"Wild Trees" by Richard Preston

The height of adventure is sometimes only 350 feet.

With best-sellers like The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, Richard Preston has made a career scaring readers silly about the gruesome dangers of microbes and pernicious germs. In his new book, Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring, Preston shifts gears to larger subject matter: the Redwood forest canopy. Preston infiltrates the subculture of this country's newest breed of adventurers: those locating, exploring, studying, and climbing the world's tallest trees -- the ancient redwoods of the northwest that stretch over 35 stories high.

"So many incredible things happen in our world that are never noticed, so many stories never get told," says Preston. "My goal is to reveal people and realms that nobody ever imagined."

Wild Trees is all true, and reads like a page-turner. It follows the lives of three tree-climbing pioneers, from adolescence until they meet and collectively turn the arboreal world upside down. Stephen Sillett was so impassioned by tree climbing as a youth, he was barely able to concentrate on schoolwork, but now teaches redwood canopy science at Humboldt State University (and is always searching for the world's next tallest tree). Marie Antoine spent a good chunk of her Ontario childhood outdoors and up in trees, and now lectures in the botanical sciences at Humboldt State University. And Michael Taylor, the former grocery clerk and long-time amateur naturalist and explorer, shows that scientific knowledge does not come solely from Ivory Tower researchers.

Wild Trees takes place mostly in the thick, tangled rainforests of northern California, where entire basins remain unexplored. (In keeping with the wishes of land administering agencies, Preston does not reveal the locations of most tall trees he discusses.) Naturalists will enjoy the discussion of the flora and fauna found in the fragile canopy ecosystems, and armchair explorers will certainly eat up the adventure elements. But where the book excels is in getting into the minds of the climbers. It reveals a level of desire and passion few are privy to. The tree-climbing community featured in Wild Trees is not a bunch of Evil Knievel clones seeking their next adrenaline shot; they're simply a close-knit enclave of researchers dedicated with unusual ardor and obsession to their science.

Wild Trees eventually heats up into a love story when two main characters, Sillett and Antoine, unite in matrimony. Their canopy wedding scene is the book's crown jewel. Bride dangling 300 feet above the ground, decked out in a long, flowing wedding train woven with real lichen. Groom twisting and turning on a rope beside her, garbed in rain gear. And a geologist cum minister standing on a high-up outstretched redwood limb, relaying the vows with one eye gazed downward for safety.

"It was a sunny day, with light winds," writes Preston. "Antoine and Sillett left their trees and moved towards each other in space, advancing along the rope strung between the spires. Her wedding veil, decorated with lungwort, floated around her in the wind. They met in the space between the trees and exchanged the rings, and they began to exchange private wedding vows. They were now hanging on the middle of the rope, floating and bobbing in the breeze and the bride's veil was streaming. They had discussed what would happen next. Sillett wrapped his legs around Antoine, and in that way he carried her across the threshold of air to the altar, pulling her along the rope."

For their honeymoon, the couple journeyed to Australia to, you guessed it, climb tall trees.

In one fretful scene, the climbers top out on a 30-story redwood named Telperion, when a storm hits, deluging them with torrents of rain and slapping winds. Fearful for their lives, they shimmy down in dire conditions. Soon after, Telperion tumbles, tossing mud splats six stories in the air, and serving as reminder as to the inherent dangers of extreme tree climbing.

Preston discourses in great detail about how to physically climb trees and what equipment to use. This may prove tedious to some readers, but rock climbers may find the similarities and differences between their sport and Preston's fascinating. And writers rarely care to become part of the story, but Preston makes an exception with Wild Trees, refusing to play the role of stodgy chronicler purveying his tale from afar. Preston learns the art of Redwood climbing, and spends a few chapters in the canopy with Sillett. He also accompanies Sillett on an expedition to measure the 379.1-foot Hyperion tree, the world's tallest living object. (The world's largest living object is supposedly a three-square-mile edible fungus living underground in Oregon.)

Preston is among the great living non-fiction writers, with clean and easily readable prose and stories that always engage. He's mastered the art of creative non-fiction; applying elements of the novel (pace, dialogue, and descriptive detail) to hold the reader's interest in a true story. With Wild Trees, he manages the unthinkable: a book on tree climbing that is virtually impossible to put down.

~ Reviewed by Michael Strzelecki

"Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder"

"Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit
Disorder"
by Richard Louv

Review:

Neighborhood playgrounds devoid of laughing children on sunny
afternoons. Malls bursting at their seams, while only a scattering of
hikers and bikers ply the trails of local parks. Kids preferring to
play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 instead of actually skateboarding.

These are all signs of the time.

And these are all images that make Richard Louv cringe.

In his new book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from
Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin Books, 2005), Louv investigates the
changing landscape of our children's relationship with nature. He
laments how families are severing their umbilical to the outdoor
environment, and what effects such actions have on themselves, their
communities, and our global environment.

