Climbable

One of the superb qualities of our native oak is its "climbability". No tree is as satisfying as the oak for those compulsive adventurous children who aspire to get off the ground; in doing so they rise beyond the constraints of everyday life, dominated as it is by adults and their tiresome conventions.

But it's not as simple as to say that all oaks are climbable. Deep in the woods where all trees put their energies into pushing towards the light many oaks and other species lack the lower branches needed to give climbers the early support they need. This is where secondary woodland comes into its own. Where oak has been a pioneer species colonising previously open land it gets enough room to spread its boughs laterally and creates a wonderfully shaped broad and complex organism. Everything about this kind of oak in this situation feels right. Not just the overall shape but the smell, textures and the quality and quantity of light that is allowed to penetrate to the inside of the tree.

Those of us who, as children, were lucky enough to live near to land where nature was winning back control found this to be just one of the delights of places left and neglected without a purpose in man's affairs.

My own children were so lucky. They loved the secret parts around the wasteland left to go its own way; in this case it was the mound above the Totley Tunnel, its ventilator shaft in the centre and all around the soil and rock  from the excavation had been colonised by oaks, bramble bearing berries  and secret paths through the undergrowth.The oaks were a hundred or so years old and admirably climbable.^^*

Similar oaks to this can be found on Blacka's eastern perimeter.

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^^* I wonder how much, if any, of this kind of experience will find its way into the latest publicised scheme  from the Wildlife Trusts? They are press-releasing a "campaign" called 30 Days Wild and have apparently got thousands of people to pledge to do something wild every day for a month. As ever with projects and press releases from this source the main benefit of this looks to be for the media image of the organisation. The reality is likely to be another series of activities vastly over-controlled. To extend this to other parts of the management-infested conservation industry, the National Trust have another media grabbing project called Spirit of Place. I seriously doubt that the places they're thinking of could be anything like the wasteland that gave enchantment to the lives of children I knew. They do not understand the value of places whose charms are dependent on lack of human control. Why should they? Their role is to control; and to promote it they celebrate those sites that show evidence of obvious human intervention.