Dan Campbell, of Dover, PA, carried a traditional wooden bow carved from osage orange wood through the entrance of the Pennslvania Bowhunters Festival this past weekend in Forksville, PA. The recurve was veneered on the front side with the skin of a western rattlesnake. It was hand made by Michael LaBrake in Stanwood, WA, who runs the website itsyourbow.com. Campbell is a traditional bow enthusiast. Campbell and virtually everyone else walked the fairgrounds proudly with their bows, modern-day Apollos disguised in blue-jean denim, Mossy Oak and Realtree.

John Stoughton, 73, of Franklin County, shot at the timed clay pigeon shoot with his recurve bow. From ten yards away, Stoughton was shooting the centers out of clay birds. He wore a short-brimmed hat with the brim curled up that matched the angle of his bowstring at full-draw. He started coming to the festival as a kid with his parents.

“My mother was Pennsylvania Bow Queen in 64’ was it,” Stoughton said.

Stoughton said his father encouraged his mother to take up archery.

“At first he was always ribbing her because she was missing. So she would go up to the range by herself, and then she started beating him, so he wouldn’t shoot with her anymore,” Stoughton said.

According to Stoughton, passing on the annual tradition of coming to the festival to his nephews is what he really enjoys.

“I don’t know how many bows I’ve bought them. As they keep growing I keep buying them bigger and better bows,” Stoughton said.

Last year Stoughton won a yellow pin for his performance at the timed clay pigeon shoot. He had over 8 seconds left after shooting each of the required clay birds.

“This year I missed that one and it slowed me down,” Stoughton said.

Michael Hickey, 36, of Watsontown, is the acting treasurer of the festival. According to Hickey, the festival is a 67 year tradition, which started in 1957.

Hickey was excited to talk about new developments in mobile hunting, and the creative ways to employ the lightweight technology that continues to develop in archery gear.

“It’s changed so much,” Hickey said. 

Hickey said he has combined concepts of climbing-stand hunting and mobile saddle hunting methods into a hybrid system that works for him.

At the top of the hill of the fairground, 3 separate 3-D target courses were laid out for archers to test their skills on. Course 3 consisted of a long forest road terminating in a loop that offered 17 targets oriented both uphill and downhill. Shots ranged from 20 to 50-yards. Havalena, boar, coyote, black bear, wild turkey and white-tailed deer varied the shot at each station. Families, friends and pets walked along the path. Groups of people chatted with each other between targets, exchanging small talk about archery. Over the hum of conversation and good-natured heckling, the crack of bow strings and the thud of arrows driving into the foam targets carried through the woodland canopy.

From lower down the hill, a bell rang at equal intervals, letting archers know at the stationary target ranges that it was all clear to retrieve their arrows.

At the kids range, targets included a multi-colored T-Rex, a white hoarse, Piccachu and Bluey. Most of the vital areas were well worn from well-placed shots.

Victor Sellers, 33, of Philadelphia, completed course 3 of the 3D target range on Friday of the festival. Sellers was introduced to the event during his childhood as well. Some years, other responsibilities have kept him away, he said. This year he traveled solo to the event to reconnect with the old tradition.

Sellers is a saddle hunter that hunts a variety of public and private property. He said he enjoys the challenge of public land archery hunting and harvested his first buck out of the saddle last archery season on a public tract of land. He has an affinity for streamlining gear and shaving ounces, a habit he said he developed on his thru-hikes of the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail.

Sellers said he enjoys coming out to the festival to check things out and see what’s new.

“I like having the time to shoot and dedicate all day doing something I enjoy,” Sellers said.

Sellers tried to get the old band back together for this year’s festival, but his dad and older brothers all had prior commitments. That didn’t deter Sellers.

“I said ‘O.K., I guess I’m going by myself’,” Sellers said.

Sellers was staying at his grandparents property on Bear Mountain, nearby the fairgrounds.

On Friday afternoon, Steve Sherk of Sherk’s Guide Service presented in the Grandstand. Sherk is revered in the hunting community for his whitetail scouting regimens. He patterns and hunts whitetails in the mountainous Allegheny National Forest. He is anything but complacent.

“I’m never satisfied with staying at the same level, that goes for anything I do in life,” Sherk said.

Sherk said the tradition of hunting is an important pastime in his family, whose hunting camp in Western Pennsylvania is going on 50 years.

“A lot of my passion has been sparked by them,” Sherk said.

“I came from a family with a strong, long lasting outdoor tradition. We’re talking decades of passionate hunters that I’ve been very fortunate to learn from.”

Although Sherk’s family are not bowhunters, he said he’s learned lessons and gained mentorship through a lot of talented archery hunters over the years. 

 “Throughout my life and still today, I enjoy all the other parts of hunting besides the shooting,” Sherk said. “Especially the scouting and all the prep work. That’s a lot of fun.”

According to Sherk, the year-round scouting and preparation process that leads to successful hunts is a great opportunity to pass on our own passion to the younger generation of hunters.

Every picnic table at the festival food stand had a unique feature: a gear hanger lagged to the end of the table where hungry archers hung their bows and packs as they ate from a variety of foods off the grill.

I texted a picture home, to which my wife responded promptly, “don’t get any ideas.”

