by Richard Preston
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Product Description
Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the largest and tallest organisms the world has ever sustained–the coast redwood trees, Sequoia sempervirens. Ninety-six percent of the ancient redwood forests have been destroyed by logging, but the untouched fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods have trunks up to thirty feet wide and can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air. Until recently, redwoods were thought to be virtually impossible to ascend, and the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered. In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbinding story of Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, and the tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, a world that is dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored.
The canopy voyagers are young–just college students when they start their quest–and they share a passion for these trees, persevering in spite of sometimes crushing personal obstacles and failings. They take big risks, they ignore common wisdom (such as the notion that there’s nothing left to discover in North America), and they even make love in hammocks stretched between branches three hundred feet in the air.
The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems that have fused and formed flying buttresses, sometimes carved into blackened chambers, hollowed out by fire, called “fire caves.” Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life that is unknown to science. Humans move through the deep canopy suspended on ropes, far out of sight of the ground, knowing that the price of a small mistake can be a plunge to one’s death.
Preston’s account of this amazing world, by turns terrifying, moving, and fascinating, is an adventure story told in novelistic detail by a master of nonfiction narrative. The author shares his protagonists’ passion for tall trees, and he mastered the techniques of tall-tree climbing to tell the story in The Wild Trees–the story of the fate of the world’s most splendid forests and of the imperiled biosphere itself.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Big Kids Climb Big Trees, 2008-12-29
Growing up, my nickname was "Monkey" for good reason. I loved climbing trees. To this day, I have trouble resisting grabbing low-hanging branches and hoisting myself into the canopy of a well-structured tree. My natural fear of heights seems to melt in the face of a good tree, no matter how high I climb. It's no surprise I was immediately excited when I discovered a book called Wild Trees, about the admirably insane people who string up ropes in ancient redwoods, "skywalking" from trunk to trunk, and take naps in canopies 300 feet above the ground.
Written by Richard Preston, noted previously for novels that combine science and suspense to weave an engaging story, this book provides a fair balance between biology, botany and adventure. In a loose chronological structure, it is mostly a narrative story that details the lives of the most prominent climbers of big trees. Preston describes climbing excursions that will cause your heart to lift into your throat as passionate individuals lift themselves far above the forest floor. Between episodes of risk and excitement, though, are explanations of tree growth cycles, forest ecology, climbing techniques and more, all in clear layman's terms.
The only downfall of this book is its somewhat monotonous litany of dimensions and statistics. You will learn more than you ever wanted to know about the heights, widths and locations of the tallest trees in the world. I listened to this in audiobook form, so I had no choice but to listen to all the details. If you read it for yourself, though, I imagine it will be easy to bypass overly specific data.
Another drawback that could be considered a negative point for this book is that it delves deeply into a very small subculture with little room for participation. It would be rather difficult to go out after reading this book, find the correct equipment, and start climbing tall trees in your area, especially if you don't live in the relatively small area where redwood trees still grow.
For an excellent opportunity to pick up some mostly-useless trivia, a basic understanding of trees and their environment, and the latest techniques for swinging through Earth's largest living things, I would highly recommend this book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Needs a Ruthless Edit, 2008-11-28
This book could easily have been edited in half, so much of it was irrelevant fluff. Yes there was a story to be told, but it was padded out with the prosaic details of it's subjects personal lives. Why would we want to know their golf handicaps, or what they have for breakfast? These people are interesting for the exceptional things they do, and where some context in their wider experiences would have added power and meaning to the story, Preston simply over does this, and actually weakens the story.
The writing style is painfully uneconomical. Condensing the narrative, and increasing the complexity of its sentence structure would intensify the reading experience.
I believe the science described in this book. I think it's important and it interests me, but there just wasn't enough of it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Wonderful Book!!, 2008-10-30
Richard Preston has a way of making a scientific story come to life by bringing you into the lives of those who lived it. By far my favorite of all his I've read. This is now on my list of favorite books of all time. If you love trees, you'll be crazy about this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
What a disappointment!, 2008-10-27
I was expecting too much from this book and I was VERY disappointed. What I got was a mediocre, disjointed story of the activities and love lives of tree-climbing geeks looking for little more than the adventure of the climb and the search for the world's tallest tree.
I was expecting a book that better described what was found in their climbs. Where was the emotion? What did it look like? Where are the pictures for those of us who will never climb a redwood? Where was any sense of the majesty and awe and timelessness that one feels in presence of these ancient giants? It is unlikely that anyone who had never experienced the redwood forest would appreciate any of that majesty from this book. Are the redwoods there just to be climbed? Is that their only value? It would be easy to think so after reading this book.
The few hand drawings and the brief, inept descriptions gave me NO feeling for what was really there in the forest. And I've been there many times. What about the folks who have never seen the unbelievable magnificence of the redwood forest? What could they sense from this book of the awe one feels by just being in the presence of these timeless giants? Could there have been a few real pictures? Where are the impassioned environmental reasons for saving the forest? This book tells more of ropes and carbiners than it does of any of this.
These guys were aledged scientists, yet this book tells very little of what they found of any scientific value. Where was their scientific curiosity? What are their passions beyond just climbing the trees?
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A Disappointing Muddle, 2008-10-27
The Wild Trees has several different elements - some work but most don't. I generally enjoyed the parts that focused on the trees and the related ecosystems. However, I would have preferred he focus more on facts and the science and less on trying to inspire awe. I understand the trees are tall, wide and old, but his endless references to number of board feet, who was alive when the tree was young, or looking at a solid wall of tree quickly became tiresome. Most of the book focused on several characters who Preston clearly admires but I generally found them to be irresponsible, self-absorbed and annoying. Several of the characters are botany professors or scientists, but it was very unclear from the book whether they were doing worthwhile research or just wasting time climbing trees and occasionally measuring them. The book is non-fiction and the people are who they are; but its not particularly enjoyable reading page after page about the day-to-day lives of people you don't like. Final, a significant portion of the end of the book focused on Preston's experience with tree climbing, a family trip to climb some trees in Scotland and his involvement with some of the book's main characters in an expedition to Australia. This part of the book did not seem to fit with the rest of the book; it seemed as if he just wanted to include some enjoyable experiences he had even though they had little relation to the main story.
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