Many years ago, a twenty-six year old young man climbed a tall tree to install a tire swing for his two little daughters. Much time passed and the swing was well-loved by the girls. By the man's fortieth birthday, he had added three more children to his family. The children also loved the tire swing and the rope was starting to wear. This dad, who had dedicated his life to his children, wasn't about to let the rope on the swing break, so he shimmied back up the tree to replace the rope.
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| Mark 2006 |
This tree is an old, leaning madrona. It's branches are solid, when there are branches. There is an expanse, about ten feet long, where there is nothing to hold on to. For a young, twenty-six year old mountain climber, this was nothing. To a forty year old father of five, it was a risk not worth taking.
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| Mark 2013 |
Seven years later, the man had three more children and had one more on the way! It was definitely time to replace that rope. He shuddered at what lawsuits could filed against him if a child's friend fell from a broken rope. His wife joked about making their friends sign release forms before they came over, just in case, but he didn't think that was funny at all. She just didn't want her precious husband falling out of a tree and breaking his legs. After several weeks and trials, the dad finally had blocks placed for climbing and had resurfaced his climbing harness and helmet. He had planned this climb as a technical climb and not as a free climb. His wife felt much better knowing her husband was tied to the tree in case of an emergency.
When he was done climbing the tree and tying the new rope, he called his wife to come out and see what he had accomplished. She was so happy and relieved! She knew he had gone out to work, but the Lord has blissfully erased her memory so she had spent the whole time sitting peacefully in front of her computer on facebook while he was in danger. All he had left to do was remove the climbing blocks. As he was hammering the blocks, she heard something. A buzzing. She looked down at the fragrant ground cover blooming in the driveway, but didn't see anything. She raised the camera to take another picture of her handsome husbands and...
...oh my gosh, he was being attacked by yellow jackets! They were swarming all over his face and clothes and getting inside his shirt and stinging him! He started shouting and trying to get out of the tree, but his safety harness was pulled tight from him trying to get away from the wasps and he couldn't get the clip undone! The wasps were stinging like crazy, trying to get the intruder away from their nest and the intruder's wife was standing helpless thinking it was all her fault he was being hurt because if she hadn't insisted on safety harnesses, he would have monkeyed right out of that tree!
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| We had no idea the nest was there. |
He finally made it to the ground and pulled his shirt off and ran away from the yellow jackets that were still attacking him. Strangely, they were not interested in me or Lula. Mark got about eight stings in total and is feeling a bit woozy, but its hard to say if we are just recovering from the fright of him being trapped or the sting venom. He says, "All's well that ends well," with a big grin on his face. All I have to say is-wow! Yellow jackets build nests fast! The old swing was cut down just a few weeks ago. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if the kids had hit it with the swing rope.
