Ever since he saw a Discovery Channel special on trees, freshman Dylan Koffman knew he would one day get to that high branch. Just last week, he got his wish.
Koffman knew from rumors going around Sadler Dining Hall that if there was one sure way to learn, it was to ask a student from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
“I’d seen an ESF student before, and I’ve definitely smelled one, so it took me less than a week to find one,” he said.
At first, Koffman had trouble getting the male ESF student to cooperate. He kept shifting from one barefoot to the other until Koffman convinced him that he benches “over two hundie” and has done “at least 1000 pull-ups since coming to college.”
The ESF student promised he would teach Koffman proper technique, but only if he didn’t wear cologne, left his cell phone at home, and wore earth tones to find himself “one with the tree.” Although abashed at the thought, Koffman said that it was worth almost any price to do something so prehistoric.
The ESF student, referred to as “Sage,” brought Koffman into Oakwood Cemetery to one of the tallest trees.
“At first, it felt like a foreign language. But within an hour, I was standing on my first branch,” said Koffman.
By the time Koffman reached the top, he experienced such a strong sense of euphoria that he no longer needed instruction. It was nearing nightfall, he said, and the smog-filled orange and yellow sunset was one of the best he’d ever seen.
But by then the ESF-er was nowhere to be found. Koffman realized that he had never been instructed on how to get back down.
“Sadler was about to close so I ended up in that tree all night until some local Syracuse lady found me in the morning and called the cops,” said Koffman.
Koffman warns the rest of the Syracuse community to keep an eye out for the mysterious ESF student, and to call the Department of Public Safety if any one knows an ESF character whose name sounds remotely like “Sage.”