W. Jim Cortese

John Muir Climbs a Tree and Other Tree Tales

An Anthology of Tree Stories

Climbing trees, sitting under and in trees, walking in the woods, hiding things in hollow trees, camping in the woods, planting trees, growing trees, collecting nuts and seeds of trees; these are some of our combined mutual tree experiences. When I was a youngster, I could and did climb every tree in my Castle, Greenmount, and Tutwiler Avenue neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee; except one. It was a very large straight tulip poplar. I could never figure out how to get up into it. It was very tall, seventy-five to eighty feet and thirty to forty inches in diameter. The first branch was about thirty-five feet up.