In Michael Phillips work ‘The Holistic Orchard’, he introduces the reader to this term: fungal duff. In the context of the orchard, we learn about the importance of managing the crown understory for the role it plays in tree growth and pest/disease resistance. For the urban forester and arborist, it is an interesting view on root zone management, and there may be potential for applications outside the orchard. 

According to Phillips, the fungal duff is the system of living plants, decaying organic material and fungal activity located within the drip line of the tree and just beyond. In the fungal duff system, it is necessary to forgo superficial aesthetics like neatly mowed grass in return for nurturing a functional network of plants, decaying organic matter and beneficial fungal partnerships interacting to provide optimal growing conditions for the fine feeder root flushes of the tree in spring and fall. These ephemeral root flushes are nurtured by the fungal duff. But the aesthetic is more wild than what we are accustomed to in a more conventional ornamental design. The wild aesthetic of such a system is more attractive anyway, creating a more diverse environment that is self servicing and sustainable.

“The case has been made that fungal-dominated biology supports orchard health. We enable subtleties that keep pest and disease pressure in balance by managing the ground beneath our tree and berries as fungal duff. Compost, deciduous wood chips, raked leaves, rotting hay and taproot plant allies set the scene,” (Phillips, 108).

Phillips is an orchardist, and he explains that in his orchard systems he aims to replicate a forest edge habitat. Habitat managers will recognize this as a soft edge, where annuals and perennials combine with fruit trees to create a transition zone between forest and meadow.

Regular mowing is an enemy of good fungal duff development. According to Phillips, mowing grass in the critical root zone of a tree can increase the root density of sod up to twenty times that of a taproot herb understory (think dandelions and comfrey). High levels of carbon dioxide build up from dense mats of mowed grass roots and discourage tree feeder roots from developing. High CO2 levels drive fine tree feeder roots deeper into the soil profile away from the organic soil/humus layer, away from where mycorrhizal relationships thrive in the upper humus layer. 

Phillips introduces us to the idea of ‘biological mowing.’ This mechanical cultural concept is all about timing our mowing applications in the critical root zone to coincide with fine feeder root development and fruit set in the spring, and again with the second flush of fine feeder root development in the fall. Mowing after fruit set in spring will encourage the ‘white root’ flushes to support fruit development due to more pore space in the humus of the root zone. Laying herbaceous material down as a mulch is another benefit of biological mowing, adding organic matter to the tree root system. Aside from supporting healthy feeder root development in the spring by encouraging more pore space in the soil, high grass and the right herbs under trees can play a role in suppressing disease pressure as well: high grass can discourage scab ascospores from releasing up into the canopy after a rain (110). Not only this, but high grass also encourages insect pests to refrain from migrating upward into the crown of trees.

Leading up to fruit set, not mowing supports biological fitness in the understroy: a ‘carbonized understory’ manifests in tall grasses and wildflowers. According to Phillips, soluable K levels are abundant from good mulching and composting practices. The un-mowed understory attracts and supports pollinators, which has an obvious effect fruit set and biodiversity.

“The mowing tool itself has relevance as well for this first orchard cut-and yes, once again, it’s for the benefit of fungal allies. Grasses and wildflowers are laid down with a scythe as drip line mulch, and thus not chopped to bits by a machine, in order to suppress understory growth in two respects. This single mowing causes root mass in perennial plants to shed just as the spring feeder root flush begins. This enhances access to new nutrient zones for the tree-with the help of mycorrhizal fungi, of course-for the purpose of sizing the fruit in the month ahead. The swaths of carbon-rich organic matter left behind by the swoosh of a sharp blade suppress the pace at which understory plants recover as well,” (Phillips, 110).

Scything grass will most likely not be the approach many landscape managers take in attempting to aid the fungal duff system, although there may be some rogue scythers out there. Scything aside, this critical root flush timings can offer windows for adding natural mulches in the form of remedial wood chips, or other forms of compost, especially during the fall feeder root flush when trees will be building up carbohydrate stores for bud development and the following year’s leaf and twig growth flush.

It is a misconception that all annual and perennials plants cause unnecessary competition for tree roots. Sure, a regularly mown lawn can be a real adversary. But Phillips gives us several examples of herbaceous plants that actually aid in creating pore space as well as organic return in the understory of a edge habitat: dandelions, taproot herbs like comfrey and even bulbs like daffodils. The latter actually prove disagreeable to voles, good information for an anyone planting or managing young trees that are susceptible to this type of critter damage. A list of plants in one of Phillips illustrations consists of the following polyculture: Asian pear, buffalo cherry, comfrey, lovage, horseradish, pea shrub, daffodil, Marguerite, and lemon balm; all topped with wood chip ground cover. Permaculturalists will recognize this as a plant guild. Arborists and horticulturalists will recognize it as an illustration of plant diversity. It is a picture of fungal duff in action, an ongoing cycle of growth and nutrients cycled back into the the root zone.

