The most frightening non-fiction book ever written is called The Hot Zone, and it was penned by the New Yorker’s Richard Preston. The book was a true story of monkeys and Kenya, Ebola and Virginia. It scared the living hell out of me, and the only book surpasses it in describing fear and terror is Blood Meridian.

Preston’s new book, The Wild Trees, has no infected monkeys, but it does feature the tallest trees on earth, and paints a decent picture of life in Arcata, perhaps my next home. Preston follows dedicated arborists who decide, after sober thought, to climb these 370 foot monsters, poke around in the crown, and harvest the previously undiscovered life forms residing there.

These neo-hippies love to climb, jump, and fuck in the trees, and though I’ve only shagged at base level, Preston’s prose as it relates to the behemoths is fair. Trying to describe what it’s like deep in the groves – the dead silence, the lack of light, the springy beds, the height – is kinda dumb once you’ve spent time there, because words fail the tallest living things on the planet. If pagans have a cathedral, it’s there, north east of Arcata along the prairie creek.

The best part of the book details the history and biodiversity within the crown, and the fun these human-chimps have bouncing around the canopy. I want to get up in one of these bad boys, and if it’s only my ashes that get tossed there, that would be just fine. Someone rent me a dirigible.