POV | Between Earth & Sky

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I remember when I was eight or nine years old... taking this very solemn oath.

When I grow up...

I want to do something that protects trees.

Something that pays them back for this sanctuary that they gave to me as a kid.

There are these deep disturbances that happen to people throughout their lives, starting maybe when they're eight years old.

The trees were there as my witness.

[ Rustling ] This was 2010.

There's a really funny story about this.

So I heard -- I knew that I was in Playboy, I was written up as one of the 20 "Meet Professors Who are Reinventing the Classroom."

So they interviewed me and they had this little piece here.

So I bought a stack of them at the checkout, and I said, "I'm in this Playboy!

I'm in this Playboy!"

And she looked at me and she said, "Yeah, and I'm Michelle Obama."

[ Laughing ] Like, in my wildest dreams.

Isn't that hilarious?

Okay, that's done.

That's done.

Oh, my God.

Here they all are.

Wow.

These are all my lab notebooks from 40 years of field research.

Yeah, yeah, I'm remembering each tree that we g-- like this was "Figuerola."

Oh, my God, here it is!

This is the discovery of canopy roots, right here.

"Observation -- at the crotches of many trees are clumps of roots.

It shows a truly mutualistic relationship.

It'll be hard to prove, but exciting."

That is correct, it was exciting!

[ Laughs ] I can't believe I found exactly when I found canopy roots!

There they are.

So, the tree was putting out roots into this soil that is created by the decomposing mosses that live on top.

This tree can actually get nutrients and water from the very mosses and soil that it itself supports.

But when you're up, you know, a hundred feet and you see root systems, you go, like, "What the heck is going on with this tree?!"

This is so cool!

And I also then climbed trees in New Zealand, tropical rainforest in Costa Rica, and discovered that lots of different tree species do this.

So now we'll put the curtain of charity back on top.

-The combination slingshot/fishing pole is Nalini Nadkarni's own invention.

-Nalini's a tropical biologist... -Yes!

-...who's brought mountain climbing techniques to do her research.

-Hooray!

-She's a professor of biology at the University of Utah, published more than 120 articles, been featured on IMAX, and appeared on "Bill Nye the Science Guy."

-I feel really as proud of Treetop Barbie as I do about all those academic awards, because it might make it more okay for a little girl who was the little Nalini to think, "I could be a scientist."

Each time I go up there, it's this sense of newness, of seeing the world in a different way.

-Professor Nadkarni ended up founding a whole new school of biology.

She joins us now.

Nalini Nadkarni, welcome to "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!"

-Thank you very much.

-You're very welcome.

It's great to have you... -Whoa, I can see forever!

-It's really my great pleasure to introduce the "Queen of the Rainforest Canopy," Dr. Nalini Nadkarni.

-What I invite you to do is to envision, for a moment, your favorite tree.

What are the values that made that tree special to you?

[ Indistinct conversations ] -What's your favorite tree?

-It's a tree in Costa Rica that I've climbed many, many, many times.

It's a strangler fig, and it has this huge trunk, and then the branches just go out so far, they just stretch and stretch completely horizontal, and you just think, "How can a tree support such long, heavy branches?"

But it does.

It's a very strong tree.

And it's just filled with epiphytes, just filled with mosses and orchids, and it goes on forever.

-Sounds beautiful.

-Yeah.

How about you?

It is so great to see you guys.

Yeah, thanks.

-So great to see you.

-Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

-My name's Indira.

-Hi, Indira.

-And it's just so cool to see someone that looks like me.

-I -- [ Laughs ] So are you from India?

-No, my dad is.

My dad's from India... -Your dad is.

Same with my dad.

-...and my mom's white.

-No kidding.

So we've got similar things.

Yeah.

-And it's just so amazing to, like... -Oh, that's great.

Great.

-...see you be somewhere that I want to be.

-So what are you interested in?

-I'm really interested in soil science.

-Oh, okay.

Great.

-Whether it's like in forests or in agriculture.

-Okay.

♪♪ July 3rd, 2015.

I was doing field work in the Olympic National Park, in the temperate rainforest with some graduate students.

It was a beautiful day, it was clear, and we had a prearranged place, where I've worked and I've done research for decades, literally.

