The Wild Trees
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 canopyvoyagers 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.
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5recommend
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100% recommend
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What Hacker News says
- The book The Wild Trees is a fantastic story about finding this tree.
- FYI there is also an illustrated edition, with cool pictures illustrating cool tree things: https://greystonebooks.com/products/the-hidden-life-of-trees...!
If you like scientific nonfiction in this vein, I'd also recommend:
- The Wild Trees
- Mycelium Running
- Mind of the Raven
- The Klamath Knot
Or if you want tree fiction:
- The Overstory
(edit: dunno how to do bullet lists here)
- The Wild Trees by Richard Preston about climbing Giant Redwood trees in California. It started my own tree climbing which I learnt entirely from YouTube and some falls. In the book the author describes making love in a hammock high in the trees. Hell, what could be better than that?
- For more about giant trees in California, read The Wild Trees by Richard Preston. It's a fascinating story of redwood tree researchers, and reads almost like a novel.
- Have you read The Wild Trees, by Richard Preston? It's a fascinating story of redwood tree researchers, and reads almost like a novel. (At least if you like trees as much as I do.)
- The Wild Trees by Richard Preston.
The tallest redwood trees were only discovered ten years ago, by a small group of people who just love trees. It's a pretty fascinating and inspiring story.
