BRIAN HORNE 34 OregonStater.org BEFORE I’D EVEN reached the top of the tree, I could see evidence someone had been here before. A gallon-size plastic bag was fastened to a bough some 40 feet above me, just visible through the boughs of the giant sequoia. One foot up the rope. Other foot up the rope. Handled ascender up the rope. Repeat.What appeared to be a bit of plywood wedged against a branch came into view. When I reached the branch where my climbing rope looped over and back down, I secured myself directly to the trunk. Then I detached from the main climbing line and surveyed my surroundings. “How high am I going?” I’d asked more than 100 feet below. “All the way to the top,” replied Jimmy Swingle, M.S. ’05, an OSU-affiliated wildlife biologist who had rigged the ↑ Our writer making her way up the tree. Previous page: Dan Blanchard’s master’s project was the development of the campus arboretum. He now serves as its curator, leading tours and telling its trees’ stories. ropes in this tree — one of a trio of giants on the northern edge of the Memorial Union Quad. Now I was so high that there were birds flying beneath me.The squeals of summer campers floated up. The MU itself was a colonnaded toy box. These sequoias celebrate their 100th birthday this year, which in sequoia years isn’t even that old. The low end of their typical lifespan is generally thought to be more than 1,000 years. A particularly ancient specimen of Sequoiadendron giganteum, in California is estimated to have been 3,266 years old when it was logged in the early 20th century. (Tree people love scientific names, because so-called common names often vary by region. Different species may share a name, or a common name might imply that a living entity is something that it is
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