There are no exact formulas for the fungal duff recipe. Countless approaches can be investigated depending on the type of site being managed. Instead it is a concept for encouraging fungal based biology in the critical root zone of trees. Instead of mindlessly removing plants through exhaustive mechanical practices, we can utilize them in an educated and selective way, by allowing them to grow and add to the soil food web.  We know that organic matter return to the soil is a crucial ingredient for encouraging the institution of mycorrhizal fungi. The timing of our cultural practices such as mowing and mulching can influence the sustenance of that relationship in a major way. Understanding and implementing the fungal duff is about a process of working smarter, not harder.

Two days prior to the completion of the project, I had arrived on SGL 207 after twelve acres had been burned following a late start to the operation. I drove slowly down the gravel service road and approached two Pennsylvania Game Commission employees, “babysitting” the fire as they said, looking for “smokers on the ground”, potential bits of small flare-ups that can follow a prescribed burn.

As I chatted with the techs, Ryan Gildea, Game Warden and Land Management Group Supervisor for the Northeast Region of the PGC pulled up to check on the scene and touch base with the employees monitoring the site.

I was lucky for the opportunity to press Gildea on some of the main objectives of this particular burn, and learned that one important goal was to enhance growing conditions for rarer plants such as wild blue lupine, Susquehanna sand cherry, and three-toothed cinquefoil, which all presently grow. on SGL 207. It is the PGC’s aim to preserve those plant communities and expand their range with the use of fire. Gildea noted that these species of plants benefit from fire, as well as the oak forest they are growing in.

Gildea explained that the over-story of the forest canopy is encroaching on this rocky ridge top and causing stressful competition for the rarer, fire resilient plants. Gildea said that black birch was a main target species for this low-intensity burn. The method he described as top-kill on these trees will stunt or kill them in order to reduce the pressure they impose on the forest understory.

Fire crews face particular challenges depending on the time of year a prescribed burn is being conducted. In the fall season, morning frost needs to dry off before crews can begin successful hand ignition. That, coupled with shorter days, prohibits long working days.

John Wakefield, acting Burn Boss on the Haystack Mountain burn, and PA Game Commission Fire Program Manager, said that because of the burn site’s location between the two high population centers of Mountain Top and Wilkes-Barre, conditions had to be especially right in order to carry out the operation safely and efficiently in the fall season.

Wakefield noted that timing is critical with a burn on a site like SGL 207. Fire crews need the right wind, and the right lift in order to properly clear smoke into the upper atmosphere as the fire is progressing. Smoke management is a big safety concern.

“We try to be good neighbors and responsibly manage the property,” Wakefield said. “People will see and smell smoke, but it’s only for a few hours. We’re going to have a good habitat product out here that will last for many years.”

Wakefield said that the burn unit on Haystack Mountain is on a three to five year rotation of prescribed burning in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem.

“Fire is a great tool for Oak forest management,” Wakefield said. “We’re targeting thin-barked species like Black Birch and Maple, we’re looking to cook some sap on those small stems so that their energy stores are depleted,” Wakefield said.

Wakefiled also noted that wildlife favor forest conditions after prescribed burns are conducted.

Marc Sechrist, Game Commission Maintenance Supervisor and acting Squad Boss for the Haystack Mountain burn, noted that this burn unit was about 118 acres in size.

“We wouldn’t consider this a large burn,” Sechrist said, studying an aerial photo of the burn unit as we chatted about the site in the middle of the forest road. He communicated with his crews over a radio while he discussed some of the challenges that he faced for the day. Sechrist noted that one particular seasonal challenge includes clearing the burn site of hunters that may be out utilizing game land property where the burn will be conducted.

“We ran into that issue this morning,” Sechrist said.

After Sechrist left me for other workday obligations, I watched Firing Squad member Dylan Roeder as he worked his way south about fifty yards above the edge of the service road that runs parallel to route 309. A flame danced on the edge of his drip torch as he ambled over the leaf litter and coarse woody debris, dowsing the forest floor periodically every few yards with fire. Like Sechrist, he communicated to other members of the fire crew over a radio. He made his way to the crest of Haystack Mountain, and I lost sight of him as he gained the ridge and proceeded deeper into the woods to the west. In his wake, the forest floor he passed over was ablaze, and heavy gray smoke lifted in shafts towards the sky. Other firing squad crew members followed the fire along the service road in an off-road utility vehicle, monitoring its progression.

According to Isabella Petitta, a graduate research fellow at Pennsylvania State University, the small wild blue lupine community on SGL 207 is under threat of forest succession due to the recent lack of human and natural disturbance. This is one of the driving forces behind utilizing fire as habitat management tool in this unit.

“Prescribed burns are a little bit taboo, so we are lucky that we have land managers that are very excited about the ecological effects of fire,” Petitta said.  

Lupine is also a keystone feature in the landscape for specific pollinators as well. In fact, the connection between lupine and pollinators is the focus of Petitta’s research.

“Bees are the primary pollinator of lupine,” Petitta said. 

Wild lupine is a legume, so even though it is capable of self pollinating, research has shown that cross pollination between plants increases seed production. For this reason, pollinator colonies provide a very important ecosystem service in wild lupine habitats.

Petitta has made other fascinating observations too, particularly about one morphological relationship that wild lupine flowers share with one of its primary pollinators, the Mason bee (genus Osmia).

