Quadchella, nighttime. A floodlight on the Quad illuminates at least a hundred students who mill around, bump into familiar faces, and discuss which activity to try next. Popular songs played by the live band The Undecided waft through the air. Like every student and adult at Quadchella, Nora Lu ‘29 hears the music—but not like the average Quadchella participant.
To reach her, the music floats to a thick branch that hangs about seven feet from the ground. Snug in her quiet tree, Lu watches from above as students move about on the grass. In a busy and often overwhelming school environment, Lu turns to tree climbing to connect with nature, calm her thoughts, and find happiness.
Lu began climbing trees at eight, always having enjoyed spending time outdoors. If she was not hiking or exploring mountains in her hometown, Hong Kong, she was climbing every tree she encountered. She associates the beginning of her tree climbing days with a particular tree near her Hong Kong apartment. Climbing the tree for the first time, she realized she could see her surroundings as if she were “on top of the world.” Even though, “once, a neighbor saw [her] climbing the tree and reported [her] to the guards,” she was far from discouraged.
Lu does not see tree climbing as a competitive sport that pressures her to constantly improve. When climbing, she takes safety very seriously, especially since she does not use any climbing gear. To Lu, finding a good climbing tree means gauging its “climbability,” which depends on a branch’s height and abundance. She favors trees that have many low branches, which offer an easy climb and act as a safety net if she falls.
Since her first days at Milton, Lu has explored a variety of trees on campus, but she has come to love two trees in particular: one right outside Wolcott and another near the flagpole. When she first tried climbing the Wolcott tree, untangling the mess of branches and navigating wide gaps between them were daunting prospects at first. But she quickly grew familiar with the climbing process, and the tree has become one of her favorite spots on campus. Up in the branches, she listens to music, does her homework, or simply watches the school unfold before her. She even finished her history summer reading in the tree before class, as sitting in the tree helped her concentrate. “It’s not very convenient to bring up a laptop, though,” she admits.
When Lu does her schoolwork, ants sometimes crawl over the handouts she reads. “I really like the types of bugs I encounter on trees,” she says. “They’re really nice companions.” Ants and grasshoppers are frequent visitors along with the occasional bird, but humans easily frighten squeamish squirrels. To Lu, a lover of photographing insects, the critters offer a particularly exciting presence. On iNaturalist, an app where users document observations of the natural world and identify species, Lu has recorded more than one hundred species of bugs. On her Instagram photography account, @overdose.of.mints, she has uploaded various close-ups of blue-winged butterflies, praying mantises, and bronze grasshoppers.
Overall, tree climbing serves as a kind of therapy to Lu, who states, “I feel a pretty good connection with trees because they don’t judge you or anything. They’re really strong, really sturdy, and they have all this history with them.” She also appreciates how tree climbing provides her with the opportunity to connect with nature, saying, “Everyone is mostly just scrolling on their phones and staying indoors, but nature’s where we come from originally. It’s nice to be so close to it.”
Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency, an independent agency of the US government, found that ninety percent of adults’ and adolescents’ time was spent indoors. While Harvard Medical School states that doomscrolling exacerbates one’s well-being and sense of life satisfaction, scholars John Gathright, Yozo Yamada, and Miyako Morita discovered that tree climbing induced a clarity of mind and increased one’s self-respect. Instead of frequently indulging in dopamine boosts from addictive reels or unending posts, Lu finds that one of her greatest and most meaningful sources of dopamine is tree climbing.
Watching Quadchella grow boisterous in the distance, Lu holds her phone up against her face and takes a photo of the fun that sparkles on the quad. Then she goes back to simply observing from above, the bark cool and strong beneath her palms.