MONDAY READING

The Wild Trees
by Richard Preston

This is a love story – a passionate love story – of people for trees.  Not just any trees – we’re talking the tallest and biggest trees in the world.  We’re talking redwoods that reach 35 stories above ground and grow mainly in one area of the world – southern Oregon and northern California near the sea.  But I wouldn’t have read almost to the end by now if it had just been details about the trees, fascinating as they are.  Richard Preston, a climber himself, has captured the wonderful society of tall tree climbing fanatics who find, name, climb, study, and fiercely protect these trees.  The two in the photo – Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine – are seriously famous in their world today, like gods.  Their story is told from their childhoods until they meet and merge their lives.  We also meet their delightful friends and colleagues, who all find life in the forest canopy high above earth the very best place to be.  Thanks to them what little remains of our old growth forests is loved and guarded for the future.  Where I’m reading now, the author himself has taught his children to climb and taken the whole family to Scotland to climb some rare trees there.  Here is one paragraph about his daughter:

“Laura said she wanted to learn more, so I took her to the tree-climbing school, where she learned how to skywalk and, at thirteen, became the youngest certified tree climber in the history of the sport.  With the instructor Tim Kovar, we climbed a giant tulip poplar tree in the mountains of north Georgia that has a cave inside it.  The mouth of the tree cave opens ninety feet above the ground.  Laura climbed in through the mouth and rappelled down twenty feet through the center of the tree.  She came out into a room inside the tree, where a hole looked out into the canopy, like a round window.  ‘I kind of thought it needed a bell and a sign that said THE WOLERY,’ she remarked (referring to Owl’s house in Winnie-the-Pooh).”

For more photos and facts, visit here .  I’ve been having this fantasy that I would like to videotape myself reading this book with my children and grandchildren, chapter by chapter, as a memento for them to keep all their lives.  It would be the perfect choice.