Loose shards of limestone clinked like broken crockery under my feet as I made my way slowly up the mountainside. The ground was a tinder-dry jumble of exposed bedrock. Thin layers of soil lay between shattered boulders, and dry, wispy grass grew in patches where it could. It was a wonder that anything could grow here at all, let alone thrive, and I marveled at the enormous trees rising straight up from the bones of the earth around me.
These were Atlas cedars, and the clear mountain air was laced with the spicy scent of their resin, a wonderfully evocative smell that seemed to float down like incense from another century. Looking up, I could see their topmost branches bathed in bright sunlight, while down here among the shadows I was surrounded by their wide trunks standing amid a spartan understory of holly and maple.
It was mid-October in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Red berries in the branches of thorn trees confirmed that autumn was here, and although the day was warm, there was a flinty edge to the mountain breeze that whispered of a harsh winter ahead. Baked to within an inch of its life by the fierce North African summer sun, then plunged into subzero temperatures and blanketed in deep snow during winter, this forest was a place of extremes. Anything growing here needed to be hardy and resilient to survive. The gnarled cedars around me certainly were. Unlike the younger trees growing in sheltered spots farther down the valley, these massive veterans had real personality. The grove I was standing in was huddled on a steep ridge, like a regiment of soldiers making a last stand at the end of a battle. Each was totally different from its neighbor, and their body language seemed defiant against the ravages of time and weather. Branches snapped off by winter snowfall, trunks scorched by summer fires: each tree was a living record of its days, with epic stories laid bare for anyone to read.
Selecting a space between two roots, I sat with my back to a trunk and looked down the slope I’d just climbed. It looked steeper from here, and I was now level with the upper canopy of several big cedars. Their layered horizontal branches were backlit by the morning sun, and their delicate evergreen needles were tinged with silver. Sunlight bounced up from the forest floor to illuminate the undersides of branches, and the cedars’ enormous scaly trunks glowed chestnut brown. Foliage sighed in a gentle breeze under a clear blue sky. The forest had a feeling of ageless serenity about it.
My dad and I had arrived in the bustling Berber town of Azrou, here in the Middle Atlas range, two days ago. It was a favorite place of ours since we first visited it sixteen years earlier. I’d been living and filming in the deserts of southern Morocco at the time, and as much as I loved the stark beauty of the northern Sahara, I’d missed being around trees. So when Dad came to visit we took a road trip and discovered this gem in the heart of the mountains. Azrou is the gateway to some of the most wonderful forests I’ve ever seen, and I’ve continued to return whenever I can, although nowhere near as often as I’d like.
The Atlas cedar is one of the most beautiful trees on the planet, in my opinion. But like all living things, it needs to be seen in its natural environment to be fully appreciated. Each one displayed the breathtaking balance of form shared by all wild things growing in harmony with nature. Maybe it has to do with the wonderful smell of the trees’ sap or the meditative solitude of their mountain home, but for me, just spending time around these ancient trees soothes the soul.
Happily, cedars are also a total joy to climb. They aren’t the tallest, but with strong timber, horizontal branches, and (in older trees) a flat-topped canopy that allows you to stretch out and admire the view, they are hard to beat. Dad was down in the souk doing what he loved best, bartering and haggling with the traders for carpets and fossils, which left me to spend the day doing what I loved best: searching the forested hillsides above for the perfect tree to climb. My plan was to return the next day to climb it and spend a night in its branches. I’d climbed plenty of cedars, but never slept in one, and I felt the need to get as close to these magnificent trees as I possibly could.
A movement farther down the slope drew my eye to a troop of Barbary macaques moving through the trees, turning over rocks, and foraging under logs for morsels to eat. They were a sudden reminder that despite the mountainous terrain of these coniferous forests, I was still in Africa and up until very recently these remote valleys had also been home to a whole variety of other mammals unique to this continent.
Africa’s only species of bear survived here until the mid-nineteenth century, and the last of Morocco’s wild Barbary lions lived in these mountains until the 1940s. There had once been large, healthy populations of both. In fact, most of the lions that met their end in the sand of the Roman Coliseum came from here.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like to see a Barbary lion in this landscape. Famous for their large size and the thickness of their shaggy black manes, the lions must have been an incredible sight, prowling through the snow on a still moonlit night, gliding silently between the deep-blue shadows of enormous cedars. Although the lions are gone, the forest remains, and as I looked at the ancient trees growing on the ridge around me, it was wonderful to think that such a cat might have scratched its claws on the hard timber of any one of them as it passed. Maybe even the one I was now leaning against.
