Book review: The high life

“Wild Trees: a Story of Passion and Daring” (Random House, 2007) by Richard Preston

Reviewed by Betty Smith

Those of us who have had the honor of walking through old growth forest know the feel of the place—the spongy duff beneath our feet, the heady odor of the foliage, the flitting movement of birds and insects in the undergrowth–all are part of our experience as we move along the forest floor.  

And if we tip our head way back and look up as high as we can, what can we tell of the world at the top of the forest?  The evidence from trees toppled by wind or loggers can no more tell us about the community at tree-top than the debris left by a tornado can tell us about the families that once flourished in the ruins. 

“Wild Trees: a Story of Passion and Daring” (Random House, 2007) by Richard Preston is the story of Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, Michael Taylor and a host of other brave naturalists who learned to find the tallest of the tall trees, those over 300 ft high, and who developed equipment and techniques to ascend those trees and what they found when they got to the tree tops.    

What they discovered was an unexplored world, stretching into the sky, rich with biodiversity.  In the canopy they found layers of soil, several feet thick, containing tons of dirt, with crowns that hold huge amounts of water. 

 They found beds of ferns, thickets of fruit-bearing huckleberry and elderberry bushes, salal , blooming rhododendrons and even small trees. In places, it is “so dense with foliage that you could put on a pair of snowshoes and walk around on top and play Frisbee.”

 In this environment is found ecology as diverse as the one we know from the forest floor, with species of voles, earthworms, and insects. Even aquatic life thrives at 300 ft and salamanders and Copepods, the insects of the oceans, can be found.  

Understanding the ecology of the tree tops has become the new field of Canopy Science.     

“Wild Trees” is part adventure book and part nature study.  But it is also a romance book—the romance of daring physical feats, the romance of discovery, and even the romance between the always obsessed, sometimes slightly deranged pioneers to the world of the canopy. 

When Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine marry, where would it be but suspended between two tall trees?  

For more about Canopy Science and some stunning photographs, also see www.humboldt.edu/~sillett/sillett.html.   

Betty Smith is a member of the Ocean Shores Friends of the Library . Website:http://home.att.net/~osfol/index.html