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Cave Junction, Ore.

"You want to try a bat hang?" Tim asks and flips over in his harness. His feet point straight up.

We're about halfway up a 60-foot black walnut, dangling from a combination of ropes, knots and carabiners. Tim's been doing this for 13 years; I've been at it about 24 hours. What the heck. I flip.

Oregon is upside-down, and this, this is all the joy of childhood, of knobby knees thrown over a branch, of hair dangling toward the grass.

The view — even right side up — is worth the work it took to get here.

I'm high enough to see over the roof of the nearby house to where the blue-hued Siskiyou Mountains peek over a dark, jagged line of evergreen treetops. If I could turn a bit to my right, I might see Redwood Highway (U.S. 199), the main drag of Cave Junction, lined with drive-through espresso stands, burger joints and, as it disappears, family campgrounds that now house giant RVs.

Cave Junction is on the hot eastern side of the Coastal Range. If you're driving north from California, you feel the state line coming: It's where the redwood trees end. Visitors might come to the area to see Oregon Caves National Monument or to raft the wild Rogue River or to camp or hike in the endless acres of national forest or to spend the night in a treehouse, of which there are several in the area.

Me, I came to learn how to climb trees.

I didn't really know what I was getting into when I enrolled in this basic tree climbing course at the recently established Tree Climbing Northwest school. Enticed by a radio interview with an L.A. climber, I found some schools online and made some calls. After receiving sufficient assurances that I didn't need Spider-Man-like upper-body strength, I signed up for a class last June.

I meet Tim "Tengu" Kovar when I get to his house in Cave Junction, a town of about 1,400. Tim's a big guy, 6 feet, 3 inches, and exudes an easygoing warmth. He started climbing trees in 1993 while working for an Atlanta-area tree surgeon.

His boss, it turned out, was using arborists' techniques to take people up into trees for fun on the weekends. He recruited Tim as a teacher, and after a few years, Tim put down his chain saw for good. In 2005 he moved to Oregon and started his own school, Tree Climbing Northwest.

I've signed up for a 2 1/2-day session. There's a lot to learn; my only classmate, Karen, is staying a full week to be trained in two climbing styles, plus rigging hammocks and stuff. I'll just learn the basic doubled-rope technique. But before any lessons or quizzes, Tim takes us to meet Ed.

Ed is our other teacher: a 60-year-old black walnut tree with wide-spread limbs.

I had imagined us deep in a forest, but in fact we're in the middle of a flat plain along the Illinois River. There's a farm/vineyard going to seed next door and a growing subdivision nearby. From Tim's, we walk down a dirt road and find ropes already in the tree.

We learn an easy first knot, the triple crown, which creates foot loops. Then we don helmets and harnesses that sort of resemble those used for rock climbing but are much sturdier and padded. Finally we secure our harnesses to loops in the ropes using locking O-ring carabiners, and start up.

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