For most of my elementary school years our family lived in Deep River Ontario, a new town built in the white pine woods on the shore of a large bay of the Ottawa River. The town was for those employed at Canada's first nuclear reactor being built at Chalk River. My father was involved in health aspects of the project as his first job after the end of World War II.

There was a particular pine tree that all us kids knew about on the bank of the bay. We called it simply "the Big Tree."  As a young tree it had suffered erosion on its bay side that caused it to tilt in that direction, but it survived and grew, and like all conifers it headed straight for the sky. By the time we moved to town in 1945 it was a large tree angled out toward the river at its base but curving to vertical above. Someone had cut a small notch in the upper surface of the trunk as it angled outward that provided the toehold needed for climbers to reach the first branch. Once, I heard later, my older brother Douglas took a blanket up the tree while playing hide-and-seek. He spread the blanket on a broad lower branch, lay down on it, and was never found. I had a little camera with which I took black and white photographs. My first photo album was one of those with black paper pages, one of which was glued to the inside of the stiff front cover. That is where I attached my photo at right of the Big Tree.

I must have been 8 or 9 on the day I decided to see how close I could get to the top of the Big Tree. There was no one else around. I made my way up, branch after branch, until I reached the scary zone, where the trunk and branches had gotten pretty small near the top. I don't recall enjoying the view. I just knew it was time to turn around and come back down. I never told my parents or anyone else about the climb (until now).

Of course trees were not the only thing to climb. The family left Canada and moved to Minneapolis Minnesota just before my 10th birthday. On a summer trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota when I was 12 a rocky hillside called to me. My father's note on the back of the photo at left says "In canyon at Roughlock Falls in Black Hills S.D. Robert Park on peak. July 7, 1952." Then for Christmas vacation that same year we had a family vacation that took us to several southern states. In Austin Texas my brother James and I found the statue in the photo at right to climb. I've sometimes wondered about our father letting us do that, and even taking our picture. Perhaps he was recalling some of his own childhood exploits, like the time he climbed the corner of his school building. Here is his description of that from page 45 of his autobiography¹.

"One day at the high school I was standing near the boys entrance on the west side of the school idly listening to some senior class boys, who were just talking and not paying any attention to me. They were boasting of how brave they were, and were proposing to climb out of the upper story window in front of the school and slide down the flag pole which stood about 3 or 4 ft. away from the window. I did not join in the conversation nor comment. Then I noticed that the decoration pattern of the brick building, at the corner, consisted of groups of bricks, which were set about 1-1/2 inches out from the wall on each side of the

Public School, Vienna, Ont.

corner. These projections were about 16 inches high, and 16 inches wide. They were also separated from each other vertically, by about 16 inches of blank brick wall. These looked to me like an ideal arrangement for a person to climb, because there was a foothold, and a handhold about 32 inches above it, on each side of the corner. Furthermore these were not on the same level on each side of the corner, but conveniently alternating about every 16 inches. So by moving the right hand and the right foot up at the same time, and placing them on the appropriate projections, and then moving the left hand and the left foot to the higher steps on the other side of the corner, one could climb quite easily. Without saying a word, I stepped up to the corner and proceeded to climb all the way up the two-story building, and then I came down the same way, by reversing the process. Climbing up was easier than coming down, because in coming down I had to find the supporting projections by feeling and not by seeing. When I arrived down safely, I walked away without saying a word, and the boys who saw me walked off in the opposite direction without saying a word either. I am sure they never mentioned it to anybody, and I never spoke of it either. I don't know what possessed me to do it. I know it was a preposterous thing for me to do. I might well have fallen and killed myself. Even now, whenever I think about it, it still scares me."

