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willemite

willemite

Currently reading

Hieroglyph: Stories and Blueprints for a Better Future
Neal Stephenson
Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated
Natylie Baldwin, Kermit D. Larson
The Girl on the Train: A Novel
Paula Hawkins
Our Souls at Night: A novel
Kent Haruf
Above the Waterfall
Ron Rash
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
Cathy Whitlock
The Homicide Report: Understanding Murder in America
Jill Leovy
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Erik Larson
The Gods of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring - Richard Preston Updated July 10, 2013 - link at bottom

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) at the technologies extant 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.