In the trees, you answer to NO ONE
Have you ever read that book called My Side of the Mountain? At my elementary school it was sort of required reading, along with Hatchet, On Guerilla Warfare, and everything ever written by Ayn Rand. Anyway, the book was about some misanthropic Boy Scout who decides to run away from home and live in the woods, evidently because his dad said he wouldn't be able to do it. I can only remember parts of it, but I seem to recall the kid befriending a truck driver and a hawk, which may or may not also have been a truck driver, and basically kicking all kinds of ass out in the wilderness while living in a tree. At the time I liked it a lot. But not anymore. That kid was a pussy.
When I tell you the kid lived in a tree, what do you envision? If you're like me, you immediately think of some rugged guy in an elaborate Swiss Family Robinson/Ewok Forest City, basking in the canopy and stroking a yard-long beard as he blows smoke rings from a pipe made from the femur of a grizzly bear. That is living in a tree. What this kid did was bullshit. He just slept in the hollowed out trunk. He was still on the wet, stupid, smelly ground. What a wuss. Even a girl could do that.
This kid really got it wrong. Why live in the woods if you aren't going to live in a tree? That's like going to the bathroom just to piss on the floor. I just don't get it. I mean, the kid was smart enough not to be a monkey, but not smart enough to act like one. And you know what else? After a few months he just left. He got sick of the woods and returned to civilization, and I think he ended up going to Brown.
But I'm not that stupid. When I go live in a tree, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to the redwoods.
I was watching the Colbert Report the other day, and, as usual, the guest was some old fart who looked like he just slithered out of a week-long adult swim fiesta at the municipal shit pool. But I immediately felt like an ass for thinking that, because he turned out to be awesome. He wrote a book about these yuppies who like to scale redwoods, because evidently they couldn't find any good yoga centers in the middle of the friggin' forest. As I understand it, the book is mostly erotica, but it's also got some cool information about the secret world of the redwood canopy that I've been try to tell people about ever since Ferngully came out. Only it turns out I was wrong about the fairies. There aren't any fairies. (Yet.)
Anyway, here is some of the information he had to share:
- Nobody knows anything about the tops of redwoods, because almost nobody has the balls to climb up them.
- The flora and fauna up there aren't even known to science yet, which means the names of all the little critters there are up for grabs.
- Trees actually grow on trees. That's just cool.
- Some trees have giant caves in them from ancient forest fires, and that means there are probably tree-bears just waiting to be battled. I bet they're green. If I find them first I can name them, too. I'd call them Bitchettes.
- The animals in the trees have never seen the ground, and have never seen humans, which means they haven't developed the instinct to avoid us. That means I can both befriend the flying squirrels and easily catch and eat them.
- The network of branches means that you can travel hundreds of miles without touching the ground using only a grappling hook.
- The best parts of the trees are out of sight from the ground and the air above, which means nobody will find you up there and you can play music as loud as you want.
- In the trees, there's no country.
- No religion, too.
- And the best part of all? Free wireless internet.
