The Douglas fir had been dead for quite some time, its wood petrified, its trunk split open by a redwood bomb. Its remains were leaning against the massive trunk of its executioner. Though it was still a good distance from the redwood I needed to reach, I believed that, given access to the canopy, I could forge a route among the treetops and buttresses that would lead me to my cephaloped companion … assuming, of course, it was my cephaloped companion calling out to me.

Working my way onto the Douglas fir’s partially uprooted trunk, I balanced myself atop the dead tree’s rotted remains, the trunk of which was listing at a thirty-degree angle. Bending at the waist, I began walking up the tree like a chimpanzee, gripping limbs and vines to secure a handhold.

Eight minutes later, I had gone as high as I dared. Nearly two hundred feet off the forest floor, I had run out of dead tree to climb.

The redwood’s midsection creaked as its treetops swayed gently against the blue sky, its lowest branch—forty feet above my reach—mocking my assault.

Redwoods are monoecious, possessing both male and female parts. The male organs, called strobili, are small conelike features that grow near branch tips; the female organs being rounded cones that are fertilized through grains of pollen that contain sperm cells. Both provided me with a potential means to reach the canopy.

Carefully inching my way along the uppermost branch of the Douglas fir, I reached out to the redwood’s trunk and a rounded female cone, testing the strength of the protrusion. When part of it flaked away in my palm, it released butterflies of fear in my stomach and I looked down … a big mistake.

First, my quadriceps began shaking, then my arms. Paralyzed in fear, I remained in place, summoning the courage to retreat.

The pan flute cry reached out to me. The creature was dying.

I reached up to another conelike growth. Sinking my fingertips deep into the strobili, I swung my left leg away from its Douglas fir perch, my bare toes searching the redwood bark for something to grip … slipping on bark and mushrooms until my foot came to rest on a burl—a benign growth—the size of a watermelon.

Restricting my vision to the trunk, I stepped away from the Douglas fir, both feet sharing the burl—a risky move. I hugged the redwood, feeling with my free hand for another knot, discovering instead a coarse vine. Relief washed aside my fears as I gripped the woodlike liana with both hands and pulled myself up, my feet walking the trunk—the cursed vine suddenly uncoiling from its growth, dropping me thirty heart-pounding feet, my palms sliding the final splinter-collecting, flesh-scorching few seconds before the brakes held fast.