According to Peitta, the mason bee carries its pollen collecting hairs on its stomach, unlike other bees that carry them on their front legs. The lupine flower houses its reproductive organs in a structure known as the keel, which resembles the shape of a sickle. Because of the location of the pollen collecting hairs on the mason bee’s stomach, combined with the shape of the keel in the lupine flower, Mason bees are very efficient at pollinating lupine when they land on the keel.

“It looks like a puzzle piece,” Petitta said.

Another primary pollinator of wild lupine is the Bumblebee queen. Bumblebees are ground nesters, and Petitta’s research observations have pointed towards the conclusion that fire has no negative effects on the Bumblebee populations. According to Petitta, Bumblebees prefer dry, sandy soil for their nests, and because fire enhances bare mineral ground, the correlation between prescribed fire and good pollinator populations seems promising.

Petitta also mentioned that because lupine is a early flowering perennial, it allows Bumblebee queens the ability to collect large amounts of pollen early in the season in order to strengthen the numbers of their colony. This has a positive effect on all flora serviced by the pollinator colony. Plants like blackberry and blueberry, common in these habitats where Oak and wild Lupine are found, all benefit from the critical connection of pollinators, wild lupine, and fire.

According to Kelly Sitch, a botanist with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry, fire was a tool used by Native Americans for managing habitat along their travel corridors. It was also distributed throughout the landscape from major industries like logging and coal mining in northeastern Pennsylvania. Especially along railroad corridors, fire was a common occurrence from sparks thrown from the narrow gauge rail that trains traveled along a hundred or more years ago carrying timber, coal and even ice.

Fire, natural or anthropogenic, has been a part of the landscape’s story for years in this region, but lately it has been occurring less due to the absence of those cultures and industry. Which is one reason the landscape is returning back to late successional stages in many places like on Haystack Mountain.

“We want to actively manage our rare plant species,” Sitch said. “Not just put a fence around them and walk away. Particularly for these species that need these habitats.”

According to Sitch, Haystack Mountain has been managed under the PGC’s Fire Program for several years now.

“There are rare species there. We felt confident, given the research, that these species would be favorable to prescribed fire. Perhaps there’s a seed bank here that we can release,” Sitch said.

I observed several buck rubs along the way, on the young saplings bordering in the margin of the clearcut and the road. There was Switchgrass planted along the north side of the road in sections several feet wide, and in a small food plot that may have been a log landing or equipment staging area for the silviculture operations in the past. As I proceeded down the road to the west, a little bit of brown marcescence caught my attention.

I had known Sweetfern previously from the heath barrens on top of Moosic Mountain at the Dick and Nancy Eales Preserve, a property owned by the Nature Conservancy. It grows en masse together along the trail edges there as well. That habitat, too, is an acidic, barren landscape that holds large populations of Pitch Pine, Sweetfern, Chestnut Oak and Lowbush Blueberry.

Comptonia peregrina is not a fern, but a low woody shrub, and according to the Peterson Field Guide, provides browse for both ruffed grouse and Whitetail deer. In fact, I have flushed growse on each of my visits to the Taylorsville tract of Weiser State Forest, and I must believe it is in part because of the nutrition and cover that Sweetfern provides those birds.

When crushed, the twigs and leaves of Sweetfern are aromatic, which reminds me of another fragrant plant, the Sassafras that is sprouting from stump suckers in the clear cuts on the top of the mountain that we walked through earlier this morning, trying to kick out a deer. To two fragrances are different though, sweet and spicy.

Sweetfern is almost tropical in its appearance, a nitrogen fixer that thrives in either boggy or dry, sandy soils, both of which can be found in the higher elevations of Northeast PA. Nestled in amongst the effects of the last ice age, or the last timber stand improvement operation, it connects several landscapes in my mind, for whatever reason, of both the recent and deep past.

And so this project has me thinking quite a bit about method, which is the process by which you achieve a certain pruning objective (ie. reducing risk, providing clearance, improving structure or health, controlling size, etc.). For example, utilizing a reduction cut at the end of a long scaffold limb would be one method by which to reduce the risk of that limb failing at the branch union, because the reduction cut removes weight from the end of leverage arm, in turn reducing stress on the branch attachment point or branch collar. Another method, in this same scenario to achieve the objective of reducing risk, is installing a supplemental support system on the limb. So methods can vary in the approach to accomplishing a single objective. 

By definition, a reduction cut shortens the terminal section of a branch back to a lateral branch that is equal or smaller in diameter than the section pruned (Gilman, 81). A removal cut, on the other hand, is made back to a branch collar on the stem of the tree or on a branch larger than the pruning cut.

Reduction cuts are more effective at shortening the overall length of the branch, removing more weight and apical growth potential, depending on the cut location and available branch contributors to cut back to. Although removal cuts can slow branch growth, reduction cuts are more effective at slowing growth and changing limb and tree architecture. But there is a physiological tradeoff between each cut. The reduction cut (unlike the removal cut) is not placed at a branch collar or natural barrier zone, so utilizing this pruning method on species that are poor compartmentalizers could be a poor method in some instances. Both of these methods (removal and reduction) are powerful tools when considering how to achieve specific pruning objectives. A combination of these cuts will most likely be an efficient way of achieving pruning objectives focused on structure and growth control.

