Blood Knot

We have a tree swing in the back yard. It’s a good one. It hangs on a thick branch, probably 40 feet high, and it has a nice clear pendulum path. Plus you can actually go around in a decent circle if you want (which the kids do). It’s comprised of a yellow 3/4” polypropylene twist rope knotted under a blue plastic seat. The rope has a working load limit of 1090lbs. It’s abrasion resistant, floats in water (not an issue), and weather resistant. HOWEVER, it’s probably NOT resistant to a child’s filthy oily hands grabbing and pulling at it throughout the years because the other day our neighbor was on it. Our neighbor is 5. Maybe she’s 25 pounds. The rope broke just above her — where all the hands go. She wasn’t hurt, but our tree is just standing there like a dumb old tree with a faded yellow twist of rope hanging off it.

When we moved in 6 years ago our neighbor Dan stopped me, pointed at the tree over my shoulder and said, “You know, that’s perfect for a swing.”

I looked up at a high sturdy branch and nodded, “Yeah.”

“I can put it up there if you want.”

“Um, sure,” I said thinking that it was like when someone says ‘how are you’ and you have a sour stomach from eating a burrito a couple days out of service and you say ‘good’.

The thing about Dan is that he likes a project. And the tree swing was a project. The other thing…