Another intriguing thought is that there might, just might, be a remnant population of the Barbary leopard still here. Though it is thought by many to be extinct, some local shepherds believe they still roam the forests, and I vividly recall the spotted pelt I saw for sale in Azrou’s souk fifteen years ago. Thick, luxuriant fur like nothing I’d ever seen in sub-Saharan Africa. I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to such things, and I wanted to believe they were still here, somewhere. If any big cat could survive without the outside world’s knowledge, it would be a leopard.
The call of a raven brought me back to this century. Taking a sip of water, I stood up to move farther along the ridge in search of a tree to climb.
I was beginning to see a pattern. These older trees grew together in pockets—distinct groves in the very heart of the forest. And unlike many other trees, which tend to grow best in the fertile alluvial flats adjacent to rivers, these trees seemed to reach their zenith on the rugged upper slopes of the mountain, where the soil was at its thinnest. This was a mystery to me, which only added to their allure. They were defiant, almost rebellious trees that seemed to march to a different rhythm.
Cresting the ridge, I was met with a beautiful sight on the flat space beyond. Mature cedars stood in an open colonnade, like the arches of an enormous high-domed mosque, and the sun had broken through to illuminate this space with shafts of light. Each beam that hit the forest floor contained a resident pair of dancing butterflies. With brown wings covered in large creamy spots, they looked like the species called speckled wood. Soft clouds of dust swirled in the turbulence from their tiny wings. I stood entranced, watching them spinning and spiraling round one another as they rose up through the pillars of light toward the canopy above. I’d walked into a glade of heaven.
My eye was drawn to a splash of color among the stones at my feet. Bending forward, I realized it was a wild crocus. I’d never seen one before. Its six lilac-colored petals were held in a vertical crown that seemed to glow in the dappled sunlight. The orange threads of its three stigmas were clearly visible. These stigmas, collected and dried in the sun, become saffron. I thought about this expensive crimson spice, which I’d seen piled high in cedar-wood bowls in Azrou’s souk. The crocuses and cedars seemed unlikely companions, but they were clearly linked in a delicate partnership of some kind. For such a seemingly rugged environment, these forests are surprisingly fragile, and I was reminded of the serious environmental pressures they face.
In 2013 the International Union for Conservation of Nature completed a periodic review of the status of conifers worldwide. The Atlas cedar was upgraded from least threatened to endangered overnight. Declines of 75 percent occurred in the mid-twentieth century, and the cedars have been experiencing prolonged episodes of severe drought since the 1980s. These forests once stretched right across the mountains of the Maghreb, but with Algeria’s contingent all but gone, Morocco now contains around 80 percent of what’s left. The main issue—inevitably, in such a seasonally dry environment—seems to be global warming. The forests around Azrou lie on the northern slopes of the Atlas Mountains and have historically benefited from Atlantic moisture, but much drier conditions arriving from the south are exerting their influence. Southern slopes are now dotted with the poignant white skeletons of cedars killed by drought, marking the trailing edge of a forest that is retreating north. Since the Atlas cedar occurs naturally only at elevations of four thousand to eight thousand feet, the forest is caught between a rock and a hard place. It has nowhere to go. And additional pressures from illegal logging, overgrazing, and soil erosion make the situation even more precarious.
Generally I’m a glass-half-full kind of person, but even I struggle to remain optimistic about the long-term future of the Atlas cedar within its natural range. Individual trees can be grown very well in Britain, but forests are obviously so much more than the sum of their trees. We may be able to preserve genes for ex-situ conservation in the future, but that’s not a patch on a cedar—or a Barbary lion, for that matter—thriving in its natural environment.
I touched the crocus delicately with the back of my finger. Its petals were so soft, I could barely feel them. How could something so fragile survive here? My gaze returned to the butterflies, so ephemeral in their courtship, and then to the huge cedars around me. What a magical place this was.
“So did you find your tree?” asked Dad when I made it back to Azrou that evening. I’d found him watching the sunset from his favorite table on the steps of the Hôtel des Cèdres, overlooking the marketplace. He was sipping a glass of nous-nous, and I marveled at his ability to drink nuclear-strength coffee at any hour of the day. Pulling up a chair, I told him that I had found the perfect one and couldn’t wait to climb it. There was a bag of freshly purchased trinkets by his side, and it seemed he’d had just as good a day as I’d had. He’d retired from the London antiques trade a few years ago, but old habits die hard and his satisfied expression spoke volumes. I just felt sorry for the traders in the souk.
The call to prayer went up into the clear evening sky, and the smell of tagines cooking over charcoal drifted through the narrow streets. A three-quarter moon was visible above the forest-clad hills, and I realized with a smile that the next time I would see it rising would be from the comfort of a hammock suspended a hundred feet above-ground in the canopy of a cedar.
