The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

by Richard Preston

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Environment, Natural History, Adventure, Biography

294 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Richard Preston is a journalist and nonfiction writer.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Preston looks at the very tallest trees on our planet and the people who seek them out, climb them and study them. This was a very engaging trip into a very unfamiliar territory. One amazing thing was that knowledge of the whereabouts of earth’s wooden giants is held by a very few individuals. The people on whom Preston reports range from Phd biologists to obsessives with no particular scientific background. He looks closely at tree-climbing methodologies (being a tree-climber himself) and at the extant technologies that support such endeavors. I learned things here, and got a far greater sense of what is lost when land is clear cut. Well worthwhile, educational and engaging.

==============================EXTRA STUFF

I first saw the article here, Lofty Aspirations, in Smithsonian Magazine back in 2002. But when I searched for it on that site, it was a nogo. Thankfully it still lives on the author's site.

January 3, 2018 - National Geographic - See Majestic Photos of the Tallest Trees on Earth

February 9, 2018 - Washington Post - A closer look at the tallest trees in the world - beautiful shots of the ancients - Photos By Carolyn Van Houten


Image from above article

March 17, 2018 – Smithsonian magazine for March 2018 – A fascinating article by Richard Grant, Do Trees Talk to Each Other?, about a German author and forester, Peter Wohlleben, who, in a new book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, offers a novel understanding of our woodsy friends. The title of the story in the print magazine was The Whispering Trees. It was changed for the on-line version. Amazing stuff.


Wohlleben compares beeches to an elephant herd—”They look after their own, help their sick and are even reluctant to abandon their dead.” (Diàna Markosian) - from above article

The April 2018 issue of Smithsonian Magazine included this short article, by Zach St. George, on California’s Giant Sequoias - How California’s Giant Sequoias Tell the Story of Americans’ Conflicted Relationship With Nature

April 3, 2019 - National Geographic - The world's tallest known tropical tree has been found—and climbed by Mary Gagen

September 26, 2019 - The Paris Review - The Intelligence of Plants - by Cody Delistraty

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

The idea that there is an entire unexplored world lurking in the canopy of what's left of our nation's redwood forests is intriguing. It seems unfathomable that in our modern life, with all our GPS systems and Google maps, there are still areas of planet Earth just waiting to be explored.

The Wild Trees is at its best when describing this hidden world. Sadly, that's not what the book is about. This is really a story about the people involved in the exploration of that world, with a few interesting details about the trees themselves scattered throughout. Although it's unfortunate that most of that description is wasted on the rather uninteresting question of precisely how tall each tree is. I'm sure that's an important question for the purposes of scientific research, but on the other hand, why should I really care if one tree is four feet taller than another tree?

I'll be honest, I heard about this book for the first time when the author made an appearance on The Colbert Report, and it sounded interesting ... until I heard the subtitle. "A Story of Passion and Daring"? Really? Preston finds these people fascinating, which is not terribly surprising since they're his friends and peers, but I found them tedious and obnoxious. Preston's frequent detours into narrating events and dialog are completely embarrassing, and I found his habit of using what a friend called "purple prose" highly irritating. The book does not benefit from Preston's description of a guy urinating. And for a book describing a secret world that most people will never have the chance to see to not have any photographs is just a travesty.

There's a fascinating book waiting to be written about tall trees. There may even be a fascinating book waiting to be written about the people researching them. This book is neither.

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Climbing Widow Makers

When I was a child I loved climbing into our apricot and French plum trees. Climbing was fun, eating the fruit was better. My dog Rex would sit under the plum tree waiting for me to give him some fruit. Yes, a dog eating plums.

But I grew out of the desire to climb trees after my preteen years,
while the botanists and other men and women in this book continued to climb, sometimes to their deaths.

This book is about finding the tallest tree in the redwoods, but why they had to then climb them after measuring them from the ground, I do not know. It is just that I don’t understand this desire, except to say that they had found huckleberry bushes growing in them as well as bonsais. This would make them worth climbing, that is, if it were not so dangerous.

