Why does a foam-flecked reactionary like Derb keep up his subscription to a

left-elite rag like THE NEW YORKER? Well, here’s one reason: Richard

Preston’s piece on climbing giant redwood trees in the Feb. 14/21 issue.

The piece is gripping, in spite of some lefty-greeny asides and a dash of

Hemingwayesque gruff-loner-uebermensch twaddle. Sample:

“With my weight on the motion lanyard, I leaned back, until my body was

horizontal and my feet were planted on the trunk, and I walked up the trunk

of Adventure [name of a tree–JD]. I threw one end of my lanyard over a

higher branch, clipped it back to my saddle, and pulled myself up.

Suddenly, I hung near the top of the tree. At three huindred and

twenty-eight feet, I found myself in the middle of a bush studded with

huckleberries. I began eating them. They were tart and crunchy. The

branches in the tree’s top were festooned with beard lichens — they looked

like the frizzy beards of dwarves. It was a sunny day, and a breeze was

blowing, which stirred the lichen beards, and the air held a tang of the sea

– the Pacific Ocean lay over a ridge to the west. Adventure rocked in the

breeze, like a ship lying at anchor.”