Logs, hay bales and tree equipment are quickly filling Alden Park’s woodland area as the third annual TreeTopia takes shape on Mare Island.
While some of the unprocessed logs provided by A Plus Tree, Inc., the festival’s organizer, serve as benches, most of them will be used for demonstrations of tree climbing and tree felling techniques throughout the weekend.
The festival will be held for the third time on 16-17 August and will feature courses, activities and games based around ‘all things trees’. While it is a celebration for arborists and tree surgeons, the industry event is also an easily accessible entry into the highly skilled world of tree care.
Citing an overwhelming lack of “fun tree events in the industry,” A Plus Tree, Inc. initially started by hosting parties after industry trade shows before realizing they wanted something bigger. The result was TreeTopia. The event is informative, skill-building and entertaining, and represents a concerted effort to give back to the industry while shining a spotlight on an overlooked trade.
The two-day festival is about more than just tree hugging, says Sarah Gaskin, vice president of strategic initiatives at A Plus Tree. As a tree care company tasked with removing dead or diseased trees, a hands-on approach is critical to ensuring the well-being of the trees and the workers. “There’s definitely a passion for trees, but you look at them in a different way,” Gaskin said.
TreeTopia offers the public a chance to experience this new perspective. Involving the community and making it a festival helps “raise public awareness of tree work,” Gaskin said. “They hear a chainsaw and that’s it. ‘Oh, they’re cutting down a tree,'” Gaskin said.
“Tree work with equipment like chippers, chainsaws, cherry pickers and cranes requires an incredible level of technique and skill – more than anyone imagines,” said Gaskin.
World-renowned experts sponsored by chainsaw manufacturers such as Stihl and Husqvarna will hold on-site workshops on these techniques. It’s a unique learning opportunity in an industry where formal training is hard to come by. For West Coast arborists, and especially those without great financial means, Gaskin says it’s difficult to “learn more than learning from someone you work with.”
“We offer an opportunity to those who would never otherwise have that opportunity, and we try to make it as accessible as possible,” Gaskin said.
The hands-on approach extends to the equipment itself, which is sponsored by event co-host TreeStuff, the world’s largest online retailer of tree gear. “They have a very unique approach where they try to make the wildest games possible that involve tree gear,” Gaskin said.
The most popular game of the festival, “The Human Claw,” involves a player hovering in the air using a belay system. By operating the belay system, the player moves forward to pick up crates with their feet before returning to the platform. The crates they successfully pick up contain prizes ranging from $50 to $200 worth of equipment.
Like all other weekend activities, the games are open to anyone “as long as they sign a waiver,” says Gaskin, who has seen children participate in “The Human Claw.”
The games provide an opportunity to demonstrate different types of equipment, such as a log loader, that participants may have seen before but aren’t familiar with how it works. “Anyone can try them out, put them through obstacle courses and win prizes. So it’s really interactive,” Gaskin said. “It tries to get away from the idea of, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to boring classes to learn something.'”
“Who knows, if we raise awareness, something might happen?” said Gaskin, calling for higher wages in the industry.
The all-day program runs from 6pm-10pm on both days and extends into the evening, with a game of Capture the Canopy on Friday at Admiral’s Mansion and an after-party at Coal Shed Brewery on Saturday.
Passes can be purchased online at treetopiausa.com. Children under 12 are free.
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