The author spends a few beginning chapters talking about the deaths of people who had climbed these tall trees, and he was very graphic in giving these details. I could have gone without this. If you are squeamish, you may wish to skip the reading of this section in the book. It rather goes like this, kind of:
1. You can fall on your head, and then your head will split open, and your brains will scatter on the ground, everywhere. Your spine will be broken.
2. If you fall on your belly, your guts will come streaming out of your belly button in what will look like a very gruesome umbilical cord. Your spine will be broken.
3. If you land on your feet, your feet will fly off in all directions by the force of it all. Your spine will be broken.
4. If you land on your knees your kneecaps will spin around and end up in the back of said knees. Your spine will be broken.
The climbers in this book prefer trees to relationships, or so it seemed, but when they married, trees were still the biggest part of their lives.

A forest, to me, is a place to walk, not climb unless it is over a boulder, a small one. It is a place to enjoy nature, not put myself in danger. Speaking of which, the climbers never talked about seeing bears. That would keep me out of the woods, unless I was with some people who knew how to handle bears.

Still, even though I have no desire to climb a tree, this book was fascinating. The climbers sometimes slept in the trees. One mooring one awoke to flying squirrels climbing all over him. Animals in the wild, at least those who have never seen a human, have less fear of them, and in this case they had no fear at all.


And I liked that they had found huckleberry bushes and bonsai trees growing in the redwood trees, and there were strange insects as well. Then in Australia, when they were checking out other kinds of trees, they had problems with ground leeches. One man put his jacket on the ground and sat on it, but before long leeches were all over it and him. I must say, Australia has the strangest creatures. The more I read a about Australia’s strange and dangerous creatures, the less I wish to visit the place.

So, if you love nature and trees, this is a good book to read.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sections about the redwoods in this book were 5 star for me--but then, trees have always fascinated me, and Preston brings his intense focus on detail to these giants.

However, the sections on the PEOPLE in this book moved it down to a 2 star for me, since FAR too much time was spent on the soap opera details of their lives rather than on the trees themselves. And their lives seemed self-centered and crass.

Stephen Sillett is the first holder of the endowed Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University (the only university Chair dedicated to one tree species). Michael Taylor was his co-founder of many of the tallest trees. However, their personal stories (like many of our own, I'm sure) seemed petty and tiny compared to the gigantic wonders they study. Even Preston himself comes across as a tagalong when he gets into the climbing himself.

Since I'm a LORD OF THE RINGS fan,I was touched by the references to these works. ILUVATAR, in Tolkien, is the major god in the SILMARILLION, so giving that name to the third tallest tree in the Atlas Grove showed how MUCH Sillett cares--not just about the redwoods but about the world of imagination.

Preston should have stuck to the TREES--because, in this book, they are FAR superior beings to the people who study them.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston

I am writing this review from Iceland - the land of fire and ice - and where there are very few trees. As it happened Vikings cut down something like 97% of the trees for fuel more than a millennium ago. There are efforts afoot at reforesting but it will take centuries in this slow growing environment. The largest native tree here - a rowan tree - is only two meters in diameter and less than forty feet tall. Quite a contrast to the trees featured in this book.

The twin subjects of this book are the Sequoia sempervirens, known as the coast redwoods, and the explorers themselves who in the ‘90s and ‘00s discovered and climbed the tallest specimens of this colossal species.

The Wild Trees - written in 2006 - has become a classic in the environmental book genre. It traces the ecological adventures of three young tree huggers from their difficult childhoods to crossing paths as adults, developing friendships and then through their monumental discoveries. The scientific discussion of the world that exists in the canopies of the redwoods is fascinating in its own right.

This is narrative non-fiction but it deeply explores the biology of this special eco-system. I learned so much not only about trees but for example about the extensive numbers of lichen species growing on these trees and that huckleberry bushes and tiny crustaceans grow in the crowns three hundred feet above the forest floor. I also learned about a biological process called iteration. This is where a branch is just a clone of the main trunk. And then branches of the branch is a clone and so on. On one such giant a branch has originated more than a hundred feet in the air. It supports a vertical branch that itself has grown larger than almost any other tree species in the world.

