Wild Tree Review

I read “Wild Trees” by Richard Preston right after travelling through the ancient redwood forest of northern California in October 2020 in an RV with my family. The book focuses on the early scientific investigations of the redwood canopy by Steve Sillet and Marie Antonie in the 1990’s. Marie and Steve plus some others, the college students that led these early scientific investigations were daring, and incredibly inspiring. In the Redwood canopy there is a whole ecosystem. Bill Denson who had discovered in the canopy of Lobaria a specific lichen and how it fertilizes old growth forests. Bill Denson’s discoveries especially fascinated Marie Antonie, a botanist student. “Wild Trees”  is a nonfiction book; I sometimes have a hard time reading historical or scientific texts but the author makes this book  hard to put down, and writes it as a story. I have a hard time reading non fiction books or historical events and scientific texts. But “Wild Trees’ ‘ was a wonderful book in which I learned a lot about the redwood forests, but also an early discovery. Now I have been inspired to climb with ropes up a huge redwood tree, and study organisms in the redwood canopy.