The Leaf Detective

Question 1

She admired their different shapes, colors, and textures.

Question 2

How did they survive?

Question 3

How long did they live?

Question 4

Why did they die?

Question 5

But looking at leaves from the ground gets a rainforest scientist only so far.

Question 6

We had already been to the moon and back and nobody had been to the top of a tree.

Question 7

It pained me if I was ever called upon in class.

Question 8

Instead, she found comfort and friendship and quiet excitement in plants.

Question 9

I was literally the only one in my town like myself.

Question 10

One professor refused to let her in his class, because she was a woman.

Question 11

Still she stuck like sap to her passion and followed it to graduate school and the tropical rainforests of Australia.

Question 12

In the dark, damp forest the trees rose up to distant rustling, squawks and screeches, shadows in the treetops.

Question 13

How could she get up there?

Question 14

From a metal rod, she welded a slingshot.

Question 15

Pull, aim, release, fire….

Question 16

Upside down, right-side up.

Question 17

The steamy forest painted her with a coat of sweat.

Question 18

Swinging and twisting, she dangled like a worm on a hook.

Question 19

I was frozen with fear.

Question 20

What is the branch breaks?

Question 21

Will my sewing hold up?

Question 22

Will a bird peck through my rope?

Question 23

At last, splashed with flowers and sunlight - the canopy!

Question 24

Lizards lingered.

Question 25

Sweat bees landed on her arm for a lick of salt.

Question 26

And the jungle’s music danced all around her.

Question 27

From then on, I never looked back…or down!

Question 28

Large and small, shiny and prickly, tender and tough.

Question 29

To scientists it was a new frontier - mysterious and unexplored.

Question 30

They wanted to cut them all down.

Question 31

You can’t do this, people said.

Question 32

She climbed the red cedar, the Antarctic beech, the sassafras.

Question 33

Plant chemicals can be used as medicines for humans.

Question 34

We have learned how to use only a very small number of the world’s medicinal plants.

Question 35

She monitored and traced them to find out how long they lived.

Question 36

I found these times alone to be very strengthening as they encouraged me to develop confidence in myself.

Question 37

Noises swarmed around her - munching…crunching…chewing…

Question 38

To my amazements and delight…most herbivores fed at night.

Question 39

Herbivores are animals that eat plant material.

Question 40

She had to find a better way.

Question 41

She brainstormed with other scientists.

Question 42

What if I fly up in a balloon?

Question 43

Or work from the edges of hillsides?

Question 44

Or train a monkey?

Question 45

They sketched the plan on a napkin.

Question 46

Now she could research day and night, in good weather and stormy, alone and with others.

Question 47

It had three suspension bridges and reached a height of one hundred and ten feet.

Question 48

The heat drained her energy, and she drained her water bottles.

Question 49

The climb seemed never ending.

Question 50

Plants gave me a voice!

Question 51

Now they could sell crops and plants instead of trees.

Question 52

Now, first and foremost, I ask “How can we save it?” so that later I can return and ask “What and Why?”

Question 53

It is shelter for animals and people, a recycler and provider of water, a creator of food and oxygen, an inventor of medicine, a soldier against climate change.

Question 54

It is essential for life on earth.

Question 55

If only I could have achieved as much as the tree!

Question 56

I have whittled away at relatively small goals in comparison to the grander accomplishments of a tree.