I, as many of you know, am a wonder junkie. I find that I cannot resist indulging my sense of awe.

Tree climbing is a nice way to do that.

I was climbing a tree, and a hawk lands about ten feet above me and screeches for quite a while. He may or may not have known I was there. I, of course, stayed still and watched, eating an apple.

I also found that there are colonies of big black ants that live inside the larger of the bur oaks in Bob Woodruff. Their tunnels are underneath the thick bark, and in one of my new favorite trees (of course, one of the tallest) they have a very busy entrance in one of the knots in the tree. All over the tree, there are countless holes these giants jungle ants can come in and out of as they please. I love watching ants, their so democratic, each laying down his or her pheremone trails, and when enough of the ants find that something is worth doing or a trail worth following, they all just do it. I hear from the TV that they also dance like bees and communicate with vibrations that travel through the plants, although I do not know their dances nor can I hear their songs. They probably know every nook and cranny of the entire system, and doubtlessly their dominion spreads under the ground for hundreds of cubic feet.

They know I'm there, and they know I'm coming up the tree before I even get on rope. They can smell me, feel me, and probably have some extra senses we'll never know about, cavity structures effect or something. But they never bite me (One did, cause it was in my shirt and I kind of felt for it, and then it bit me. I smashed it.)

Someone said in a book I read about climbing redwoods (the one below,) 'To really see a giant tree, you need a magnifying glass."

There are many things I don't understand about the forest. Lichens extract nitrogen from the air and give it directly to the trees. Are vines parasites or symbiotes? I don't know. I always thought that vines killed the trees, like they can destroy a man made building. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe they protect it, or supply it with a vital nutrient or something. I really don't know. I pulled some off that were in my way the other day, and now I feel kind of bad.

Dollars to donuts, they'll be all the way back up the tree in a couple months.

Y'all quit being pussies and come CLIMB SOME TREES WITH ME.