<![CDATA[The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring]]>

false <![CDATA[The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167343355m/22163.jpg 22163 7 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. 1937343 10 4 2007 The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring total:982|5:271|4:385|3:244|2:67|1:15| 982 3776 1653 395 1 4 true false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 22 21:01:08 -0700 2007 Wed Dec 19 21:42:04 -0800 2007
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See > M.D. Vaden's hunt for The Wild Trees Redwoods

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A really interesting look at the group of tree-groupies (arborists, naturalists, botanists, and so on) who dedicate themselves to identifying, documenting and preserving the Gia...more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jan 27 15:22:37 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 15:52:33 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 15:22:37 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed May 13 13:43:26 -0700 2009 Wed May 13 13:44:21 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 30 06:53:49 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 06:56:05 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 true false Thu Oct 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 10:04:04 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 10:04:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Apr 20 09:50:14 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 10:49:37 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:44:40 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:44:40 -0800 2009 Richard Preston, whose previous nonfiction thrillers include The Hot Zone (about the Ebola virus) and The Demon in the Freezer (about smallpox; ***1/2 Jan/Feb 2003), takes a botanical detour in The Wild Trees. Most critics praised this noteworthy, if somewhat less sensational, effort. Yet while some...

more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Jan 07 19:35:14 -0800 2009 Thu Dec 25 07:51:08 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 07 19:35:14 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 27 07:26:55 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 27 07:29:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 12 16:56:23 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 14:00:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Nov 04 13:23:53 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 04 13:23:53 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Feb 16 08:57:38 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 09:02:18 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Nov 23 19:07:58 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 23 19:13:47 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Dec 22 10:51:57 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 22 11:00:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Dec 04 18:21:12 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 04 18:30:55 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Dec 19 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 08 19:49:26 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 19:56:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Aug 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 29 11:32:01 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 14 09:54:37 -0700 2009 The Hot Zone. Preston quietly describes the untimely fall of a tree climbing worker, plunging to his death from a ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jan 19 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 20:35:51 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 16:22:04 -0800 2009 This is the story of obsession: men and women who eke out a living, if they're lucky (and socially presentable enough) in the botany departments of Pacific Northwest colleges and universities. But their true calling lies 350-f...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=22163