Staying with the example of a long scaffold limb, a reduction cut would also be a way to provide clearance on say, an unmovable structure such as a roof or a utility line that the limb is encroaching towards or growing over. By comparison, a removal cut can also be utilized in this scenario, although one cut may be better suited for the objective than another. Limb architecture will ultimately be a major factor in determining which specific pruning method to utilize. For instance, the number and size of tertiary limbs or branch contributors that are available to cut back to, as well as their orientation, will be important factors for deciding to use the reduction cut over the removal cut. Also, we know that smaller cuts are a better option in most instances, because smaller pruning cuts expose less heartwood to exposure of fungi and bacteria, remove less sapwood which is a major energy storage site, and smaller cuts have the ability to callus over quicker than larger cuts. Considering tree species, smaller pruning cuts will be more beneficial on poor compartmentalizers and less vigorous characters as well. Ultimately, the pruning objective paired with tree species and architecture (bio-mechanics) will provide direction for arriving at a suitable method.

The Pear tree we worked on that sparked this contemplation had been pruned in the past, perhaps four to six years prior. Callus had developed around the smaller cuts since the last pruning cycle. There was a large lead about six or seven inches in diameter that was removed from what I assume was the space over the deck, given its orientation on the tree next to the deck. At that cut site there was significant sprouting, but not much callus development. Aside from that removal cut, the majority of the other removal cuts were in the upper half of the crown, sized approximately 3.5 inches and less. Very little reduction pruning was done in order to shorten limbs of the crown. Therefore, the crown was thinned with removal cuts, but it was not shortened, in essence leaving the tree exposed to the same amount of sail forces in the periphery of the crown.

There was also a clear indication of gaff marks throughout the interior of the crown on all the major scaffold limbs of the tree, most likely applied during the last pruning cycle. Ribs of callus were developing along the margins of the gaff scrapes, some on the interior of upright scaffolds and some on the top of horizontal scaffolds and secondary limbs. Climbing on gaffs is another example of a particular arboriculture method, although in this case it is a poor method if the objective is to improve the health of the tree. Those gaff wounds initiate the formation of what Alex Shigo referred to as a reaction zone and a barrier zone. “The barrier zone is a highly effective means for separating infected wood from healthy wood. However the barrier zone is a disruption in design of woody tissues. When loading occurs, the barrier zone may be the starting point for a fracture,” (Shigo, Tree Failure Risk Evaluations). Shigo’s insight illustrates how gaffing trees during preservation operations is a poor method. By continuously wounding the tree along a significant length of the stem, the potential for cracking at each of those barrier zone sites accumulates. Improving tree health should be a thread that connects all pruning objectives. Although in some hazardous situations wearing gaffs to prune may offer a safer work position for a climber, this method does not belong in most pruning scenarios because of the potential future risk of tree failure it introduces.

Our prescription on the Pear was to utilize the reduction cut as our primary method in order to achieve the main objective of reducing risk major branch unions, a very common objective given this particular species and its biomechanical tendencies to develop included bark and fail under load at those unions. On the largest horizontal scaffold limb, we applied a heavy dosage of reduction at the end of the limb, about 6 cuts in the 2-inch range. We then applied lighter dosages in the periphery of each successive major scaffold limb: One 2-inch cut per limb). Our objective was to shorten the crown in order to slow growth and also to slightly reduce the overall profile of the tree.

Back to the second phase of the job: removing dead branches from a mature Norway Maple. During this part of the project, we found ourselves mostly utilizing removal cuts located at the branch collars of the dead branches. The natural protection zone of the branch collar was highlighted by my ability in many cases to simply break dead limbs clean at the collar, reducing the need to even use a hand saw at many collar sites. By breaking smaller branches at the branch collar, this reduces the risk of cutting into the branch collar by accident and damaging the developing callus wood. The dead branches had simply been shaded out under the dense crown, and so the tree no longer allocated resources to those energy sinks. The tree cut its losses. We removed and chipped them. Here is a species that compartmentalizes poorly, and so by selecting this method for reducing risk, as opposed to something with a higher dosage like reduction pruning, we were able to achieve the objectives of improving the aesthetic of the tree and reducing the risk of those dead branches breaking off and potentially hitting a parked car in the driveway under the edge of the crown.

It would be helpful to briefly examine the concept of method under the light of the pruning system you are working within. Ultimately, the general pruning system itself will help determine the types of methods you utilize in achieving objectives. There is a wide variety of pruning systems, such as: natural, pollard, formal (topiary, espalier, pleached, etc.), bonsai, and orchard or fruit production. The overall pruning system an arborist works within on a specific tree really concerns itself with the main objectives of form and structure. The method though-the cuts and the tools utilized to make those cuts and the accuracy at which those cuts are made-is at the heart of working within a pruning system and achieving specific pruning objectives.

Annie Dillard wrote, “I never saw a tree that was no tree in particular.” I love that notion of individuality. It is true that no tree is alike, even the same species will be in a particular microenvironment with a particular phyllotaxy owned by a particular client that will have a very particular set of expectations. This is part of the challenge of being a good arborist: to look at a tree individually and think in terms of tree time, and attempt to translate the language in which trees speak. It is the methods we choose as arborists that make art and science bloom.

