MONTOUR COUNTY, Pa. — Van Wagner has been climbing trees for as long as he can remember. The Danville Area High School teacher is a certified forester. Recently he decided to turn his hobby into a project by climbing a tree in every county in Pennsylvania.
"The idea is to get to the highest point in each county and then climb to the top of the highest tree on site," Wagner said.
Newswatch 16 caught up with Wagner as he climbed a pitch pine tree at Montour Ridge, the highest point in Montour County.
To put this in perspective, there are 67 counties in Pennsylvania, so that's 67 climbs.
"67 counties is probably going to take me a few years to accomplish. I'm up to four so far, and I'm hoping to knock out five, six, seven next weekend in Ricketts Glen State Park."
Wagner is not only doing this as a fun personal challenge. He wants to raise awareness about forestry and forest issues.
"It's a tens of billions of dollars industry in Pennsylvania per year, and I hope Pennsylvanians realize that. But at the same time, I hope they understand the fragility of it. We can lose our forests. We have a lot of threats. There are non-native insects. There are non-native plants."
Bob Stoudt is the director of the Montour Area Recreation Commission and joined Wagner on his first climb a few weeks ago.
"It's the sort of thing that gets people's interest, whether you're young or older, seeing Van up in a tree telling interesting stories, explaining what he's doing. it really is. It's a great project," Stoudt said.
"Pilots have been flying over these trees, hunters, and hikers have been walking under these trees, but no human that I know of is in this location. I love just stopping and turning off my brain and my thoughts and taking in the moment," Wagner added.
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