In this book there is also a small part that is travel writing which I tend to enjoy. Many of the ancient groves discovered by the subjects of this book are in Northern California but there are trips to climb the Mountain Ash in Australia, the third tallest tree species in the world. In the latter chapters, we are introduced to the author. As he gets to know the subjects in the book he becomes hooked on the innovative techniques and adventure involved in climbing redwoods. He spent time climbing great trees on several continents. His passion clearly shines through in the book.

5 stars. Now one of my favorite non-fiction books. A perfect blend of science and adventure.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about Redwood trees. These trees exist along the coast of northern California and southern Oregon, they need fog, but not the salt so they are somewhat inland. The tallest one is named Hyperion 379.7 feet (115.7 m) tall and about 600 years old. It is fascinating that it was only discovered in 2006! These trees can live to 2000 years and has been around for over 240 million years!

[Meghan Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be a bit... Incorrectly marketed. I am a lover of redwoods. I fell in love with my partner among them & have many fond memories attached to the trees around Trinity, CA specifically, so I thought this read would teach me a lot of new information about their biology. I also REALLY love descriptive nature writing, so I chose to read this for my February book club because I was under the impression that it would be a detailed story about the vast natural life in the tops of redwoods. In reality, this book was much more about the people who climb the trees. I was honestly not truly captivated or interested in this book at all until it was almost over. I felt like towards the end, Preston spent a lot more of HIS time in the trees & that’s the only reason why the writing got more fascinating to me. I wanted to hear much MUCH about what the trees looked & felt like at a staggering 370 feet off the ground. Not to be impolite, but I just had no interest in hearing about the tree climbers divorces & previous jobs before getting into redwoods. I just think I was misled by recommendations for me to read this, so I just kept waiting for it to get better. I have now learned not to judge a book by its cover! Because the front & back covers also made me think this would be a lot more science-based. Overall, I would give this 2/5 stars because while most of it disinterested me, there were some parts that were well-written & made me feel like I was learning something worthwhile. I learned what epicormic branches are. I learned about the different types of mosses & lichens that are present in a landscape much out of my reach. I learned that copepods & salamanders live in redwoods even though they were previously understood to live most of their lives on the ground. I learned that redwoods are much older than modern Homo sapiens. I learned about tree climbing gear. And I also learned about people’s marriages, careers, mental breakdowns, friendships, near-death experiences, & scientific findings. I really enjoyed some particular parts more than others, so I will quote those below! “The fact that nature seems to know mathematics is a wonderful gift that we neither understand nor deserve.” “All of us as humans— we are homogenizing the earth’s biosphere. We don’t know what will happen to the biosphere or to the forests. I’m afraid that our work trying to understand the redwood forest might just turn out to be documenting something magnificent before it winks out.”

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am of two minds about this book. When Preston is giving us the impressions of actually climbing into these gigantic trees, I am transported to a world where new species abound high above earth in ecosystems "similar to the ocean's coral reefs."

When he is lecturing us or creating the tension of personal relationships, I find myself more conscious of his prose --- his lack of fluidity and attempts at a compelling style. The "story of passion and daring," promised in the title, comes through but is mitigated by the latter.

[M. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was good enough to get me to explore deeper into the dense Jedediah Smith Redwoods and find the Titans myself. Read the book early January, and found the Grove of Titans and Lost Monarch on January 15, 2008.

See > M.D. Vaden's hunt for The Wild Trees Redwoods

Unlike the book, I supplied one color photo of a titan. That's one desire for that book, which was lacking. If even but one nice color photograph.

There was more in the book than I expected about people, but after I read it, it was understandable that more about the trees was not practical. It's not a story about trees.

Someone wrote earlier that some parts had a cut and paste feel, and I felt some transitions were so abrupt, that it did feel that way sometimes.

For the fact that the book was interesting enough to hold for hours at a time, and for the large amount of research included, I gave it 5 stars. For other reasons, I could give it 3 or 4 stars. But the presentation and facts and history included merit making up for deficiencies. I've taught tree care, and the stuff in The Wild Trees directly related to trees and forests could fill one or two class sessions.

Some reviews I've read, stated that the book needed more about trees and forests. I'd suggest to go back, reread, and write down every fact and bit of history, and realize just how many aspects were woven into the entire book.

My mother is from the area mentioned in The Wild Trees where Marie Antoine grew up. The description is right-on-the-money.

