This book was amazing. It tells the story of a group of semi-insane fanatics who became obsessed with climbing to the top of the redwood canopy and douglass-fir forests. Turns out no one had ever done this before, like 1993. And there’s a whole ecosystem up there. Like huckleberry bushes and ash trees growing out of the TOP of a redwood canopy, worms and snails living up there, even supposedly sea-water animals living in trees. Also, the people in the book discovered the actual tallest tree in the world, and climbed to the top (not the one that’s a tourist attraction—the real tallest one is a closely guarded secret, deep in the redwood forest). Crazy. I love trees, especially really tall ones. But for me the most interesting part was the relationships among these eccentric people who study the forest and climb 380-foot trees. Plus a lot of them live in Arcata, some of them went to Reed, and most of the action took place in the Pacific Northwest so I loved it.
