Up in the Redwoods With Richard Preston

Redwood trees have been around for thousands of years, but very few human beings have seen them the way Richard Preston has seen them.

Preston, author of The Hot Zone, described the tops of redwood trees as “Earth’s secret ocean,” at his talk on Monday during the 2011 Wallace Stegner Lectures in the  

Preston's research led him to California, where he met scientists Steve Sillet and Marie Antoine. During his research, he learned that no one knew how old redwood trees really were. The oldest one is believed to be 2,500 years old.

According to Preston, it is hard to determine how old the redwood are, for two reasons. The first is that the National Parks Service will not allow you to drill through a live redwood tree to count the rings. The times it has been allowed, however, the tree rings were so tight it kept breaking the drill bits.

Up in the trees, Preston, along with Sillet and Antoine, studied how the redwoods received moisture. He showed the audience pictures of Sillet and himself installing moisture readers up in the redwood trees, 200 feet in the air. They learned that redwood's leaves retrieved moisture from the fog, and then the water runs down the tree. He explained that they still do not know how far down the water goes.

“Redwoods literally live off the sky,” Preston said.

Preston began climbing trees with his children in New Jersey as research for his book. It was “a wonderful thing to do with his children,” he said.

He and his children would camp out in “tree boats” (canopy beds), 65 feet up.

“I left with the feeling, of, 'Geez I wish I could have been his kid,'” attendee Jane Rusnak said jokingly.

Preston described how time moves slower up in the trees—he calls it “tree time.” He encouraged all to think of time in the big picture, as galaxy time, and then to remember that this is the Milky Way's 40th year. In regards to galaxy time, redwood trees have been alive for five minutes, and human beings 10 seconds.

But even though human beings have been around for only 10 seconds, Preston concluded, we have the ability to preserve and ask questions—unlike the redwood trees.