As a profession, I work with trees, and nothing caught my eye in the botany category as factually distorted.

So the book gets the facts right, best I can tell.

For the more part, I found details about the people interesting. Others might find it mundane. But I appreciated to see how others too, have progressed through life from stage to stage.

Someone criticized details like eating Fruit Loops being mentioned or urinating - what else do they want, a sentence that says the character was "standing there"? Like that would be better?

Besides, even the critics must admit they remember the part about urinating or "Fruit Loops" !! Because they wrote about it. Had something like "standing" been written instead, they may not have remembered.

That's an interesting aspect of the book that deserves a second read - look at all those unique comments and descriptions that were used, and consider how well they cause readers to remember those parts.

[Kerri Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. I adore this book. Mostly because I adore talking about, learning about, geeking out about trees. Any trees. But especially redwood trees. And this book is fantastic in its breadth and scope and coverage of the history of studying the redwoods, and all the stops and starts and madness therein. Did I know there was an entire subset of people who spend (and have spent) their days climbing redwoods, and Doug Firs, and countless other species of trees? Not really. I really had no idea the history of studying the redwoods, but I love it. This is the very thing, the very book, I would have loved to talk about with my grandfather and my dad. I really had no idea the sort of biodiversity lying in wait in the canopies of redwoods, though it's easily one of the most thrilling images of a reality I've ever conjured: finding ripe huckleberry bushes 200-feet above the forest floor. That I read this days after finishing Rare Bird (which is a fantastic companion piece to this book) is the best sort of literary luck.

[Four-point-five stars for so many interwoven stories that'll stick to my bones for so many years to come.]

[Donovan Mattole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't a book for everyone, but I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a fast paced(although somewhat tedious at times) book. It is a window into the lives of those whose passion is climbing trees, and not just any trees - the tallest trees in the world, the coastal Redwoods of northern CA.

The cover caught my eye and then as I read the jacket, I knew I had to read it, as the setting is near where I grew up. The book is the story - over about a twenty year period - of a number of individuals who are passionate about finding, climbing and scientificially documenting the tops of these majestic giants.

Climbing trees was a passion of mine as a kid and while these"explorers" were grown men and women, there were so many times when I paused and had flashbacks to my own childhood - climbing through the treetops - building forts and treehouses and stringing ropes between trees. I've always loved trees. I just counted and I have about half a dozen paintings of trees in my house, including one I climbed all the time as a kid - the largest madrone tree in the world, until it came down in a storm in 2001.

It was also exciting to peer into the passions of others. It reminded me of the "Orchid Thief" - this is a story about individuals who are so passionate about trees that their lives take second place. The passion is so strong that it becomes their life, their career, their reason for living. This passion leads to death, divorce and heartache, but also life-long and deep relationships, marriage and incredible adventure.

I will definitely remember this story for a long time and the next time I'm visiting the family farm in the backwoods of Humboldt County, I may even climb a tree.

[Matthew Stocek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once you get past Richard Preston’s somewhat long, pedantic and oftentimes unnecessary explanatory writing, there’s a fascinating story here about the world’s largest trees and the scientists and eccentrics who spent their lives studying them.

[Misty Wilson read.fine.print · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t read nonfiction. I’m not interested in trees. I can’t remember the last time I climbed a tree or even THOUGHT about a tree and I’m not really very interested in botany or even science, yet I really liked this book called The Wild Trees by Richard Preston.
•
This is a book about trees, but it is fascinating because the author tells the stories of the quirky, fearless people that study them, beginning in the 1970s to present day. Whole other worlds exist at the top of these gigantic Redwoods and Douglas firs, and these people had the determination and intelligence to figure out how to scale the trees and then how to study their findings.
•
Some were obsessed with finding the tallest tree, some were obsessed with climbing the trees, some were obsessed with the plants in the trees. Will they ever find each other and work together? Will these massive trees ever be mapped and appreciated by our world? These are the questions that kept me turning pages, and also the facts about trees that made my mouth drop open in awe, and also the suspense that goes into reading about someone climbing a tree that is over thirty stories tall. Some people do fall. That’s all I’ll say.
•
I’m so excited for our trip to the Redwood National Forest in June now! I’m brainstorming on how to find some of the biggest trees mentioned in this book, but I know they remain hidden for the safety of the tree. But we can still look, right? How big can the forest be?😂
•
This book actually does contain some adult content, about three pages to be exact, and let’s just say things can be done 400 feet up in a tree that you maybe wouldn’t have thought of😳. I would still let my young adult read it but be aware.

