What arborist work taught me about falling.
The knot held, while the branch didn’t.
I remember the rope tightening across my chest like a seatbelt. The world turned while my spurs scraped across frozen bark, and the chainsaw swung away from me on its lanyard.
Someone below me swore.
Or.
It may have been me.
It tends to be me.
I spent nearly six years working as an arborist. All the tree things: removal, storm cleanup, cabling, rigging, climbing, and more time running a saw above the ground than anyone with my relationship to heights should have considered reasonable.
I was afraid of heights when I started.
And I still am.
At first, I climbed because I needed . There was no deep calling behind it. I needed money, needed something useful to do, and probably need to prove to my father and myself that I could remain committed to something difficult.
Then I kept with it. For too many years.
Eventually, I began to love it. Well, parts of it.
Some morning, I would be halfway up a frozen maple with no feeling in my fingers, trying to tie a knot through muscle memory because my hands no longer could feel. Then wind cut through everything. My skin cracked. I regularly thought that I was not being paid enough.
I was correct.
I kept climbing.
Fear didn’t disappear just because it became familiar.
There’s an odd love that grows in the middle of that.
Something physical. Something direct.
You work. You sweat. You solve. Trees are puzzles. You figure out how to get up, what to cut, where it’ll fall, where you hope not to. No guessing and no pretending. Just you and gravity.
I’ve had some close calls. Nearly fell once, at about eighty feet. A limb split wrong and I had a long freefall swing until the rope caught. Adrenaline doesn’t wear off easy even when you’re finally on the ground.
I also had a moment where I paused, high up, and saw an ambulance go screaming past in the street below. All the lights and sirens. And something in me clicked.
That’s what I should be doing.
The thought didn’t quite make sense yet. But it stayed. I started thinking about becoming a paramedic. Something about it felt better. Helping people. Movement. Meaning. Pressure. And some purpose.
So I applied to school. And then kept climbing for three more years.
There’s some irony in it all. I went from being scared on a rope to being scared walking into dark homes with sick people. But the fear feels different now. Like the same tree, but a different branch. Back then I was scared of falling. Now I’m scared of failing.
I learned a few things up there:
Fear never really goes away. You just get used to working with it. And doing hard things doesn’t make you fearless. It just makes you stubborn enough to keep going.
I miss the trees.
Sometimes.
Often.
The hard work.
But I don’t miss the cold. I don’t miss the numbness. I climbed to survive. I stayed because I learned to love it. And I left because something deeper, and scarier, was waiting for me on the ground. And I don’t think I could have become a medic if I hadn’t climbed first.
Now, I watch new medics start their own climb. And I recognize the look
Dedication
To my family, who taught me grit.
To my old crew, who taught me knots.
And to that walnut tree, who taught me how to hold on, and when to let go.