There is one other event from our 1952 family trip that, without a photo, is burned in my memory - the bell tower incident. It really was an accident, sort of. I didn't mean to do it. We stopped at an old church (probably in Texas) that had an outdoor entrance to its bell tower which was open to visiting tourists. No one else in the family wanted to climb up to the bell but of course I did. They waited for me at the bottom. At the top I looked inside the bell and saw that it had two metal arms reaching down at either end of the donger's swing path. The first thought in my 12 year old mind was that they were there to prevent the donger from striking the bell. Ever inquisitive, I decided to test this theory. The donger was within easy reach. I gave it a swing and DONG! I was in trouble. A father and child who were up there with me headed quickly down the stairs. They may have proclaimed their innocence to the person in charge who was waiting at the exit. I followed them down, belatedly learning with dismay that the old church was actually in use. Through an opening into the church near the bottom of the stairs I caught a glimpse of something such as a choir practice going on. As I emerged in humiliation the tourist door was immediately closed behind me to keep other troublemakers out. Of course I was scolded by my father but my parents apparently felt my embarrassment was punishment enough.

Our house in Minneapolis was on Humboldt Ave. one house over from Summit St. Our garage was a separate structure at the back corner of our property separated by around 3 feet from our neighbor's garage which was entered from Summit. Their neighbor on Summit also had a garage built with a similar separation from their garage. I found this last garage had a set of vertical bars over a window facing the narrow passage between garages. During my teen years I made use of those bars on numerous occasions to pull myself up to the window sill from which I could climb onto the roof of our neighbor's garage. From there I could easily jump up to my destination, the roof of our garage. The scariest thing I did up there was to push open the door to the garage loft with my foot and climb down through the opening. That's my brother James below the pair of loft doors at right.

The house on Humboldt was 3 stories tall. Propelled by my fondness for high places, I climbed on to its roof on a number of occasions. The best route to the roof was through a rear window that opened on to the roof of the 2nd floor sun room shown at right. (That's my father at the bottom of the photo.)² Using a wooden extension ladder, it was my teenage job to take down the many heavy wooden storm windows each spring and put them back up each fall.

I came to Madison Wisconsin as a 21 year old graduate student, and it was not long before I learned of the fine climbing available at Devil's Lake State Park a few miles to the north. There are paths to the bluff tops of course, but going straight up over the giant boulders was far more challenging and more fun. I had shoes called "Hush Puppies" with thick squishy soles that seemed particularly well suited for leaping from one boulder to the next. On a visit one summer with friends who stuck to the trails I decided to time myself in going straight up over the rocks. I started at the railroad tracks and made it to the top of the bluff in 7 minutes. That included time to sit and rest at the top of the big boulder section before finishing the climb over smaller rocks. The next summer another young man heard of my exploit and made the same climb in 6 min. and 45 seconds.

Toward the end of my graduate student days I was living in an apartment attached to a small house near Vilas Park. When the owner died his wife decided to move and I found I had the opportunity to buy my first house. I took it. It was the oldest house in the neighborhood and it had a row of 3 Lombardy Poplar trees at the edge of the back yard which towered over the house. Their tops had all died and they needed to be cut down. I borrowed an electric chain saw with a long cord which I took up the trees, cutting each, from the top down, into sections small enough to drop into the back yard. Before finishing the job I used my perch to take the photo at right of my house³ from above.

As the owner of a house within walking distance of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus I was soon renting rooms to students. As the war in Vietnam was raging at that time I was also participating in anti-war protests. When Nixon invaded Cambodia I joined a fast for peace at which I met a grad student named Debbie Doob whose father was a professor at the University of Illinois and whose mother was a physician with Planned Parenthood. She became one of my tenants, and in 1974 she became my first wife. She wanted to live in the country to raise crops and animals so we bought a farmhouse in the scenic driftless area of southwest Wisconsin. There it seemed a shame that our kitchen and dining area had no window providing a view of the valley to the south of our house, so I undertook to install a picture window. The first step in the process was to take down the old cinder block chimney on that side of the house. You can see me accomplishing that from the roof in the photo at left. My brother James visited us at the farmhouse in 1976 and I took him to a nearby rock outcropping overlooking the valley below as shown at right. (He was with the son of a then girlfriend.) This farmhouse was the first home for my sons Robin and Mischa, but by the time Mischa was born Debbie had filed for divorce and we were separated.

