The muscles in Dennis Coker’s arms tightened as he adjusted his grip on the rope that held him securely from a more-than-100-foot-tall tree at Winterthur.
He looked above him to assess the tree and determine his next move. It’s a skill he learned this week at a three-day tree-climbing school held on the Winterthur estate.
“You have to assess the tree to make your plan of attack,” he said.
His plan was successful, and Coker was soon high among the branches.
“I’ve been wanting to climb a tree my whole life, and learning how to tie three knots was the only thing holding me back,” joked Coker, 71, Chief of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware.
The course taught the 27 participants about tying knots, safety/safe climbing practices, equipment/use of hand tools, tree terminology, tree disease and insect diagnosis, pruning, and more.
Most participants work at landscaping companies, and a handful were from youth programs.
But there was one significant outlier.
“In this tree, we have state park workers, a Longwood Gardens (horticulture) instructor, and a professional chemist,” said Kevin Braun, Winterthur’s supervisor of arboriculture and natural lands. “She took three days off to do this. Yesterday she said she was nervous about whether she’d like it. But then she said, ‘I love it!’”
Kadine Mohomed said her decision to take a vacation from her work as a materials scientist at W. L. Gore & Associates (the Gore-Tex company) made sense because she’s a rock climber, powerlifter, outdoorswoman, and sustainability enthusiast.
When an ad for the school popped up in her social media newsfeed, she understood why an algorithm had targeted her.
She described her experience at the school as a “happy accomplishment.”
“Something that I’m feeling pretty proud of is when I show my kids pictures when I go home at the end of the day. They get excited,” she told a reporter from DelawareLive.com. “It’s nice for my boys to see that as a woman in my 40s with teenage boys, I could accomplish things that they don’t typically see women doing.”
Mohomed plans to use her new skills to take down dead and loose branches from woods near her house so her kids can be safe when playing there.
A feeling of responsibility for trees and a connection to them was a shared quality among school participants.
“To care for a tree, you must first learn how to care for a tree,” said Coker, the Lenape chief who is retired from a job in road construction.
Coker said he would recommend the course.
“Climb a tree as soon as you can,” he advised.
The school came about due to a request from the Lenape Tribe to put it on as a job-training program. Four tribe members participated.
The one-of-its-kind course may be offered again in Delaware, said James Savage, lead instructor for the school and an assistant professor of plant science for Penn State.
The school at Winterthur was the first ever held in Delaware, Savage said. The school was a joint initiative of Greenbridge CDC, the Penn State Extension, the University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, and Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.
The course takes students from knowing nothing about climbing trees to feeling comfortable maneuvering about in a tree, Savage said.
The waiting list of people to register for the class was just as long as the list of class participants. There’s a strong demand for such courses.
“This is the only class like it in the country because there’s climbing schools, but most of them are, ‘Here’s how you do it, now go home and do it,’” Savage said. “We show you how to climb, watch you and help you do it, and show you what you’re doing wrong.”