It was almost noon the next day. But while the barren mountain slopes higher up baked in the fierce dry heat, the forest here was shaded and cool. The now familiar smell of cedar resin filled the air as Dad and I picked our way between the boulders. We were making our way along the slopes of a wooded valley toward the tree I’d chosen to climb. I’d recorded its position in my GPS, which somehow felt a little like cheating and certainly detracted from my enjoyment of the forest as I blindly followed the trail of digital dots on its LCD. But I was keen to get there as soon as possible, with the intention of being settled in my hammock at least an hour before sunset. Dad was keen to camp out too, so I’d brought a second hammock for him to rig at ground level somewhere nearby.
The chosen tree stood on the far side of the butterfly glade, just before the small plateau dropped back down into the next valley. It wasn’t the tallest cedar I’d seen, but it was growing in the best position by far. From the moment I had spotted it, I knew it was the one. Having finally made the choice, I couldn’t wait to get up there.
Once we got to the base, Dad strolled off to find a place to camp while I took a few minutes to get acquainted with the tree I was about to climb.
It was a beautifully proportioned specimen. The trunk measured six feet across—not too massive—and rose straight up toward the canopy in a beautiful column of knot-free timber. The first branch didn’t emerge until seventy feet up and was nothing more than a twisted dead stump. But the main canopy above that was perfect: huge horizontal branches spreading out in every direction, offering endless hammock-rigging possibilities. The tree’s location at the edge of the plateau, high above the next valley, promised fantastic views. To cap it all, it faced west, which boded well for sunset.
Wasting no more time, I set up my catapult and fired a line over the lowest solid branch I could see. I hauled up my rope, planning to use it to get above the sheer trunk into the lower canopy. From there on I would climb up through the rest of the tree from branch to branch. My lanyards would be there to catch me if I fell, but I felt it was important to climb the tree itself, rather than a rope. I didn’t want to be transported to the very top of the canopy via a rope connecting it to the ground in one long pitch.
The distant clinking of rocks told me Dad had found a campsite and was clearing a place for a fire. So, stepping into my harness, I pulled it up onto my waist and removed any extra carabiners and kit I wouldn’t need. Tying the end of the rope onto a rucksack containing camping gear, food, and water, I clipped in and pulled through the slack. Climbing in dry Mediterranean weather made such a pleasant change from slogging up through the searing heat and humidity of a tropical jungle. It was nice not to be drenched with sweat within thirty seconds of leaving the ground, and refreshing not to be harangued by biting insects.
But I’d spoken too soon—although I remained blissfully insect-free, the sweat was soon flowing. Halfway up the trunk I entered the sunlight and felt my skin instantly prickle with heat. Arriving in the shadow of the canopy a few minutes later, I stopped to take a breather. My sweat evaporated into the dry air to cool me down, and within a few moments even the dark patches of moisture on the front of my T-shirt had completely disappeared. I peered up the trunk to see how much farther I had left to go.
The rope passed up through a gap between the tree and a huge dead branch just above me. The gap had looked much bigger from the ground, and now I was beginning to wonder whether I would fit through it. It would be a squeeze, for sure. It would have been easy enough to bypass this bottleneck by transferring onto my other lanyards, but I decided instead to have a go. Inevitably, it turned into a proper little grapple, which nearly left me irretrievably wedged. Too many tagines, it seemed, and when I eventually did emerge back into the open above, my arms were covered in angry scratches and a mixture of tree sap and dirt. Flakes of dry bark adhered to the sap in places, and I managed to rip a few hairs out picking them free. But the smell of the resin was out of this world, and I couldn’t resist dabbing my finger in it for a taste. I’d like to say that in doing so I discovered an amazing new elixir, some sort of secret natural potion guaranteed to create a sense of eternal well-being. Rather disappointingly, however, it turned out to be extremely bitter and unpalatable, though there was an underlying sugary spiciness to it that made me try it again, just to be sure. Nope, still horrible, so, taking a swig of water, I carried on climbing until I reached the top of the rope, where I sat back to take a proper look around at my new surroundings.
I laughed out loud with spontaneous pleasure at the view that greeted me. The forest canopy hung around me in floating terraces. Horizontal layers of thick foliage suspended at different heights within neighboring trees. Everything was backlit, glowing bluish-green in the afternoon sunlight. The sun itself was eclipsed by a branch, but the surrounding needles shone in a halo of silver, and long threads of gossamer shimmered in the air as dozens of newly hatched spiderlings floated down through the canopy around me.
The position of my tree on the edge of the escarpment meant I was now level with the very tops of others growing on the slopes below. They looked close enough to leap into through the clear mountain air. The forest rose up the opposite side of the valley to peter out on an open plateau beyond, and high on the horizon, above everything else, floated the enticing silhouettes of mountains. All I could see were mountains and Atlas cedars, the loveliest trees on the planet. It made for an idyllic scene.
