Those who shall dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Rachel Carson

To my brother Douglas Preston. Remember that tree we used to climb when we were boys?

One day in the middle of October, 1987, a baby-blue Honda Civic with Alaska license plates, a battered relic of the seventies, sped along the Oregon Coast Highway, moving south on the headlands. Below the road, surf broke around sea stacks, filling the air with haze. The car turned in to a deserted parking lot near a beach and stopped.

I put a descender on the rope and went slowl down through Hyperion until I reached the bottom surface of the canopy, twenty stories above the ground. Then I took a last look around, and cast off. I kicked away from the tree as hard as I could and opened the brake on the descender full wide. The rope began to rush through the descender, and I fell out of the canopy on a fast rappel. Huge columns appeared, the trunks of Hyperion Grove, and I floated weightless down through redwood space.