Have climbed trees hundreds and hundreds of times.

For two of them, it was the first time they'd ever gotten into the canopy.

Supported by a rope no thicker than your pinky finger.

You are really out there in this three-dimensional volume.

So I went up this tree about 50 feet, and as I was leaning over the branch and looking out, trying to figure out where I would put my next sample... suddenly I was not feeling the tension of that rope holding me.

And then I fell.

♪♪ I had four operations in four days.

My doctors did not know whether I would walk again.

Nine broken ribs.

Five exploded vertebrae.

I had ruptured my spleen.

Breaks in my pelvis in three places.

I had a broken fibula.

I lacerated my left lung.

And probably most critical, I cracked my cervical vertebrae number two, which is known as the killer vertebrae.

If it had been another few millimeters, that would've been it.

I was in the hospital for like two months.

When I was in the ICU, I experienced these hallucinations that made me doubt my own intellect, my own sanity, the most troubling thing that I could doubt.

I knew who I was.

But, if I couldn't go running, if I couldn't write another grant proposal, if I couldn't climb trees, who would I be?

What would I be worth?

It was like a super identity crisis happening overnight.

But I hadn't really stopped, the way this fall made me stop, to be forced to confront, maybe for the first time in my life... "Well, Nalini, who are you?"

♪♪ We grew up in suburban Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. My father was from India, a scientist, a Hindu.

My mother, from Brooklyn, New York, of Russian parentage, an Orthodox Jew.

And, you know, in Indian families, and also, I think in Jewish families, there's a real value that's placed on boys instead of girls.

So I know that my parents wanted me to be a boy, because they actually hadn't picked out a girl's name.

I think I always felt like I had to somehow accomplish things just to get some small amount of attention.

And I think, when I look back on it, that was probably the root of this journey that I've been on, which is like riding this bright red arrow, where, if only I could achieve something more, something fancy, or do something important or something worthwhile, then I would be somebody in my family.

The outside of the house always looked really good.

The kids are well behaved, Dad has a great job, but there were these sort of incongruities about the inside of the house.

I think my mom would not break the picture that this was a great marriage, this was a great family.

I think there was this underlying core that really was broken.

There was something really deeply wrong there.

And, you know, I've lived with secrets from my childhood that I knew I had to keep enforced because, otherwise, there would be terrible consequences.

Like that long childhood secret that none of us should hold.

"Be quiet.

Don't talk.

You do not have the right to refuse."

[ Voice breaking ] You know, I knew my mom was sleeping on the couch, and my dad would call me down from the third-floor bedroom.

He would tell me to shut the door.

My dad would always say, "Don't ever tell anybody about this.

And if you do, I will stop loving your brothers and your sisters."

I knew it was bad, but I thought it was something I did that was wrong.

None of us should hold that.

None of us should hold that.

Where was that picture of me?

That little Nalini.

That's her.

You know, those maple trees that she used to climb after school... they were dependable, you could trust them.

They didn't have any harsh words to say, and they didn't have any expectations.

If I didn't climb them one day, it didn't matter.

I wish that she knew that people loved her.

'Cause I think she didn't know that.

Okay.

[ Sniffles ] ♪♪ Most of us, including myself, go through life just, like, doing stuff and not understanding, like, "Why did you do that?"

Yes, I'm walking again.

I'm running again.

I'm doing research again.

I'm doing public engagement again.

But the threads of those disturbances can continue to precipitate other disturbances.

Even though it's been seven years since I fell out of the tree, I'm still not quite sure what that identity of the new Nalini is.

That "Third State Nalini."

It's neither the original state, nor is it the severely disturbed state, but it's some third state that may not be better or worse than either one of them.

Okay!

Hi, Amy.

-How are you?

-I'm fine.

-Thanks for talking to me again today.

-Good, good.

Thanks.

-So, in terms of, like, possible research questions you could be asking or that you have recently asked, could you just give me, like, two or three?

-Sure.

So one of the questions I'm asking now are the effects of disturbance, physical disturbance, on canopy plant communities.

And I do a series of stripping experiments.

I will just cut off stems and leaves in order to understand responses of these plants to disturbances of various kinds, from physical stripping to climate change.

-Sure.

-Hold on one second.

-Okay.