Of course, along our way I admired the trees in the city, which provided me with a familiar subject (in photographic order): 

1. Planetree leaning on copper pipe (Platanus occidentalis).

2. Japanese pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum).

3. Fig in front stoop garden (Ficus).

4. Dawn redwood and scooter (Metasequoia glyptostroboides).

5. River Birch allee with lights (Betula nigra).

6. Planetree alle in Bryant Park.

7. Ginkgo leaf on wet sidewalk in Times Square (Ginkgo biloba).

I admired their sense of place; the trees belonged there. Not in a panic, but cool and collected, an integral part of that place, and sharing a common, challenging ground. Whether they grew out of a tree pit or a raised planting box, or a park lawn, the trees softened the hard edges. They grew amongst the garbage, they grew against the iron fences and onto copper racks. They spilled over it. They swallowed it up without complaint. They broke up the monotony of the strait edges, they stood in the way of the vanishing points; the architecture of nature illuding industrial design. It was the trees in all of their isolated microclimates that stitched the neighborhoods together, filled in the dead space with life.

I saw Norway Maples still in fall color in the fill banks along the highway. I saw Autumn olive and foxtail growing in a slender space between the concrete curb and retaining wall, mulched with litter, vigorously, courageously, adventurously growing. In Peter Del Tredici’s language, these were ‘spontaneous’ landscapes. Nature’s design seems to be just that, spontaneous. Especially when its projected against a large and looming industrial architecture.

Perhaps that is what this urban flora can teach us. That it is good and exciting to feel a little out of place, a little uncomfortable with where we land. There is courage in spontaneity. It’s the heart and soul of any good adventure.

Peter Del Tredici, in his book Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, provides three different categories into which urban landscapes can be classified: remnant natural, managed horticultural and abandoned ruderal (13). Generally speaking, the three functional classifications define a scale of disturbance; remnant natural landscapes being the least disturbed ecologies persistent from a time before the surrounding landscape was developed, to the abandoned ruderal landscapes having the highest level of disturbance and change from the native ecology (an Ailanthus growing out of the sidewalk crack). Del Tredici admits that the urban setting has been changed so drastically that “most urban habitats…are strictly human creations,” (14). But the three characterizations do provide a working classification system that can be applied to the process of management and to the concept of site overlap that I’ll explore here.

On a private, lake front property we recently cabled a mature Red Oak to add supplemental support to two major stem unions. The current homeowners had been there for a few years, and confessed that they fell in love with the tree that framed the view of the lake from their back deck. It is a hard tree to not fall in love with. It’s flanked on the rocky bank by Red Maples and many other oaks at an elevation of around two thousand feet. It’s architecture is unique, broad and sprawling, left to its own devices of growing in an openly exposed site at the water’s edge.

Aside from the construction of the cottage, I would consider the site to be minimally disturbed, and I would classify this tree as a remnant natural tree, a relic of the native setting that existed on the site before any development took place. In fact, the lake was an ice lake at the beginning of the twentieth century, and was marketed as a summer vacation site around 1949 after developers purchased it from the prominent Lewis family (https://www.mrmlpa.com/IceLakes). Perhaps the tree dates the transition of the site’s economy from a commodity based commerce to a real estate and tourism based commerce. Either way, as a remnant natural tree, it influences the emotions of people in a positive way and gives them a sense of home, inspiring them in their financial decisions because of its deep roots in the past and what that invokes in people’s sense of place and belonging. ‘This tree is a good investment’ is the sentiment.

The tree not only occupies its space on the lake shore, it occupies a space in time over the last seventy or so years of history. The supplemental support system adds strength to structure, but it also adds strength to the plot of a continuing of a story. As a mast tree it has helped wildlife thrive in this ecosystem. Birds of prey have hunted fish from the scaffold limbs. Families have picnicked under its shade on spring and summer days. The tree is a microcosm of this larger place, a time capsule in which the years are locked into its growth rings. It tells the story of drought, heavy winds, insect and disease infestations, and it tells the story of sunny days and growth. The tree has brought people to the lakeshore like a temple draws pilgrims up a mountainside. In this sense I think that remnant natural landscapes and pieces of them are holy things.

Del Tredici writes that “enormous variety of non-human life has managed to crowd into cities to form a cosmopolitan collection of organisms that is typically more diverse than that of the surrounding non-urban areas,” (13). He’s telling us that urban landscapes are more diverse than their rural counterparts, a fact that always gives me pause.

The city is a dynamic place. As an arborist, our interactions with people reveals their feelings towards trees. The scope of emotions is broad, and can range from positive relationships like the example described above, to negative stressors like fear, anxiety and even anger.

