Meg Lowman - The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us

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This book is dedicated to those lifelong planetary heroestrees. I hope my passion for these leafy giants will inspire readers to share a sense of wonder for

our eighth continent, and maybe we can

help save it, together.

Big thanks to Eddie and James for joyfully climbing in many forests with their mom.

I WILL NEVER LOOK AT A TREE in the same way again, nor will the rest of the world, thanks to the author of this book. It now seems obvious that most of what makes a treeas well as what constitutes a forestis above eye level, but until Meg Lowmans irrepressible curiosity inspired her to look at trees from the top down, most humans tended to view them from the bottom up. What they missed is most of what makes treetops not only individual miracles, but collectively the source of shelter and sustenance for most forest dwellers, with dividends for the rest of life on Earth. I was thrilled when I heard about a fellow botanist who had devised ways to not only use her natural primate abilities to climb trees, but also to take tree-climbing to new heights with ingenious lifting techniques and, pushing further, to develop sky-walking pathways among the trees leafy crowns. In this engaging volume, she shares her view with stories that you know are true because You just cant make this stuff up!

For a scientist and explorer, it is satisfying to make new discoveries, to go where no woman (or man) has gone before, to see what others have not, and to find meaningful pieces of the great living puzzle of life that is unique to Earth. But Meg Lowman does more, excelling in communicating her findings not only to scientists in the arcane language of numbers and graphs, but also to non-scientists with contagious enthusiasm and meaningful rationale, in language and humor befitting the audience, conveying why trees matter and how their existence and ours is inextricably connected. She also instills a sense of urgency about embracing the planets remaining natural forests with enhanced protection, speaking in classrooms and boardrooms, in villages far from tall buildings, in the offices of government officials, electronically and in print, with the world at large.

Throughout history, people have taken from nature whatever was needed or wanted from the worlds lands and waters. When our numbers were small and the natural world was largely intact, our impact was slight, but after one hundred thousand years of a more or less peaceful relationship with nature, the past five hundred, and especially the past fifty, have marked a turning point that does not bode well for the future of life on Earth. Human capacity to consume and alter the nature of nature has reached perilous tipping points for climate, biodiversity, and land and water use, compounded by pollution, all driving changes in planetary processes and the underpinnings of what makes Earth hospitable for life as we know it. The good news is the other tipping pointknowledge. Children in the twenty-first century (adults, too) are armed with the superpower of knowing what Earth looks like from space, of seeing and hearing about events across the globe in real time while understanding the new perspectives of geological time, of seeing Earths place in the universe, of vicariously traveling into the inner workings of cells, to the depths of the deepest seas, and to the tops of the highest trees. Half a century ago, it was widely believed that Earth was too big to fail. Now we know. If Earth is to remain habitable for the likes of us, we must take care of what remains of the natural systems that took 4.5 billion years to make and a bit more than 4.5 decades to break and do our best to restore damaged areas to better health. There is still time to hold on to the last safe havens where trees are intact, hosting miraculous creatures that are as vital to our existence as we are to theirs.

Bravo, Meg Lowman, aka Your Highness, for sharing your journey in this book, and for launching Mission Green, thereby inspiring others to understand and know why we must take care of the natural world as if our lives depend on it. Because they do.

SYLVIA A. EARLE, aka Her Deepness, founder, Mission Blue

Oceanographer, botanist, National Geographic Explorer in Residence

1. Always carry a headlamp, not just in the forest but anywhere even on a plane or traveling by car.
2. Keep a few tissues in your pocket for those emergency ablutions behind a tree!
3. Wear a vest with lots of pockets.
4. Never drink more than half of your water supply every time you hydrate so you always have some left, and it always helps to tell someone your itinerary in case a rescue is required.
5. Keep your camera handy for amazing discoveries, even if it is just on your phone.
6. Carry a poncho. It can serve as a ground cloth as well as rain gear.
7. Oreo cookies are a wonderful energy snack!
8. If you are a parent, carry a few photos of your kidsthey work well to break the ice with other cultures, especially where language barriers exist.
9. Use all five senses, relentlessly.
10. Keep a journal so that you can recall amazing stories, biodiversity, and observations.

IMAGINE GOING TO THE DOCTOR for a complete checkup and, in the course of an entire visit, the only body part examined was your big toe. The visit ends with a pronouncement that you are perfectly healthy, but there was no test of your vital signs, heartbeat, vision, or any other part of youjust the big toe. You may have gone in with a broken arm or a headache from high blood pressure, but the assessment of your lowest bipedal extremity alone couldnt clue the doctor in to the real trouble. How would you feel? At the very least, youd probably switch doctors.

For centuries, the health of trees, even those ancient giants stretching hundreds of feet high into the clouds, was assessed in just the same way. Examining woody trunks at eye level, scientists essentially inspected the big toes of their patients and then made sweeping deductions about forest health without ever gazing at the bulk of the tree, known as the canopy, growing overhead. The only time foresters had the chance to evaluate a whole tree was when it was cut downwhich is kind of like assessing a persons entire medical history from a few ashes after cremation. In tropical forests especially, the lower levels are as different from the upper reaches as night and day. The ground receives as little as 1 percent of the light shining on the crowns. So the understory is dark, windless, and often humid whereas the canopy is blasted with sun, whipped by high winds, and often crispy in its dryness between rainstorms. The gloomy forest floor is inhabited by a few shade-loving creatures, while the canopy hosts a riotous variety of lifemillions of species of every imaginable color, shape, and size that pollinate flowers, eat leaves, and also eat each other.

Before the 1980s, foresters unimaginatively overlooked 95 percent of their subject; almost no one paid attention to the treetops. Then, in 1978, a young botanist with a lifelong passion for green giants and infatuated by leaves arrived in Australia on a fellowship to study tropical forests. Coming from the temperate zones, this neophyte knew almost nothing about the tropics. During her first visit to a rain forest in Australia, she stared up into the most dizzyingly tall trees shed ever met and thought, Holy cow, I cant see the top! That gobsmacked botanist was me.