If I could bring to college any character from any book I've read this year, I would definitely pick Steve Sillett from The Wild Trees. He would be a really cool professor to have, since he's really outdoorsy and adventurous. (And, in real life, since he is a real person, he is a professor!)
I would bring this character to college because it would give me a great opportunity to learn more about the magnificent trees I've read about and experience the thrill of climbing them for myself. Ever since I read The Wild Trees, the images that were painted for me have stayed in my mind and influenced some of the ways I think and do things. I have found myself telling some people I know about the amazing things that redwood trees are known for. When I learned biology and got interested in it, I immediately related some of the things I learned to the redwood trees I read about. It would be so great if I could study the trees and biology of them in depth from a person who practically lived in them, to take his class and go on his field trips and climb the trees with him. And I usually don't do those kinds of things, but it would be an awesome new experience to get my hands dirty and get out in a world I never knew about.
I want to see the vertical Edens boasted about in this book: "It was a garden in the sky containing tons of dirt, along with sheets and beds of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes. The canopy soil has been accumulating in Atlas for unknown numbers of centuries. It is composed of a mixture of rotting redwood needles, twigs, the roots of plants, and dust from the sky. The soil is apparently being fertilized by rotting lichens and twigs and redwood needles." (Page 149) I also want to be a part of the discovery of so many unseen things. Marie Antione, Sillett's wife even felt that "The only thing she knew for certain was that even if she spent the rest of her life studying lichen, whatever she found out about it would be almost nothing in comparison to what remained unknown about the tall temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest." (Page 179)
So if I could be a part of that, I would bring Steve Sillett, the person who climbed the world's tallest tree.
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Good use of evidence. The quotes you used are relevant, and make sense. I also think you made a good choice on a professor, since he really is a professor. :D
ReplyDeleteDid Steve take his students on this trip? I haven't read this book, so I don't know. If he doesn't, then I don't think you'd really want him as a professor, because chances are, he won't take you to see these trees. What do you plan on studying in college? Would he be a good professor for that? I don't have a see a very clear reason why you would want him specifically as a teacher, other than his experience. Bring up what he could teach you, and you'll be fine. :)