-This is the "Master Caster," which I invented about 30 years ago.

-It looks like a fishing rod.

-And I just go... And then, I'm not going to do this here because I'm in my lab and I have glass windows over there.

But, anyway, I pull back, I aim for the branch.

I let this go, and hopefully it goes up and over that branch.

Then I'm going to sit in my seat harness like this, and see how it's holding my weight?

I'll stand up in my seat harness and move the jumar up as I stand up.

And I don't know if I'm out of the picture yet like this.

Could you move the... -Yes.

-Just back a little bit?

-Yes.

And then, you just stand up, sit down, all the way up to the top of a 200-foot-tall tree.

-Okay, this is the most interesting perspective I think I've ever seen.

-[ Laughing ] Oh, that's so funny, Amy.

-Great.

Well, that's everything that I had.

-Okay.

Well, good luck with the rest of the article.

-Yeah, I'll send you a link when it's up.

-Okay, great.

Thanks, Amy.

Take care.

-Bye.

-Bye-bye.

So, now I'm coming back to Monteverde.

We'll be climbing up into the canopy to find out what grows back after that kind of a disturbance.

Oh, no.

-It's "Keylor."

-Wow.

This was one of our trees.

So we just lost three plots.

Oh, dear.

¿Qué significa?

[ Chuckles ] -No sé qué significa.

Y era un buen árbol también.

-Es una lástima.

-Si es una lástima.

-Now, if "Figuerola" goes down, I'm going to have to have a national day of mourning.

Oh, my gosh.

I set up the plots two years ago, so they're ready to be censused.

Just enough.

I got my field assistant, who's -- you know, he knows exactly where the plots are.

So, actually, at this point, there is absolutely no pressure from the outside to actually do this.

He's a lot faster than we are.

It takes a lot of strength to do it that way.

You know, when you watch a documentary of scientists in the field, and they always know exactly what they're doing next.

"Okay, send up this piece of equipment.

Okay, do this, do this."

It's like, how often that just isn't true.

Like, "Oh, no, we forgot the tags.

Oh, hey, are the tags down below?"

"No, I don't see them."

"Oh, oh, they're up here in my..." There's so many stupid mistakes made.

It's definitely getting harder.

You know, just, I'm not as strong as I used to be, and that's kind of awful to realize.

Okay.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Laughs ] ♪♪ Well, I'm moving up.

♪♪ Hoo!

♪♪ Fantastic.

♪♪ You really see the canopy now.

Okay, muy bien.

Yo creo que este es un "control."

-Eso es "control."

-Y no estaba cortado.

-Exacto.

♪♪ -¿Y este?

¿Terminado?

-Mmm hmm.

-Que bien.

I feel great.

I feel like I'm back home again.

It's weird.

I thought I'd be a lot more scared, but I'm not.

Maybe it's because it's "Figuerola."

Like, this is such a homey place.

You sort of forget how high up you are.

♪♪ ♪♪ All right.

Oh, yeah.

That is so fun.

It's pretty amazing.

Even now, 40 years after I did those initial stripping experiments, I can still see the imprint of those disturbances.

Elaphoglossum.

Pleurothallis.

Clusia.

Disterigma, this is in the blueberry family, one of my favorite plants.

Although these canopy plant communities appear to be lush and vibrant, diverse and functional, they are actually quite fragile and quite vulnerable to physical disturbance.

It is actually very rare for any system, after a disturbance, to revert to its former state.

It doesn't happen in nature.

It doesn't happen in human lives.

I feel like I'm getting somewhere closer to that "Third State Nalini," but she's still a bit mysterious to me.

Still hasn't quite gelled yet.

♪♪ And I imagine I'll be working on this, you know, for the rest of my life.

♪♪ You see, when I was little, climbing trees... you know, in those maple trees I used to climb to get away from my father... the trees were there as my witness.

I love that little Nalini.

I haven't always loved the adult Nalini, but I do love this little one.

♪♪ Maybe that was the little Nalini's first journey, was saying, "This tree is so solid and so supporting.

That's where I want to be."

[ Chuckling ] Oh, man.

There's the rope.

[ Exhales deeply ] Still up there, seven years later.

♪♪ Mosses are so beautiful.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I'm just going to lie down.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

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