One place that conjures up mixed emotions is the tree lawn, that gray area in the urban landscape that is sandwiched between hardscapes and riddled with small root space, poor drainage, compacted soils from storm water run-off, and constant exposure to infrastructure development and public ridicule. It is a land yet claimed by anyone, it is the last frontier for the arborist. It is a crossfire. Some city ordinances claim that the homeowner is responsible to manage trees there. But, oh Lord, my budget. The populace raise up with lighted torches to such claims, and march down to city hall, and shout hideous cries at the shade tree commission. All the while the trees grow on somehow in the tiny soil space between brilliant lawns and black pavement. Norway Maples and Red Maples and Silver Maples and Sugar Maples, Sycamores, Lindens and Little Leaf Lindens, Liberty Elms, Japanese Lilacs, Pin Oaks, Honey Locusts, Cherries and Ginkgo; their root plates spill out over the sidewalk and heave it up, and the shade from their crowns cool it down, and their branches tangle up within cable lines and high speed internet cables. They graft around guy wires. Utility contractors brutally cut their roots, cars crash into their trunks, city workers and homeowners loethingly lop their branches, and the trees grow on, sometimes quite unaware that there is any melee whatsoever. There is a flash of strength in their sprouts. Their leaves bring a breath of fresh air, and with their blooms we smell the hope of another year. Hope, though, is not a plan.

Property lines are another interesting phenomena, another arena of conflict between trees and people. Recently we worked along two separate property lines, and to me they seem to be a place where the edges of managed horticultural sites blend together to form small slivers of abandoned ruderal landscapes at that seam. And typically that seam is a fence, and all the better if it is chain link for the trees spouting and growing there. Del Tredici notes that fence lines act as safe sites for establishment of trees and plants he refers to as ‘spontaneous vegetation'(17).

We performed some crown reduction work on a Gray Birch tree that was tucked into the the corner of a chain link fence in the back yard of a residence. The fence line was trellising wild grape vines, bittersweet, and protecting several young stems of Norway Maples as well. All spontaneous vegetation. Next to the fence was both rhododendron and yew shrubs, cultivated varieties mingling with the outsiders leaning against the fence. There was a squirrel nest present in the crown of the Birch too. Maybe they were the horticulturalists here, the sowers of seeds. The Birch was beginning to grow into the roofs of the houses it grew between, and so it was our responsibility to host an intervention. Many times it seems as though that’s what working along property lines shakes out to be, an intervention.

The very next day we worked along another property line. The scope of work included raising the crown of a maturing Pin Oak, and clearance pruning in an Elm as well as in a mature European Beech. The elm tree was spontaneously growing out of the fence line at the edge of a mature yew hedge, causing quite a bulge on the bottom edge of the chain link. ‘What came first,’ I thought to myself, ‘the elm or the fence?’ It was planted by the wind, or a bird riding on the wind maybe. The Elm was a ruderal being in an otherwise managed horticultural setting, at the compete mercy of chance. The European Beech was the neighbor’s tree, a mature and magnificent feature of a managed horticultural landscape, like an elephant growing up out of the earth. Although the Elm was much younger than the Beech, their life stories had come to an intersection at our clients roof line, and so we added a paragraph to the story in the form of two and three inch reduction cuts.

Before starting the work, I went next door and knocked on the neighbor’s door in order to ask for permission to be on their property for setting lines in the Beech tree and accessing the reduction cuts at our clients’ roof edge. I explained our process and a little bit of our philosophy and keeping the cuts as small as possible and utilizing a non-invasive climbing system. And he gathered my advice on a few other trees on his property over the course of our small talk. ‘Isn’t that tree magnificent’ he said again as we admired it from the porch. ‘It’s a wonderful tree’ I agreed. I was anxious to ascend into the crown and explore the world up there. But then he revealed to me something really wonderful. What he really loved most about the tree, he said, was the dark bold carving that the previous homeowners left on the thin gray bark facing his window: two names encircled in a heart.

At the top of one White Pine I climbed, I came across a shear plane crack in a smaller scaffold limb approximately four inches in diameter and fifteen feet in length. The longitudinal separation occurred along the seam where compression wood had formed on the under half of the branch. I noted the ‘buckled’ effect of the limb as daylight shined through an otherwise physiologically functioning organ. There was ample woundwood curling around the margins of the crack. Respiration and photosynthesis were still reciprocating. Cells continued to divide and grow and specialize. Water transported sucrose from the photosynthetic center of the needles down through the stem in the phloem to storage sites in the sapwood and roots. Although a buckled branch, form did not buckle function, so to speak. So I made a reduction cut at the end of the branch, two inches in diameter, in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on the healing crack, in order to preserve the ongoing function in light of the form that I found.

Shigo gave us the image of the tree system acting as a seesaw in order to illustrate his concept of dynamic equilibrium. He wrote, “dynamic equilibrium is a situation where two opposing processes are moving back and forth at a steady rate,” (Modern Arboriculture, 298). He notes that this dynamic equilibrium is very different from balance in the sense that the former is life giving(a highly organized system functioning properly), while the latter leads to death (system failure). Constant motion in the mode of reciprocation and oscillation is therefore what the arborist should note and aim to preserve.

Arborists oftentimes deal specifically with parts of the whole in the context of preservation. Two basic examples would be dead or dying branche(s), or a cracked limb or stem. These problems exist at the physiological level or at the bio-mechanical level; and potentially both spheres overlap. In the White Pine I referenced already, I dealt with dead limbs (physiological failures) and a cracked limb (biomechanical failure). Each embodies some sense of stress or strain on the system. But these individual parts can experience strain while the system at large maintains a state of dynamic equilibrium. It’s the nature of a highly organized and dynamic system. It’s characteristic of vigor. Therefore, the state of individual tree parts is not necessarily representative of the health/stability of the larger tree system. This notion illustrates the complexity of trying to grasp the concept of dynamic equilibrium. The constant coming and going of life and death in a maturing tree.

