of it).

Anyone vocal about the benefits of tree climbing speaks as though they have been media-trained with 2016’s lifestyle buzzwords. They talk about living in the moment, reconnecting with ourselves, finding peace, being grounded, being engaged. Cooke writes that “when we escape into this realm our senses are replenished”.

This month a YouGov poll showed that London parents consider polluted air as the top health concern for their children and American writer Richard Louv coined the term “nature-deficit disorder”, meaning the growing separation between children and nature. He has since applied it to adults suffering from losing the benefits nature offers, as immersed in a digital world of technology and electronics as our ancestors were in nature.

Cooke’s guide is not the only book about adult tree-climbing due to come out this year. Aged 34, Henrik Dahle decided to climb a different tree every day for a year. He began inviting people to climb with him and conducting interviews in the branches. He ended up speaking to more than 80 people — artists, activists, children, professors, tree surgeons, a Middle Eastern dancer, a politician, an economist. He lived in Hackney Wick during his tree-climbing days until he “ran off to a cabin in Norway” to finish writing his book (uptrees.net).

He says: “There were days during my project when I really couldn’t be bothered to haul myself outside and get into a tree, but there wasn’t once I regretted it. Some people believe trees earth your negative energy — that different trees offer a variety of benefits to us. Perhaps it was just a case of moving my body, or engaging my mind to think differently, but something would happen when I climbed. I found peace.”

As someone who is often bored by exercise, self-conscious at fitness classes and normally plagued by anxiety in day to day life, it was a freeing experience to scramble up into the sprawling, twisted arms of an oak tree. Sure I was only a few metres off the ground (I probably got about seven or eight metres high) but the air felt a little fresher, the world seemed a little brighter and I had a really great view of all the dogs which ran over to bark up the trunk at me.

It’s scarily easy to feel jaded by life in the city: London is more built up than ever and we are dulled by constant exposure to screens. Since my exploits last week, I am finding myself eyeing up the branches of some of the seven million trees we have to choose from.

Perhaps the best way to feel grounded might just be to get a few feet of f the ground itself?

@littlewondering

benmedder.com