I stared up at the tree with Sweet Husband, looking for hummingbird nests.

There are five sawtooth oak trees and four red oak trees in the front yard. We looked upward in each of them, searching for a sign of a summer abode for our few hummingbirds.

Maybe looking up into the welcoming greenness is what did it for me. Maybe it was holding onto the lower branches of the trees as I walked underneath them. Maybe it was remembering earlier this week what it was like to climb tall trees when I was a kid.

All I know is I took hold of the lowest branch, and I began to climb.

The bark of a sawtooth oak is incredibly rough, which provides a better grip for someone who hasn’t been up a tree since the birth of our oldest Gen Alpha babies, those soft little tadpole humans, most of whom have no idea what it is to roam the woods and the fields with two free hands.

Some can’t even make it through a meal without being glued to video images viewed through a cataract haze of smeared and dried goo from last week’s macaroni and cheese.

We call them crusty iPad kids for a reason.

But you sure can’t climb a tree with a phone in your hand.

And even if they wanted to, their hands wouldn’t hold up.

They don’t know blisters:

From hoeing in the hot sun down the rows of potatoes and corn, 

from carrying five-gallon buckets of water to keep the newly planted trees alive, 

from digging up Canadian thistles with a shovel in the back pasture.

From swinging on monkey bars, 

from swinging a bat, 

from swinging itself: gripping slightly rusty chains with sweaty hands, and holding just a little stronger at the zenith of flight while feeling the momentary release of the earth’s tight hold. 

And of course, from climbing trees.

Or from climbing rock bluffs high above the lower pool of Kinlock Falls. My aunt thought I was going to die that day.

But I had also dug my fingers and toes into the rock walls on Rock Creek, raising my body from the deep water and attaching myself to those cliffs as if they meant life itself, climbing all the way to the top, rolling myself onto the rough, hot sandstone.

I lay on the rock face, my back padded and protected with my wet life jacket, while I looked upward at blue sky.

High places, all of them.

Exhilaration. Peace. Confidence.

Things our kids still need.

Things I still need.

I climbed the tree carefully, placing my feet in the correct spots, the memory of how to do it embedded in my body. I needed no tutorial as I gripped the branches, turning this way and that way, slowly and deliberately, while I ascended. 

Ants made their way up with me, a trail of them creating a highway on the main trunk. Tiny twigs broke off as I advanced, as I created a path of my own. 

I stopped as the branches grew more narrow. High enough.

I looked down. If I fell, I’d hurt myself. Sweet Husband might even have to call 911. 

I’d make the “What’s Happening in my Hometown” Facebook page after the call went out over the scanner and the ambulance turned in at the driveway. People would try to figure out who it is. There’s no anonymity in a small town with concerned (nosy) people.

They would talk about my stupidity. They might scorn me for such an act, for a middle-aged female has no business climbing a tree in her own front yard.

Or maybe they would be nice and simply post: “Prayers” with an emoji of a red heart or praying hands.

How kind.

I’m at the age where I should be kinder to my body, right? Injuries don’t always heal correctly, especially in middle-aged people. Surgery would be required to set the bones right again. Physical therapy would be necessary to help me regain my strength. 

But I am not injured. My bones are still strong, and I will use them.

This is my therapy.

I began my descent. How easily it came.

I placed my foot on the ground, gently, as if made of feathers.

Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, I will look for hummingbird nests while climbing a different sawtooth oak.

And all you Gen X people out there, and a few select Millennials: I have complete faith that you could do the same. It would all come back to you. We’ve got a certain set of skills, and if we’re not careful, we might be the last generation on earth to have them.

If you’ve got any influence on Gen Alpha, let’s help the babies out. Hide their phones, their iPads, and their screens. Show them how it’s done. Climb a tree. Ride a bike. Catch a fish. Dig a hole.

Seek out the wild and high places, on this earth, and in your soul. 

And one more thing:

Don’t post twenty pictures proving you did it.

Just one will do.

Or maybe two.