Arbor Day has come and gone — uh-oh, you missed it?
No worries, trees aren’t so fixated on time. You can still grab a belated card for that special oak in your life that didn’t fall on your Daihatsu during Hurricane Sandy. Or a box of chocolates for that white ash that stoically looks the other way when your dog treats him like a wooden Kohler.
Or you can pay ultimate homage by climbing one — with Bob Wray, the undisputed tree-climbing guru at southern Virginia’s Primland luxury resort enclave, set on 12,000 private acres of Blue Ridge Mountain wilderness.
On a crisp way-too-early April morning, he’s insisting I have nothing to fear in scaling the towering barked behemoth before us.
Except that Wray’s “climbing” is very different than most — which I quickly realize seeing that the first branch of our tulip poplar within reach from the ground is a good 25 feet up (gulp), while all sorts of ropes, metallic doodads and even a chair hang from higher limbs.
If you’re familiar with terms like “delta hooks,” “carabiners” or “anchor hitches,” you’d be in good company. Wray is using more of a rock-climbing approach (though Wray doesn’t rock-climb; he thinks it’s “crazy!”) on trees — a system he developed himself over five years (double gulp).
This isn’t foot, hand, foot, hand, ladder-style tree climbing — this is tree “hiking,” from one isolated branch to the next.
“Wait till you experience ‘tree time,’ ” the retired roofer says in his very Zen way. I think that’s what he’s saying, anyway — I’m kinda busy buckling up my helmet, hyperventilating and threatening to bail.
“Time moves slower, conversations get deeper, it’s a whole other world up there.” Wray isn’t just a tree-climber, he’s a tree philosopher — Socra-trees, if you will. “For a tree climber, the path to Enlightenment is on rope,” it says on his website.
Turns out, Socra-trees is a genius. His system basically involves stepping into one loop, moving this knot up, straightening up, moving the other loop and repeating (got that?). Once you trust the equipment, the tree turns into friend not foe, allowing you to sit back in your harness and relax along the way up (three-day classes are $475 for one-on-one, $375 per person if you bring a friend).
Wray is only one of the many kooky perks guests have access to at Primland, thanks to the even kookier French billionaire behind it, Didier Primat, who grew the place from a simple bundled wood dispensary in the ’70s into an upmarket golf-and-lodge-and-then-some resort (sadly, he died before seeing the 26-unit, LEED-certified lodge was completed in 2008). Other welcome weirdness includes a space observatory dome attached to the lodge (Celestron CGE Pro 1400 telescope, check!), an 18-basket disc-golf course and the Golden Eagle Tree House lodging option (it is what it claims to be), designed by French treehouse specialist La Cabane Perchée, starting at $550 a night in the summer.
Then there’s the shock of the lodge’s unexpectedly sleek and modern touches: 400-thread count Frette sheets, Dornbracht fittings in the bathrooms, flat-screen TVs and Italian Culti bath paraphernalia. Also shocking: the not-cool mini-bar prices ($50 for a half-bottle of red, whaaaa?).
But back to Primland’s greatest asset: its outdoors. After tree climbing, it’s time to explore Primland’s vastness by ATV ($120 per person for 2 ¹/₂ hours). As luck would have it, my guide is Lauren, a Jennifer Lawrence-from-“Winter’s Bone”-ish 20-year-old who counts four-wheeling, clay-shooting, trail-guiding and hunt-leading among her job’s demands. Off the clock, she remains very much the tomboyish beauty, powering a Ford F-150 (of course) around town, blasting country music, when not riding her horses.
Lauren’s best trick, however, is mastering Primland’s complex network of trails — which switch from rolling hills into rocky ditches into flowing creeks into, finally, awesome splash-into-and-wear-on-face mud puddles — like a veteran cabbie who knows the quickest way to JFK during rush hour.
After a few hours of driving around, we ditch the wheels for shotgun shootin’ time. After taking one look at my biceps deficiency, Lauren decides on a lighter, friendlier 20-gauge over the 12- (the bigger the gauge, the lesser the kick — the 20 is what you’d give your osteoporotic mom, say). I name it Isabella. And off to the clay-shooting trail we go.
There are 14 different clay-blasting stations along the scenic, golf-cart-drivable, mile-long course, each offering a different landscape and different speeds of clay fire (from $35 per person with gun/cart rental and ammo). Do as Lauren says: Keep your left eye shut, keep the aim dot on the hovering ones, stay in front of the line-driving ones — and you, too, shall make the sky rain orange dust down upon the clay killing fields with every pull of the trigger.
The best part of a day out and about around Primland is being able to brag about your exploits during cocktail hour in the lobby later in the evening. “So what did you do today? Oh, a full round of golf? That sounds . . . neat. Me? I climbed a 200-foot tree, four-wheeled through mud, shot stuff. You know, the usual.”
Being half-deaf from the shotgun blasts (don’t be dopey like me — wear the earplugs they give you), I’m probably yelling. I’m also intentionally wearing a short-sleeve shirt so as to show off my red pancake of a bruise left on my upper arm and shoulder, courtesy of Isabella, the little minx. “Check that out. Cool, huh? And it doesn’t even hurt.”
The next morning, I discover that same red pancake bruise is now a mutant purple crepe, and it does indeed hurt. So I mosey on down to the basement-floor spa where the skilled hands of my specialist, Amy, dripped over it like so many bottles of soothing maple syrup (signature massage, $110/hour).
The ladies love a good war wound.
Lowdown
Info: Summer lodge rates (June to Oct. 31) from $329/night. primland.com
Get here: Fly nonstop to Charlotte, NC. Arrange for ground transportation (about a two-hour trip) through Primland’s reservation desk (from $100, 866-673-7802).