Over the last few months, I have taken to starting my day by reading a couple of pages, randomly chosen, from Atlas Obscura Wildlife, a compendium of nature stories from all over the world. It is a brilliant book, thoughtfully illustrated, written with wit, that provides a reliable anchor in the swirl of almost always disturbing daily news.
Nature celebrates principles that have been politicized, denigrated, even criminalized. Diversity is a good thing, providing resilience and stability. Growth is about more of more for more. As a forest matures, there are more species, more connections, more productivity, more bounty. There is no waste, only opportunity.
Borders are open. Ecosystems segue one into another, stitched together by globetrotting aerial migrants, vertical commuters swimming up and down water columns, and determined travelers that make their way from inland freshwater streams to oceans, and back again.
There is genius everywhere.
LOOK UP
When my friend, Meg Lowman, heard about my morning reading, she sent me a copy of her latest book, Tree Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Arboreal Lives. Meg is an arbornaut. She coined the term, so she is also the first arbornaut.
Meg climbs trees.
This gem of a book isn’t about an hour spent in each tree. The title is poetic. But it is about 24 trees from all over the world, each a favorite of Meg’s. She has spent time in the treetops of all but one, the Dragon’s Blood tree native to Yemen, and has plenty of stories to tell.
In the 1970s, as a young graduate student with considerably more determination than money, Meg traveled to Australia to study the rainforest. Finding the forest was easy enough, but looking up, alone in a hot muggy buggy jungle, she wondered how she was going to travel the last 150 feet to her desired destination.
Until Meg came along, most of what was known about life in the canopy had been gleaned from studying the tops of trees that either had blown over or been cut down. In the time it takes a tree to fall, everything living in its crown flies, flits, scampers, jumps or starts to crawl away.
Even if everything stayed put, Meg couldn’t wait for the canopy to come to her. With the clock ticking on her time in the field, she took inspiration from those more experienced in ascending heights: mountain climbers. To reach her leafy summit, Meg shot a fishing line over a sturdy branch, then tied a rope to the one end of the line and pulled on the other until the rope was in place. Next, she attached a harness to the rope and ratcheted herself up, dangling in the air without a safety net, deep in the forest, the only human for miles around.
Meg—soon to be called “CanopyMeg”—found herself in a magical world long hidden in plain sight high above the fray. She calls it Earth’s “eighth continent.” Half the world’s species call it home.
A tree is always more than a tree. It is a habitat, an ecosystem, a provider of shelter, shade, food and water. A tree connects the sun, 93 million miles away, with vast underground networks, microbiomes that thrive in utter darkness.
I could have devoured Tree Day in a single sitting. The information-rich chapters are short and the physical book, while bigger than bite-sized, is small: 6” x 4.75” x 1”. Instead, I chose to savor Meg’s stories at the leisurely pace of one chapter—one tree—per day. The details were simply too wonderful to rush.
Mangrove flowers give out a heavenly scent, although no one knows why or for whom. They rely on wind pollination, so no need to attract pollinators. The generosity of mangroves, which protect shorelines and serve as nurseries for young fish, knows no bounds.
Coastal redwoods absorb moisture from morning fog through their leaves. Trees typically pump water from their roots to their shoots, which takes a lot of energy, especially in such a tall tree. Being able to sip directly from a cloud is a boon.
A massive baobab trunk is an oasis for the thirsty, including elephants, that can hold as much as 30,000 gallons of water.
Kapoks “offer swimming pools in the sky” for tree frogs.
Planting trees is good. Preserving old trees is essential: “…A koala can’t live on a seedling, nor can insect pollinators find refuge in the tiny canopy of a sapling.”
For five decades, Meg has been the Pied Piper for aspiring arbornauts, organizing teams all over the world for “bio blitz” expeditions to gather samples from treetops. She will do anything to get to the canopy, including, as seen in the National Geographic video below, wrangling a dirigible to airlift a raft.
Meg also pioneered building canopy walkways to create permanent structures for ongoing research, while providing local communities with steady ecotourism income. There are now walkways from the tropics to New England.
