Hertfordshire, England
August, 2024
Ascending into a 500 year old oak tree
Back in the winter of 2024, Toby reached out with an idea to weave a net in the canopy of his 500 year old oak tree to act as a grounding (or maybe elevating) experience at his retreat space, Mana & Wak in Hertfordshire, just north of London. Know it would be a mega project, I decided to collaborate with Kieran from K Flow Creations.
The biggest challenge for this project was not the net itself, but how to let visitors safely access the canopy. A 40 foot ladder would be too dangerous but also there weren't enough branches to weave a ramp. Instead, we decided to zig zag out to the adjacent tree and back at canopy height. This meant rigging lines to climb up and down each tree, then slack line webbing to traverse between them. From there, we set the anchor points, tensioned them and began weaving. Unfortunately, the long gap between the trees meant our floor became very skinny. This was somewhat remedied by the side walls which fanned out, but it’s still something I wish was a tad bit wider.
After a week, we were able to reach a fork at the beginning of the canopy, and from there Kieran had the idea to wrap around the outside of the tree in a spiral ramp with rings so that people could quickly ascend to the top platform, 40 feet up. The result was a beautiful ramp which perfectly molds to the shape of each branch and allows climbers to feel the bark as they work their way to the top.
Once up top, I wove the platform and enlisted the retreat chef, Tommy, to help finish up the weaving. The project was about 3 weeks in total and stands as my tallest/biggest net I've woven so far. It also was the first time I used harnesses and climbing devices which is something I've used ever since. Later, Kieran came back to expand the net even higher.
If you want to see more, you can check out a series of daily reels I posted here.
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