by By Richard Preston
Random House, 2007
Coastal northern California, with its rainy, temperate climate and rugged terrain, is home to some of the oldest – and tallest – trees in North America. These ancient trees, mostly redwoods and Douglas firs, are often found as isolated remnants of what once were extensive forests. Most of the trees in these forests were harvested long ago, and if they weren’t, it’s because they were just too difficult to reach, even for the most intrepid of loggers.
It’s no surprise, then, that until very recently, the anomalous giants at the heart of this book – the largest of which is 379 feet tall – were completely unknown. It took a crew of passionate botanists to even dream that these monarchs might exist, let alone to complete the scientifically and physically rigorous work of locating and documenting them.
This story – of these botanists, and of the trees they discovered – is related by Richard Preston in The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring. Preston, whose science-based thrillers include The Hot Zone (about ebola) and The Demon in the Freezer (smallpox) departs from his familiar milieu of deadly viruses to explore the mysteries of ancient, lofty canopies and the hunt they inspire in a handful of oddball, vertically enabled scientists.
Principally, these scientists include Steve Sillett, Marie Antonie, and Michael Taylor, all students at the start of their respective quests to find and climb the tallest, oldest trees in northern California. Of course, their paths eventually cross, and they begin collaborating. The three pioneer, with a hybrid mixture of techniques cobbled together from the sport of rock climbing and the arborist profession, a Spiderman-like method of climbing these giants and then moving about with ease from branch to branch.
Preston weaves the tale of budding friendships with the unfolding botanical discoveries, and with the lives of the venerable trees themselves – trees that may seem like timeless fixtures of the forest from a human perspective, but which are truly impermanent, like every other biological organism. We’re reminded of this when one of these giants – named Telperion – takes an earth-shattering fall only weeks after the team makes their first ascent up its massive trunk.
Falling trees aren’t the only danger encountered by the scientists. When they aren’t suspended 35 stories in the air by the thinnest of ropes hung from fragile, twig-like epicormic branches, they’re being tossed around in their overnight hammocks during violent windstorms or pelted by car-sized deadfall from above. Their world is more mountaineering adventure than armchair botany.
At the same time, we’re introduced to the exquisite intricacies of old growth canopies, lofty Edens where, over hundreds of years, enough soil has accumulated from decomposition and atmospheric deposition to support entire gardens of lichens, huckleberry bushes, and even small trees, which in turn shelter spiders and salamanders that know nothing of a pedestrian, ground-level existence.
This drama plays out on the West Coast, but it is not without its analogue here in the Northeast. On a scale of both time and height, our trees are comparatively puny, but their canopies are yielding similar delights to those who have taken the time to look. Graduate student Heather Root climbed sugar maples in the Adirondacks in 2006 and found three species of tiny mites never found before along with a species of lichen never before seen in the Adirondacks. Mites live in the lichen mats and are food for snails and slugs, which are in turn an important source of calcium for birds – giving “old growth” a new dimension of importance for ecologists and forest managers alike.
In a world where all obvious frontiers appear to have been breached, The Wild Trees reminds us that there are indeed universes left to be explored – large, mysterious ones above our heads, and tiny, equally unfathomable ones right under our noses.