"For a new generation, nature is more abstraction than reality," Louv
exclaims. "Increasingly, nature is something to watch, to consume, to
wear - to ignore."

Louv shows how Americans have become dissociated from nature using a
raft of studies and statistics. Certain issues he addresses are ones
most parents are well aware of, such as child obesity, our culture's
infatuation with television, and the disappearance of recess from
elementary school curriculums. But he casts a wider net on the topic.
He shows how visitor numbers are down in major western national parks,
even when surrounding populations are exploding. He explains how the
average age of a Sierra Club member is now over 50 and rising. He leans
heavily on academia research, such as the 2002 British study showing
that eight-year-olds can now identify more Pokeman card characters than
native animals.

Paul, a fourth-grader that Louv interviewed for the book, perhaps
captures the sentiment most concisely: "I like to play indoors better,
'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are."

Louv spills a generous amount of ink in hypothesizing why this
detachment exists. He argues that over-scheduled parents have little
time to add outdoor activities to their to-do list, and that structured
team sports have taken the place of free-form play. He criticizes the
media and society for what he calls the bogeyman syndrome - often
irrational fears that parents use to keep their children indoors, such
as the threat of child-kidnappings, mosquito bites, snake bites, or bear
attacks.

Louv also blames governments and private landowners for swiping the
freedom of outdoor play from our kids. Over-regulated park strictures
often make it unlawful for kids to build tree forts, construct rock dams
across streams, or even walk dogs -- things their parents did in their
youth. In an extreme example, some parks are now banning kite-flying,
asserting it may confuse and distress birds. "Stay on the trails and
hands off" is too often the new park mantra. Further, some nervous
landowners, worried about lawsuits, may be exacerbating the problem by
no longer letting neighborhood kids fish their farm ponds or play in
their woods.

Even community associations cannot escape Louv's scorn. Noting that 47
million Americans now live in housing governed by community rules, Louv
argues that "most housing tracts, condos, and planned communities
constructed in the past two to three decades are controlled by strict
covenants that discourage or ban the kind of outdoor play many of us
enjoyed as children."

Louv also raises awareness over the large volume of environmental
warnings and concerns freighted upon the backs of today's youth through
school lessons and the media. "If we fill our classrooms with examples
of environmental abuse, we may be engendering a subtle form of
dissociation," he writes. "In our zest for making them aware of and
responsible for the world's problems, we cut our children off from the
roots. Lacking direct experience with nature, children begin to
associate it with fear and apocalypse, not joy and wonder.

"Children learn to cut themselves off from pain," he adds.
"Emotionally, they turn off."

The result of this dissociation between children and nature, according
to Louv, is a condition known as nature-deficit disorder. "This term is
by no means a medical diagnosis," he explains. "But it does offer a way
to think about the problem and the possibilities - for children, and for
the rest of us."

Louv argues that the effects of nature-deficit disorder are far
reaching. It may inhibit a child's creativity, fitness level,
spirituality, ability to socialize, and decision-making process (to name
just a few parameters). Spending time outdoors has been shown to reduce
or eliminate the effects of ADHD in children, taking the place of
Ritalin. Outdoor expeditions have been shown to be life-changing for
at-risk urban youth. Plus, playing outdoors is just plain fun.

But Louv also frets about the global aspect of our dissociation with the
outdoors, and how it will impact the future well-being of our planet.
"The health of the earth is at stake," he writes. "How the young
respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the
configurations and conditions of our cities, homes - our daily lives."

"Childhood experiences are significant precursors for adult activism on
behalf of the environment," he adds.

To remedy the problem, Louv calls for a nature-child reunion, and offers
solutions on how to revive the freedom of outdoor play. He argues for
the return of summer camps. Not computer camps or soccer camps or
inventor camps, but recreational venues where kids can canoe and hike
and shoot arrows and identify birds. He calls for tort reform,
particularly in laws that govern the association between children and
public and private land. And he wants to see park rangers focus more on
outdoor education than writing citations and collecting entrance fees.

Louv also wants to bring wilderness back to the people. He thinks we
should re-evaluate our current thought process on urban design. This
would involve incorporating more wilderness tracts into subdivisions,
turning vacant city lots into green space, and establishing urban farms
for outdoor education. He also thinks Americans should develop
"adventure playgrounds" - tracts of wilderness where kids can build
forts and dam creeks and swim in ponds and plant gardens without
breaking park rules.

Louv acknowledges that parents may resist finding time to reacquaint
their children with the outdoors, but argues why doing so is so
essential: "Here is another way of viewing the challenge: Nature as
antidote. Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of
spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life - these are
the rewards that await a family when it invites more nature into its
children's lives."

~ Reviewed by Michael Strzelecki