I have a philosophy I adopted at the age of 37. A natural conservatism and desire to remain in, or close to my comfort zone, was restricting my world view, narrowing my imagination and preventing me from meeting the most important people of all; the people you didn’t know you needed to meet. So, I decided to play a game of jeopardy with myself, I would always accept the third invitation I received and so… an adventure of chance meetings would change my life.

A call with an American friend led me to meet a man who believed he’d had a “near death” experience and had met a ghostly being telling him that he had to return to protect the Giant Redwoods and that he was the one chosen to lead the efforts. He was a huge man with big personality and I played along and so later he invited me to climb the biggest tree on earth which is on private land in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. I am terrified of heights. My youngest son told me this was a once in a lifetime experience (I was afraid he might be right!). My son dared me to go and I went hoping to back out and nobly give my place to someone else. Throughout the drive up into the High Sierras you travel through mile after mile of forest, the bronze colour of dying pines sickened by the boring Pine beetles, millions and millions of trees all resistance gone through thirst. At high altitude you start to see bits of green and then suddenly at the top of the accessible range you start to come across giants towering 300 ft plus into the sky with trunks 30 feet or more across, their bark deeply etched so a hand could slide into its soft crevices, resistant to fire as their propagation requires fire to crack open the cones.

It is interesting how at a certain point your fear of being thought a coward overpowers your fear of death! A bow and an arrow attached to fishing line launched over the first great branch 120ft up…rope pulled through then attached to your waist and you start to climb, your heart deafening and you dare not look down. At 260 ft up you stop and look left into an infinite view of green, then right and in the distance you see Death Valley, a metaphor for our times. Then, your hands feel the bark and you realise it has become soft and delicate like the neck feathers of an eagle or an owl. This massive tree is full of life and you start to let your imagination play. You are not thinking of the massive capillary action drinking up thousands of gallons of water a day, bringing water to the top of the tree; nor are you thinking of its enormous roots, writhing their way across dozens of yards fed by a mat of fungi, the mycorrhizal network linking this giant with all the trees in the neighbourhood, the so called wood wide web, so sensitive it can detect almost everything moving in the forest, but no…it was not of the science or its ecology, but it was of the nature of that life I was thinking about. This tree has lived for around 4500 years. It has outlived, to my knowledge (and that is pretty skimpy so it will be far more) 37 civilisations around the world.

Each with its aspirations and organising principles and each has peaked then faded before destruction or morphing into something else. I think for a minute and shiver at the thought that each of these civilisations will have contained an establishment. Each as clever as us, yet every time they are found wanting. Cast your mind back over the ruins, the records, the faces, heroes and villains…the moments that seemed so important in making us who we are. They are but a speck in this giant’s history measured by mighty shifts in nature. Fires, storms, earthquakes and drought. It has lived through them all, but now we wonder…their cousins are dying by the million and the weather may seem familiar, but the climate is a changing. You can argue if you like, you can say it is an opinion, a belief. This has happened many times before I hear one say. It’s nothing to do with us.

How many times has this been heard in the past I wonder. What is it we could change? What vanities or appetites should we suppress? What training can we give our youngsters to encourage them to think, to fully explore what it is to be a Citizen in the natural world? As I descend I reflect on my little act of bravery and feel elated. Later in calmer mood I reflect on bravery and feel ashamed. Bravery is about standing up for what you believe to be right regardless of what others may say and think and you wonder deep in your heart, if all of us stood up and said “enough”, we must bravely change the way we are, we must see it as the greatest adventure and opportunity presented to us. Above all else it is the most extraordinary chance to prove that we are worthy of the name we gave ourselves. Homo sapiens sapiens – the wise hominid, so wise that like New York we named ourselves twice.