[Melondrop · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, while it has its moments of fascinating ecological description and awe of the majesty of the natural world, is first and foremost a wet dream of the male ego. It follows the lives of several men in particular who are obsessed with being the first, finding the tallest, the biggest, exploring and literally “penetrating” “virgin” and “undiscovered” places in the trees. It lauds the “explorers of old” like Columbus, and more than once stresses that it is the “right” of a discoverer to “name” his conquest. for a book that occasionally deigns to lament that 90% of the old growth redwood forests are gone due to logging, it is unforgivable that it contains not even a hint of an analysis of capitalism’s role in that destruction, choosing instead to focus on the orgy of macho bullshit that I’d the main character’s quest to find and climb the “world’s tallest tree.” The few women featured prominently in the book at all are lovers of, in particular, the main character Steve Sillet - even Marie Antoine, who is a forest canopy scientist herself, seems to primarily exist in the book because of her relationship to Steve. The tree sex scene is fucking gross. The author mentions indigenous people, the Yurok, maybe 3 times, seemingly uninterested in their relationship to the trees because they weren’t obsessed with naming, climbing and conquering them. I’m glad I got to learn about the wonders of the tree canopies, the forests in the skies, the intricate biologies of the ancient redwoods, in the book’s only redeeming passages. But be warned: this book is shameless, comes off as incredibly narrow-minded and ignorant, and straight-up misogynistic at times.

[Daphne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think this was a bad book per say. I think that many would actually enjoy the method of story telling, but for several reasons - it just did not work for me. I love nature writing generally, and find giant trees endlessly fascinating, but this dealt much less with the biology and nature of them and it focused on the stories of some dudes that climbed and studied them. I found much of it and their stories quite boring outside of the actual climbing. If I want to read about someone bagging groceries and having a crush on a girl that shops there, then I'll pick up some chick lit.

[Flori · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the most fascinating read I've had in a long time. I loved learning about the old-growth forests of the northwest (which I previously knew nothing about). I loved learning about the science behind forest ecology (which I knew nothing about). I felt inspired by the people who developed ways to climb these giant trees and figured out that there's a whole world up there to explore. In short, I felt like I really learned a lot and enjoyed it too!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book would have been near-perfect if it had cut off the last few chapters... I thought the author went off on a tangent writing about himself and his own tree-climbing. The first 3/4 of the book were amazingly educational, and I relished reading through the chapters.

[LibraryCin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author starts by looking at the lives of three people in the 1980s. In 1987, Steve was a university student when he climbed his first really tall tree (can’t recall if it was a redwood in California or a Douglas fir in Oregon); also 1987, Michael was a rich kid in college, but not really interested in attending classes… he also discovered the really tall trees; and Marie (early 80s) in Ontario, who lost her mother at a young age and enjoyed rock climbing. Eventually, the three would cross paths as they (formally or informally) studied the tallest trees in the world, mostly those California redwoods and Oregon Douglas firs.

I really liked this. It’s a mix of biographies of each of the main people, as well as information about the trees and forests and – until the late 80s – no one had been up to the tallest reaches of these trees. There are ecosystems that live high up in the trees, and it’s tricky to know how to safely (as much as possible, anyway) climb the trees. It was interesting that the author himself did learn to do it and joined the scientists on their adventures in the trees. He even went climbing with his kids. I really liked this – all parts of the book: I like biographies, and I like (popular) science, so I enjoyed all of it.

[itchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

titular sentence:
p200: They would be climbing wild trees in Australia.

A couple of arborists climbed up a tree. Then they fell--in love.

[༺Kiki༻ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wild Trees is well researched and truly brings the forest to life. The glorious redwoods will leave you wishing you were there with them!

