There are many modern hitches. Too many to cover in depth in the short amount of time that I have at this hour. So this is not a deep historical endeavor, nor a scientific one; it’s just an acute categorical exploit, and a maybe a plea for peace, and it is an argument for unity, uniquely.

Tree climbers come in all different shapes, and all different sizes, and also in all different dispositions. There are many things you can tell about a climber outwardly. But if you look at their hitch, you will know the entire story.

I must first start with the absolutely appalling classical hitches, the tautline, the Blake’s, etc. They need no introduction. They are legend. These hitches have been around. Three or four wraps up, down and through and back it up with a knot. Badabing, badaboom. At one time, they were advancements? And there can maybe exist a creative turn or twist somewhere, but for the most part, what you see is what you get, both in hitch and climber disposition.

They are grumpy hitches that work. We pretend we don’t like them, but like all old timers, we couldn’t get on without them. They’ll always be there, even if you dropped everything.

This brings us to the french prussics of now, the VT, the Distel, The Schwabish, the Michoacaun and so fourth and so on. These prussics inspire all. In this category, things seem to morph and melt together more like a Dali painting than a Kotwica drawing. There is roistering in the crowds, claims of creation and of high honor and legacy and less gear and more wraps and better blends. There are formulas of surface area and melting point and technora and high modulus fiber. There are graphs and charts and how-to videos in slow motion. Not to mention the lovers of a splice, not to mention the benefit of stitching, not to mention the down-homeness of the scaffold knot integration, the knot within knot…

To quote the great Thomas McGuane, “[french prussic tying] is where the child, if not the infant, gets to go on living”.

Caution tape here. A deep red, because just beyond, in this paragraph, lies mention of the mechanicals. Because of their popularity and efficiency. For the purist and high court of cordage, mechanicals are snuffed at and deemed as too rigid, too unpredictable in volatile situations. Undertested, misunderstood and under no circumstance used outside manufacturers recommendations.

Mechanicals aren’t even really hitches…but neither is a can of worms.

In some instances, there isn’t just three wraps or four braids, there’s twenty years of trial and error. Theres blood and sweat and tears, of course. The knot jammed. It cinched. It grabbed too late. It never really grabbed at all. Glory fades. Never again. One more turn. One more cross. One more loop.

“It’s like a Distel with a Michoacaun on the bottom but, the braid and the cross up top is opposite. Then just bring it down like this, and as if you were finishing the VT. Been using it for years. The nine three on the eleven seven.”

But in our hitches we find that peace, and we find that unity. The peace that comes with moving fluidly along the rope. The unity that comes with the hardware we choose, and of the knowledge we share in the process. And so its easy to see ourselves in the hitches we tie.

How we manage friction, how we take up slack, how we maintain balance in the trees, and tie it into the lives that we live.