I was very fortunate to gain a supportive friend who had been through her own divorce 9 years earlier. Her name was Barbara Steinau and she was raising a 10 year old daughter called Casey. She had bought a lot in Wildwood Bluff, a little development on a bluff overlooking the Wisconsin River, and had arranged for erection of a prefabricated home there for herself and Casey.⁴ By the time the house was finished we were a couple and the 3 of us moved in together. We were married at that house in 1981. Relatives who came for the wedding also came for a family reunion the following day. That was the start of a tradition of holding a Park family reunion every 5 years.⁵ While my father was visiting for those 1981 events we took him to Gibraltar Rock, another high place which our family has enjoyed over the years. He is shown up there with Mischa and Robin in the photo at right. The hike to the top rewards you with a view of the Wisconsin River valley. On one occasion while Barb and I were at the top a small stunt plane flew past us at eye level, upside down!

On family trips north to visit my brothers and families in Minneapolis we have sometimes stopped at a scenic overlook with a hiking trail to the top of a high rounded hill. I learned from topographic maps that the hill's name is Bell Mound. Part way up there was a bench, and the photo at right shows 5 year old Robin enjoying a story break with Barbara. I wonder if that bench is still there. Next time I make that trip with Barbara I'd like to see if it is. In recent years the state has installed a rest area at the foot of that trail.

The year after our marriage Barb and I set out on a journey to Canada to explore some of my Canadian roots. By then she was pregnant with Ian, who became the final addition to our blended family of one girl and 3 boys. A literal high point of our trip was our visit to the sandhills near Fairground Ontario where my father was born. The top-of-the-hill portrait at left includes my uncle Wesley with his wife Irene and son Jonathan (who now goes by his middle name Craig) with Barb and me. We returned to this spot in the summer of 1988 when I showed Robin how we could safely leap from high on the hill and land in the soft sloping sand below. That's Robin flying through the air at right.

Devil's Lake became a favorite destination for family outings with the boys. The paths to the bluffs have stone steps that are challenging for small children. When our youngest son Ian was 20 months old he gamely made it about half way up with some help from Barbara as shown at right. We carried him the rest of the way.

In 1991 our 3rd family reunion was held in California. On the outbound trip to the reunion Barb and the older boys traveled by train while Ian, my brother James and I drove the big black van we had at the time. Ian took my picture at left at a stop in Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota. On the back it is labeled "Dad jumping across Pine Creek." Another stop, at Angel Lake Nevada, gave us a chance to do some climbing above the campground as shown at right. Ian and James did not climb as far up as I did.

In 2006 we visited Casey in Alaska and took advantage of some of the mountain trail hiking opportunities.⁶ I hiked up to the 2500 foot level on the Matanuska Peak Trail and took a short hike on the trail above Hatcher Pass. Barb and I both did some hiking on the Lazy Mountain Trail and the Pioneer Ridge-Knik River Trail (photos below).

In 2007 Barbara and I took a trip to the west coast⁷ which was rich in high vista opportunities, including a bluff overlooking Lake Tahoe,⁸ Mt. Diablo,⁹ Alum Rock Park, San Jose,¹⁰ Mt. Hamilton,¹¹ and Point Reyes.¹² Particularly memorable was a visit to Beacon Rock on the shore of the Columbia River, a climbing opportunity not to be missed. As you can see in the second photo at right, there was a zig zag path up one side. Barb had not planned to climb all the way to the top, but when I met her as I was coming down she decided to persevere, and we both continued to the top.¹³

March of 2015 saw us in California again for a few days on our way to Hawaii. With Mischa Barb and I explored the Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve¹⁴ along a high ridge overlooking San Jose's Alum Rock Park. Then on to Hawaii. Among our adventures there was a drive to the Haleakala summit, just over 10,000 feet high, in Haleakala National Park.¹⁵ It was the highest point on our planet that I have reached in my travels, and was the first time I experienced driving through a cloud bank to emerge in the sunlight above. Note the clouds below on the right.