LOOK DOWN
He goes by the name “Nestor,” but beyond that the creator of the popular HabitatForge videos on YouTube is a mystery. Whoever he is, he has gift for creating the most amazing aquariums using bits and pieces collected from tide pools, rivers, ponds, marshes and puddles. Thanks to algorithmic kismet, HabitatForge videos began showing up in my feed one day and I was delighted. I “liked” one, so, of course, the algorithm delivered ten more, including several by other YouTubers. It turns out aquarium videos are a social media genre. Nestor’s are the best.
Nestor is a DIY David Attenborough with the curiosity to see whatever there is to be seen and the generosity to take us along for the ride. Watching life emerge from an unpromising collection of sticks, stones and a few scoops of water never gets old. There are predators and prey, courtships and babies. Nestor doesn’t always know exactly what he’s looking at, so in the spirt of crowdsourced nature-gawking asks viewers for their help to fill in the blanks. The comments section is part the joy. Yet even with blanks unfilled, the videos are riveting.
LOOK EVERYWHERE
After a long cold gray winter, signs of life are popping up everywhere. Daffodils, lilies, tulips, irises, crocuses, rhubarb—shoots of all shapes are slicing through barely-thawed ground. Buds on trees and bushes are starting to plump. Yesterday, it was 73°and sunny. Today, it is thunderstorms with a side of snow, with a windchill. That’s March, full of fits and starts, lambs and lions.
This spring, I will try to see the trees in my suburban/urban forest through Meg’s eyes and pay more attention to the dramas in the canopy. I will scoop up some puddle water and put it in a jar to see what happens.
Yet for all the glory around me, there is also no way to ignore the dismaying truth that too many stories about nature in the 21st century are about loss. Forests are shrinking, oceans are warming, glaciers are melting and the climate is addled. Even Atlas Obscura, my go to for daily encouragement, has a section on “endlings,” individual animals that were the last of their kind. Wildlife is on the brink, overwhelmed by the many challenges that come from sharing a planet with us.
••••••••••
This summer, Meg will be leading another “bio blitz” in the Amazon to assess canopy biodiversity and health. Will it be thriving or declining? Or perhaps adapting with new species? The only way to know for sure is to climb into the treetops and take a look.
Science is about gathering data, then making sense of it. Meg has a PhD, decades of experience and dozens of peer-reviewed papers to her credit but would be the first to tell you that anyone, no matter their level of education, can be a scientist: a citizen scientist who can help gather data. In fact, she would tell you that everyone ought to be a citizen scientist. There is joy in discovery. And power in knowledge. If you know something is wrong, you can do something about it.
That has been the motivation for dozens of American scientists who have donated their time and expertise to compile and write the first Nature Record report. The report, a comprehensive assessment of US ecological health, was commissioned by President Biden as the National Nature Report, then cancelled by his successor. That didn’t stop the scientists. They renamed the project and continued the work without government support, believing the American public has the right to know that our nation's nature is in trouble and our natural capital has been squandered.
According to a first draft recently released public review, freshwater systems are “overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and invaded.” Marine ecosystems aren’t faring any better. About a third of plant species and 40% of animal species are threatened with extinction.
••••••••••
The glimmer of good news is that it is still possible to make a difference. We can garden to expand habitat for native species (Homegrown National Park). We can volunteer at nature centers and sign up for river and beach clean ups. We can support legal efforts to restore environmental protections. We can vote for candidates who understand climate change is real and that funding scientific research is the smart move. We can become arbornauts just like Meg and protect the eighth continent.
We can learn.
Every day I am astonished, awed, humbled and inspired reading about nature’s endless bag of tricks. My morning ritual has become a saving grace. So, too, has watching videos of aquatic ecosystems evolve. No matter how unpromising the set up, life almost always finds a way. I watch videos by Mossy Earth, Leave Curious and others documenting what are mostly volunteer projects to “rewild” and restore ecosystems all over the world. When in doubt, add beavers. David Attenborough is a fan.
I also think about a young Meg alone in the jungle, figuring out how to get to the top of 150’ tree. The impossible is impossible. Until it isn’t.
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