My journey with started as young as I can remember, being born and raised being homeschooled on a 3 acre organic farm and nursery in the mountains of Kaua’i, Hawai’i. Our home backed up to a forest reserve. The first tree I fell out of was a old grapefruit tree I was up in the top picking fruits when my Grandma saw me and screamed so loud it threw off my concentration, second tree I fell out of was a rose apple tree I was sitting on a branch level with our two story home when I heard a crack luckily I hit a bunch of branches on the way down landed flat on my back and got the wind knocked out of me I stood up in shock, butt baked as the limbs had ripped off my shorts. Knock on wood I haven’t fallen out of a tree since I learned about climbing saddles and ropes and all those fancy gizmos, I’d say my love and appreciation for plants, fungi and trees, their propagation and maintaining the ecosystem is just as much as my love for climbing pruning and removing trees that justifiably need to be. I was familiar with cutting and using saws from a pretty young age cutting down invasive Albizia and free climbing coconuts. Eventually after high school knowing I wanted to learn more I took my first job as a ground man for a really good old school climber just him doing the bids and climbing with 2-3 groundless and one chipper and truck, I’d just watch and studying everything he was doing eventually he never wanted to give an opportunity to climb so I ended up getting some basic gear and started to teach myself a bit on our trees at home, eventually i hear of another job for a climber, first day was a working interview, a home with 30+ decent sized coconut trees that where fully loaded. At the end of the day I had trimmed 3 cocos and the owner operator had trimmed 20 I thought for sure he was going to tell me not to come back, but he ended up taking the time to teach me so much, to this day he was one of the best overall tree guys I’ve ever known, but we also used a lot of old school techniques and no helmets or any of that stuff lol. A lot of jobs in Hawaii for resorts, etc. don’t utilize the coconuts or other plants as much as I really personally agreed with, and they some motivation and connections of a friend who only climbed coconut trees spineless to harvest and sell the coconut water I started out on my own just sticking to jobs that really where in alignment with my values. Fast forward and our son is born and shortly afterwards we move to Californian to help and be near my wife’s parents. Where I sort of back tracked on my values a bit to provide working a mix of private when city contracts and doing a lot of crane work it’s been cool to experience and work with different parts of the industry and also looking forward to getting back home to Hawai’i to continue with all of what I’m most passionate about, ahupua’a restoration from mountain to ocean invasive species eradication and native plant restoration. Growing food and medicine and climbing trees as long as I’m alive, I’m also a ISA certified arborist.
