As a youngster growing up in Coudersport, I know I did.  I know most of my friends did.  Long before any of us were introduced to Robert Frost’s poem, “Bending Birches,” we had, one way or another, conquered most of the climbable backyard trees.  Indeed, some of us had gone so far as to build rather elaborate “tree houses.”  Very important – where else was one to retreat from the nagging, prying eyes of parents and neighbors.  The tree houses became our “clubhouses in the sky,” where we could relax, tell stories, get away from the girls, smoke the weed and otherwise escape the vexations of what, by today’s standards, would appear to be a rather benign childhood. 

What we didn’t realize, of course, was that our whereabouts were easily tracked by mothers and housewives peering ever so discreetly out of their kitchen windows.  And years ago when my own son announced one day, at the tender age of about 8 years, that he and his friend Dougie were building a tree house it brought back the memories of my youth - memories of the scrounged boards and nails from orange crates (yes, there was a time when oranges were shipped to grocers in nifty real wood crates from which an energetic street urchin turned tree-house-builder could extract all sorts of necessary building materials).  So, of course, I went thru my scrap lumber and turned it over to my son.

No one seems to know why children need to climb trees.  I won’t go into the various esoteric theories that have been advanced. Even city kids are furnished ‘jungle gyms’ planted in asphalt lots to facilitate the impulse. Usually it’s a passing phase of any child’s development, and, curiously, once passed may actually turn into a fear of heights.  But for some people, it isn’t a passing phase. 

In my case it lasted well into my undergraduate years:  Cut to an early winter weekend when I have a neat date.  The weekend includes an excursion to a state park.  As an English major it becomes necessary to actually demonstrate the technique of ‘bending birches’, not just talk about it.  (After all, it was something that my buddies and I routinely did here in Potter County in our formative years).  The accompanying photo, with yours truly hanging from the bent sapling looks impressive.  Alas, moments after the shutter snapped, the tree broke and I landed flat on my back at my date’s feet.  I had forgotten that saplings lose their sap and are brittle in cold weather!             So…perhaps my encounter with The Wild Trees is really a voyage back in time. Right up front, let me say this:  this is mind-boggling book.  Preston is not writing about backyard trees.  We’re talking about redwood trees,  trees that

 reach heights almost unimaginable to those of us here in the East (see scale drawing below for a comparison).  Furthermore, this is not a scientific book, not a National Geographic treatise, but rather an adventure story about a handful of today’s Dungeon and Dragons youths who become hooked on trees – BIG trees.  And one of them has a nightmarish fear of heights.  And how these kids stood the stuffy scientific community on its ear.  And launched, almost single handedly and with no more resources than the paltry wages of working in a fast food restaurant, an intense re-examination by the scientific community and government agencies of this country’s last remaining stands of these forest giants.

            What’s the tallest structure in Coudersport?  The Court House, of course. It stands, perhaps, twelve stories high. Imagine, if you will, a redwood tree in its place.  Say, it’s just an ordinary tall redwood – but it stands 35 stories high!  Now imagine climbing this tree with ropes and special climbing gear (developed by these young climbers) to the very top so that you can drop a tape measure to get an exact height measurement.

Schematic (drawn to scale) comparing our Eastern scene to a typical coastal redwood tree.Note
 the 6-foot basketball player in lower right corner. Redwood tree adapted from a Joslin drawing.

            Madness.  Looneyville.  Insane!

Who are these crazy kids?  Beginning in 1987, while still in their teens, Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, Michael Taylor, Chris Atkins, and others, unknown to each other at the time, became transfixed by the redwood trees growing near their California ‘digs’. Over time, they got to know each other and formed a close-knit community of climbers.  Most came from what we would call ‘dysfunctional’ homes.  Sillet pioneered new climbing methods, while Taylor, obsessed with locating the tallest of the redwood trees, provided leads. Together, they set new records in both discovery of unknown giants, but also in bringing the hitherto unknown biotic diversity of the tops of these trees to the attention of botanists and other scientists.

Preston, the author, who had been climbing trees in New Jersey (New Jersey!), thought he knew something about the craft. He had acquired some climbing gear, and applied to the youngsters to climb with them.  Sillet had to tell him that his gear “wouldn’t do a lick of good in a redwood.”  After months of additional training and enrollment in the Tree Climbers International School (Atlanta, GA), Preston was allowed to climb with Marie and Steve Sillet.

            I am not going to relate the gory details of climbers who made a single, stupid mistake and plunged to their death.  Anyone with an ounce of imagination can feel the gut seize up when reading about these climbs into regions where no one else had ever ventured.  This is, after all, a true adventure story. 

Imagine also scaling a tree named Iluvatar and getting lost in its crown.  Lost!  It turns out that the crowns of these trees can be so dense and entangled, so matted with vegetation of all kinds, that they constitute another ecosystem independent of ground-dwelling species.  Lichens, mites, two species of huckleberry, rhododendrons, currant and elderberry bushes, other tree species, salamanders, sea plankton (an unnamed species of copepod), and a myriad of other species of plant and animal life were discovered residing quite comfortably 35 stories above terra firma.  Most people think that the tropical rain forests contain the most diversified collection of life forms.  Not true.  It is now estimated that the redwood canopies of the temperate rain forests of the California coast, in the redwood range, contain three times the biodiversity of a tropical forests.  And they are much taller than rain forests.

            Fossil records indicate that relatives of the coastal redwoods thrived in the Jurassic period some 160 million years ago.  The trees can live as long as 2,000 years, with a normal life span of 600 years.  The tallest known redwood is Hyperion, discovered by Michael Taylor and Chris Atkins, and is 379.1 feet tall and contains 18,600 cubic feet of wood.  It is the world’s tallest tree. Such a tree could easily have a trunk over 22 feet in diameter at the ground.  According to Preston, probably less than a dozen people know the exact location of this tree.

            And now, the not so good news about this book.  In my opinion, Preston went a bit overboard on the detailed biographical details of his heroes.  True, this is story about real people, but I don’t think it would have hurt to spend a bit less time on the trials and tribulations of misspent California youth.  Second, I think the publisher, Random House, rather blew it by not including some appendices – one for some good color photographs of these giant trees and another with a list of additional sources for those who might want to learn more.  The pen and ink illustrations by Andrew Joslin are good, but somewhat limited in coverage. Perhaps, should a second edition materialize, these items could be included.

            I would predict that the editors of Nova and other documentary television shows will, if they haven’t already, want to adapt this story for the non-reader.  Good luck!  I can’t imagine how a film crew could get aloft.  Indeed, these trees are so tall, so tightly packed into their distinctive groves, it is almost impossible to even see the top of an individual tree.  It can take a crew of professional surveyors two or three days to get an accurate height measurement.

            Tired of the same old, same old TV junk.  Check out TheWild Trees.  At the Coudersport Public Library.

"Jedediah Smith Redwoods: Grove of Titans" - A must-visit website.  Mario D. Varden, an Oregon arborist describes his own discovery of The Grove of Titans.

Copyright October 13, 2007 Thomas P. Dewey