TREE SURFING

Composed: 2022
Duration: 3 minutes
Instrumentation: flute, piano, and digital delay

PROGRAM NOTES

In the book called The Wild Trees, author Richard Preston tells about people who climb the highest Redwood trees in places like Oregon and California. High in the trees that are sometimes equal to 34 stories high, huge trunks grow out of branches. In the center of these trunks are crotches that contain a layer of deep canopy soil that has grown into a garden in the sky containing tons of dirt, along with beds of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes. It is fascinating to read how these professional climbers sometimes take off their shoes and play around the high canopy out of sight of the ground. I imagine them hopping from one branch to another while holding onto a rope tied to a trunk.