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A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth.
When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.
As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.
Some VERY beautiful writing early on, and an interesting story. I found it a bit hard to get into, but somewhere around page 100 I was hooked. I know it's being compared to Into the Wild and other wilderness-meets-madness stories, and I don't think that this tale compares favorably. However, if this is the author's first book, I am excited to read more. ( )
There were times in Vaillant's narrative when I thought, "Aren't we going kind of far afield here?". For indeed, the book covers broad swathes of history, including compressed histories of the lumber industry, Native American history, oceanography of the Pacific Northwest, and more. And yet Vaillant always brings the story back around and you find that the diversions do enrich the tale. [Audiobook Note: Edoardo Ballerini does a first-rate job here.] ( )
The writing in this book is beautiful. I really love big trees and I love stories about the Northwest. This was an interesting story intertwined with the history of logging in the area, and a general commentary on humanity. It is pretty depressing to show the repetition in history of us consuming resources till they are gone, and how our free market economy makes it difficult to stop the vicious cycle.
Pertinent quotes:
"I'd never have made anywhere near the money I made in logging 'cause I didn't have any schooling. I can't say anything against it 'cause too many people depend on it. But how do you control it? The big companies always get the wood they want."
Replace wood with oil, and you have our current situation.
"You have the attitude... that 'If I don't do it, somebody else will." Any of this man's ancestors who had been concerned about the declining otter population would have been driven toward the same logic and by the exactly the same market forces."
All Trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste; And all amid them stood the Tree of Life, High eminent, blooming Abrosial Fruit Of vegetable Gold; and next to Life Our Dseath the Tree of Knowledge grew fast by, Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill. -John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 217-22
Dedication
For Nora
First words
Small things are hard to find in Alaska, so when a marine biologist named Scott Walder stumbled across a wrecked kayak on an uninhabited island thirty miles north of the Canadian border, he considered himself lucky.
Quotations
Last words
Only time will tell whether they will be plagiotropic dwarfs, as every other artificially propagated golden spruce has proven to be, or if they will live up to the lofty messasger they carry with them from the golden crown of their mother tree.
A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth.
When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.
As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest.
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Book description
As vividly as Jon Krakauer puts readers on Everest, Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest, where trees grow to eighteen feet in diameter, sunlight never touches the ground, and the chainsaws are always at work. When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island, the reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. FIve months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chain saw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell. The tree, a fascinating puzzle to scientists, was sacred to the Haida, a fierce sea-faring tribe based in the Queen Charlottes. Vaillant recounts the bloody history of the Haida and the early fur trade, and provides harrowing details of the logging industry, the omnivorous violence of which would claim both Hadwin and the golden spruce.
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