"It was a challenge to get the right samples," Dalton says. "We've had a heck of a time learning when to take them and how to extract them. Gould has stayed at it, both in the trees, and night after night in the lab, and has figured it out. She deserves a lot of credit."
After we're done at the first site, Creighton drops us down to the second marker at 46 meters in the tree's wide waist, and then to the third at 36 meters. The difference between the three locations is striking. Light levels have dropped from 1,100 micromoles of photons/square meter/second at the top to 55. Gould's other readings have climbed, signifying healthier, easier living at the lower elevations.

We then move on to the two other trees. One has a dead top, the other has aborted female cones. One of Gould's tests proves inaccurate, but there's no going back to redo it; the crane is tightly scheduled. "By being up here, I'm much more aware of the complexity of the canopy," she says. "You can't possibly appreciate it from the ground. The plants, animals, temperature, light intensity, water--it is not static. All of this relates to antioxidant activity."

Has she made any interesting discoveries? "It's still early," she says, "but it is encouraging that we've confirmed that the hydrostatic gradient is in close accord with the theoretical gradient--meaning that, as predicted, trees do get drier as they go up."

Back on the ground, we load the gear into Dalton's truck. The official field work is over for the day but we're not done. Dalton takes us to an unusual strip of trees planted in a firebreak in the 1930s. He points out that the trees here are noticeably larger and healthier, because reforesters first planted the area with nitrogen-fixing alders. These fertilized the soil, which fed the later growth.

Gould appreciates the contrast, then instinctively digs at the roots of a fir, looking for and finding the mycorrhizal fungi she'd studied at OSU. Her enthusiasm hasn't flagged, nor is it likely to as she continues what is obviously her life's work. As she wrote in her application for use of the crane, "I am an outgoing and willing person. I believe strongly that there are drastic improvements that are encouraging and refining our understanding of forest communities. I have a strong work ethic and there is no limb I won't go out on to work something out."

Marnie McPhee is a Portland-based freelance writer.