After Hawaii our travel adventures for the year were far from over. In October we embarked on our longest trip yet, to New Zealand, with Robin, his wife Evelyn, and granddaughter Elodie.¹⁶ Toward the end of that trip the three of them departed while Barb and I stayed on in Queenstown. There was a gondola ride available to a tourist attraction spot high above town but I hiked that far and beyond, and took the photo at left looking down toward the area with three patches of artificial turf where paragliders lift off when the wind is right. There was one more climb in store before returning to Wisconsin, up the ridge separating Christchurch from Lyttelton. The trip to Lyttelton had not been planned, but earlier I had posted a photo of Elodie on Facebook with Lake Tekapo in the background. An incredulous reply popped up: "? ? Are you in New Zealand?" It was from Dana, a former classmate of Robin's in Sunday school in Madison 30 years earlier and 8494 miles away. When I'd last heard from Dana she was in Hawaii, but now she was living with her husband and son in Lyttelton. It was too late for Robin's family to add Lyttelton to their plans, but after they left New Zealand Barb and I arranged to visit.Their house is on a steep hill, and at the top of the ridge high above there was a strange structure that I decided to investigate. It turned out to be a large curved building, the terminus for a gondola ride coming up from the Christchurch side of the ridge. You can see the building and gondolas above. On the right is the view looking down toward Lyttelton and its harbor.

Our 2016 family reunion¹⁷ was held in and near Madison, and included a day at Blue Mound State Park. On top of the mound the park features observation towers at the east and west ends, so of course we had to climb them. On the left you can see reunion participants as viewed from the top of one tower. Going back in time on the right, you can see Robin and a friend at the top of the other tower in 1980.

Now in my 80s I no longer look for trees that are fun to climb, but I still take advantage of conifers that lift me up to work that needs doing. A striking feature of our Madison home is the pair of magnificent northern white cedar trees behind our attached garage. When we moved in here I soon found that the tree closest to the deck at the back of our house provided my easiest way up to the roof. I visit the roof 2 or 3 times a year to clear out our eavestroughs and remove tree debris from the roof. That closest tree also spread over the corner of our deck, limiting its usefulness to humans (though it was as useful as ever to our numerous four-footed furry visitors). Within a few years of moving in I found that support beams beneath that corner of the deck were rotting, so I decided to take that corner out. However, I made a point of retaining the platform seen below the window in the photo at left so that I could still get to the tree that provides my path to the roof.

Once, while sitting on the roof enjoying a peaceful moment I suddenly noticed a small bird, hanging upside down from a cedar branch a few feet away, eyeing me. I looked our visitor up when I came down. It was a Pine Siskin.

Another activity on that roof was installing the broadcast antenna for the low power radio station that broadcast from our garage from 2008 to 2015.¹⁸ In 2015 we found that to comply with FCC requirements we needed to move the station, and a new home for it was offered in the garage of friends from our Unitarian Universalist society.¹⁹ That brings us to the final pine tree in our story.

I felt it was important to get our broadcast antenna up to tree top level, and the only practical way to do that was to install the antenna at the top of a large white pine tree in the middle of our friends' backyard. Years ago that tree must have lost its top, in a wind storm perhaps, because now it branches into a "V" near the top. This made an ideal place for me to install a socket for the base of our radio broadcast antenna's mast. A cross piece between the sides of the V higher up secures the mast in a vertical position. We needed to know the distance from the ground to the base of our antenna for our license application to the FCC. Using a 50 foot tape measure I found that the distance from the ground to the tip of the highest branches was 70 feet. The mast I installed takes the base of our antenna about 3 feet above that. My video clip at left shows how stressful a treetop location can be for an antenna when winds are strong and gusty. Problems with the connector at the base of the antenna have made it necessary for me to climb the tree and bring the antenna down a number of times since 2015. When the problem struck again in the fall of 2020 I made a short temporary tower for the antenna for the winter since I don't climb trees in cold weather. In the spring of 2021 after 3 hours of work in the pine tree I got the antenna reinstalled at the top. The photo at right shows the view looking up into the tree from the ladder needed to get to the first branch.

So what high places still lie ahead? A stroll up Lazy Mountain in Alaska perhaps? I tried that once before, after reading the sign at the bottom warning that rain makes the trail muddy. From well up the trail I could see a storm approaching across the valley. Overly confident about how speedily I could descend, I got caught by the rain, slipped near the bottom and had some very muddy jeans when I rejoined Barbara, who had wisely returned to the foot of the trail in time to avoid the rain.