If you liked this book, you might also enjoy:

✱ The Trees in My Forest
✱ The Hidden Life of Trees
✱ The Tree
✱ Seeing Trees
✱ American Canopy
✱ My First Summer in the Sierra
✱ The Yosemite

[Cav · Rating 1 out of 5]

Remind me not to read any more books by Richard Preston... This is my third from the author, after his 1994 book The Hot Zone, and his 2002 book The Demon in the Freezer.
I didn't really enjoy those, and I didn't enjoy this one, either.

Despite fielding a topic that is full of interesting possibilities, and having some rich material to work with here - Preston's telling of this story fell short for me. I really don't like the way he writes, and I honestly don't understand why his books are so popular. To each their own, I suppose...

I found the formatting of the book particularly bad. Preston's writing jumps around; introducing many characters that the reader never identifies or sympathizes with, and then bounces back and forth between them for the duration. This managed to thoroughly grate on my nerves.
Thankfully, this was not any longer or I would have put it down...
1 star.

[Costen Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who knew a book about trees could be so interesting. Although this is a book 50% about large trees and 50% about people who enjoy climbing trees for recreation and scientific discovery.

I thoroughly enjoyed the scientific anecdotes the author added about redwoods, sequoias, Douglas firs and the canopy ecosystem. The comparison of the canopy ecosystem to the ocean depths and there relative lack of exploration is apt.

I definitely look at trees in the park differently knowing a completely different world of plants, animals, insects, lichens and mosses could be hiding at the top of their leaders.

[Dorianne Laux · Rating 5 out of 5]

A page turner. This non-fiction book reads like a novel. I couldn't wait to go to bed every night to see what had happened while I was away. I've since read Richard Preston's The Hot Zone and am currently reading The Cobra Event. He loves orinary people who do extraordinary things. There's an excerpt from The Wild Trees in the latest issue of Orion, along with one of my poems, and I'm so pleased and honored to be anywhere near this guy.

http://www.richardpreston.net/index.html

[Wendy Kiang-Spray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm planning a trip to see the California redwoods and wanted to read a good book that would get me excited for the experience. The Wild Trees was an excellent blend of stories of interesting people and their connections to nature/trees and facts about redwoods (like their amazing canopies) that I'll be happy to share with my family as we're hiking through the forests.

[tammy west · Rating 5 out of 5]

A “must read!!!”

It was A suspenseful pageturner for me,
iCouldn’t put it down and have sung its glories,
ever since, and will continue to rave about
it at every opportunity!!!

If iHad thE ability to enforce this, i’D mAke it A rEquired rEading bEfore anyone is ever allowed to chop trees down, or to so much as cut A single branch
off of one!

[Margaret Nilsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got this book as a gift a long time ago from my aunt, and started reading it while working in Oceano with ACE. Three years later and I finally finished it! I enjoyed learning about the characters and becoming more awe stricken by redwoods, and I’ve definitely been looking at and thinking about trees differently since I started reading it again. Did get a little bored with all the specific details and scientific findings beyond the more exciting adventure aspects. Finishing this books feels like some wholesome full circle moment as my aunt is now resting at the base of a redwood and it was a book I started at the very beginning of my career in seasonal work🌲

[Liam || Books 'n Beards · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't what I expected! I admit I didn't read the blurb very closely, and I thought it was more about the ecology of the giant redwoods. As it turns out, it was kind of a biography-by-proxy of a number of different 'tall tree hunters', and Steve Sillett in particular.

It was entertaining, but not exactly what I was after - my favourite parts were when it DID dip into ecology, the interesting environments that develop within the crowns of redwoods and so on, rather than all the touchy feely people stuff of the climbers themselves

Also a quite detailed description of how to have sex in a hammock hanging hundreds of feet above the ground while tied to a tree was something I probably could have done without.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Went into this blind after it was given to me as a gift. A pretty interesting adventure that'll make you want to strap on your boots and wander off into woods; to explore or study something that's not necessarily mundane, but overlooked or unappreciated.

[Thomas Ray]

Dewey 585.509794 P926w

[Ashley Lehman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was truly sad when this book ended...I wanted more. A great mix of information about the trees themselves (fascinating) and the stories of the people who explored their canopies (equally gripping). Inspirational to say the least. Other wordly at times. It just made me want to be up in a tree - I'll be taking a course in branch walking as soon as I can!! An excellent read!