I think again of a poem by Berry titled ‘The Sycamore’. Not only is it beautiful verse, but I think it gets to the heart of this idea of dynamic equilibrium in a beautiful way. “In the place that is my own place, whose earth I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing, a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself…There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it that is its death, though its living brims whitely at the lip of the darkness and flows outward. Over all its scars has come the seamless white of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history healed over…I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it, and is fed upon, and is native, and maker,” (Berry, The Pease of Wild Things, 20).

I would suggest anyone to read the poem in its entirety, for it is a short and beautifully simple description of the complex life and character of an old tree. Even more, it is a great characterization of what Shigo describes as dynamic equilibrium, the oscillating seesaw action of life, of stress and strain, of shedding and regrowth, of giving and taking. We can look at trees and observe almost constant change and constant motion, which is hard to conceive when considering an organism that exists in one individual place throughout the range of its life. But a tree embodies the harmony of its place, and is a reflection of the community around it. And trees give arborists a sense of place. And a sense of purpose. Berry writes that the tree is actually “a principle, an indwelling…that I would be ruled by.”

I think that is arboriculture.

Thats a good question. It’s one I think about often when I’m working with my new apprentice and long time friend, Brian. The most general topics are easy enough to come by, things like (to name a generic few) how to tie a knot, safe work practices and following the A300 standards, efficiency, clear communication, practicing good science through proper pruning cuts, thorough pre-work tree inspections, properly timed cultural practices and accurate tree species identification. The list goes on and on. There are so many great books out there for the aspiring arborist, for the aspiring climber. There’s some great content on the internet too.

I recently came across a wonderful interview produced by the The Tree Projects featuring the late Jamz Luce, long time climbing arborist and industry ambassador. In the interview, he talks about an experience he had working for a municipality where he climbed a large tree near a park to correct some large, storm damaged limbs. In the video, he reminisced that after the work was done, he descended to the ground, and his colleague asked him, “how was the view?” In his eagerness to finish the project, he had forgot to take a moment and admire the view, and Jamz said that realization always stuck with him for the rest of his career.

I would say that’s exactly the kind of thing you teach someone who doesn’t know much about climbing trees.

I called an old friend this morning over coffee to catch up, Mark Prezkurat of New Hampshire. Mark has always felt like a kindred spirit to me, someone I can really relate to. He’s the type of person that encourages you to call, anytime at all. So I did. Anyone that knows Mark knows the kind of respect he has for arboriculture. He has a lot of passion for mentorship too, for teaching people how to do the right thing for the right reasons. Sometimes I just like to give Mark a shout and listen to his positive energy. It’s refreshing. And he’s a great storyteller himself.

As it turns out, Mark and I found ourselves talking about ceremony. I told him that I had just finished up reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’. I remembered a quote from the book, “Our elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember.” Mark explained that ceremony is very important in his life and in his work. He told me he always conducts a small ceremony before working in the trees-whether he’s cutting one down or pruning-and before commencing a project he always commits himself to the promise of utilizing the parts of the tree in the proper manner, mulching pruned branches back into the forest for some organic return, or piling firewood for a client close to the house for winter heat. His promise is to not waste the majesty and magic built into the life of the tree. He is remembering to give it new life. And by remembering, he is teaching.

I went on to mention how interested I was in Jamz’s work and in his character and spirit after watching that interview, and Mark shared his memories of him in a few touching stories. Looking back on it, our whole conversation was a small ceremony of sorts, a remembering to remember, and it illustrated a keystone theme that’s echoed all throughout Kimmerer’s book: reciprocity. A respectful giving and taking as we interact with the animate world around us. Whatever you give comes back. It lives on. Telling stories is a ceremony for sure. Stories are a way to give something back, to breathe reciprocity into the world.

That’s another important thing you can teach someone.

Just yesterday Brian and I were practicing some climbing techniques in the hackberry in my yard. He progressed from a simpler moving rope system to a stationary line, and I introduced him to the nuts and bolts of an efficient single line ascent. Up in the crown, we swung around and rang some bells and continued to work on the nuances of work positioning. We ran through a few progression climbs, working deliberately from station to station, focusing on smooth technique, control and dialing in on the mastery of the systems we were using.

After a while though, we separated, just simply exploring separate corners of the tree. As exploration inherently causes, he went his way and I went mine. I worked out to the end of a long, horizontal scaffold limb, and all at once the the world started to vibrate in my vision. I looked down and the wildflowers in the lawn spilled out in all endless directions, whole galaxies of yellow and blue. A flock of cedar waxwings burst past me like a band of berry robbers barrel rolling through the sky, the flock splitting in unison around me. I could hear the simmering pulse of their wing beats, their hectic chatter. A silent crane glided by overhead on some unseen thermal against a bright blue sky, his long legs floating way out behind him. I looked out across the tree crown and noticed Brian smiling at the same sights, balancing on the same frequency of experience, right there in the middle of things. Perhaps the mystical is just that: the simplicity of pure observation.

So what’s the most important thing you can teach someone learning to climb trees?

Teach them to enjoy the view.