The very top of the tree was another thirty feet above me, but the spot I was hanging in would do just fine for my lightweight hammock. I hauled up the rucksack and hung it from a branch next to me. The hammock was brand-new and wrapped up in a tight ball. It unraveled to hang down below me, and grasping one end in my teeth, I swung out on my rope along a large branch to attach it. I then swung across to another limb ten feet away to pull the hammock taut, before letting myself fall back into the middle, where I dropped down onto my new bed. I’d sort out the sleeping bag later on, but for now it felt great to lie back and watch the sunlight dance on the underside of the canopy directly above.
The sun was still a hand’s breadth above the horizon, and I had plenty of time to just lie there, so I closed my eyes and listened to the forest. The day was cooling and air was on the move as the sun dropped toward the horizon. A gentle breeze whistled softly through the cedar needles around me, and somewhere down in the valley, where shadows were already gathering, a tawny owl called once and then was silent.
I could still hear the occasional clinking of rocks from Dad—heaven knows what he was doing down there, constructing some sort of wall to keep out the wolves, by the sound of it. But for the most part it was utterly silent. In fact, silent wasn’t quite the right word: it suggests an absence of sound. Peaceful is a better choice, or even tranquil. It’s hard to describe. But the hour I spent gently swaying in my hammock 120 feet aboveground in that cedar, while watching the sun slowly descend over the Atlas Mountains, was one of the most serene of my life so far.
After a few minutes I opened my eyes to see a tiny spider dangling on its thread a foot above my face. It seemed to be dropping in line with my nose, so just before touchdown I gave it a gentle blow. It dropped faster in response, and I caught it by the silk just before it landed on me. Re-anchoring its thread to the branch next to me, I peered over the edge of my hammock to watch it continue its epic head-first descent through the canopy. The forest floor was 120 feet below, and I couldn’t believe a spider that size could produce enough silk to make such an epic abseil. Since I had nothing more pressing to do, I estimated that if the tree was enlarged to dwarf me, as it dwarfed the spider, I would need a rope more than 69,000 feet long to reach the ground from this hammock. The tree would measure almost seventeen miles high overall, placing its topmost branches somewhere in the stratosphere. Amazing. Just trying to visualize what a seventeen-mile-high cedar would look like made me smile. As I watched, a gentle breeze blew the spider in toward the tree. It landed on the trunk ten feet below me, detached itself from the silken thread, and scurried off across the bark. I guess I wouldn’t discover how much silk is inside a spider after all.
I’d have to remain attached to my safety rope while I slept, which also meant keeping my harness on. So in a bid to make myself as comfy as possible, I removed all my extra carabiners and hung them out of the way. Unrolling my sleeping bag, I removed my boots, pulled on a woolly hat, and lay on my side to watch the sunset. Fire rolled across the sky, and the blood-red sun slid slowly down behind the mountains. Salat al-maghrib, the evening call to prayer, drifted up on the edge of the wind from a distant mosque hidden in the folds of the mountains, then all was silent.
A few hours later I woke up cold. I’d fallen asleep on top of my sleeping bag, so I slid down inside and listened to the sounds of the night. The waxing moon was rising through the trees, but it wasn’t yet high enough to shed any light, so the forest around me was inky black. Stars glittered in the canopy and tawny owls were calling. Their plaintive notes reminded me of that first night I’d slept in Goliath, back in the New Forest all those years ago. I fell back to sleep, wondering what the owls were saying to one another.
The next time I awoke, the moon was high in the sky and the forest around me was bathed in its soft glow. There was a waxy sheen to the cedar foliage, but the huge branches twisting around me remained in shadow. Looking out over the valley below, I could clearly make out the tops of the taller cedars reaching up into the moonlight. I rolled over in my hammock and peered down. The trunk below me was dappled with beautiful silver shadows. Its scaly bark looked prehistoric and timeless, and I wondered how old this tree was. It felt as though it had been here, keeping watch over the valley below, forever. It was certainly several centuries old and could easily be half a millennium or more. Five hundred years was a long time to live in these mountains, and my brief visit would barely register on the timeline of this cedar’s life. But that’s one of the alluring things about trees, isn’t it? They seem almost eternal figures of reference in the landscape, reminding us to make the most of every passing day in our all-too-brief lives. A tawny called again from the tree next to me, and I drifted back to sleep.
By the time I stirred again it was seven o’clock in the morning. I opened my eyes to a different world. Color was seeping back into it, and the moonlit night felt like a passing dream. The pale eastern sky heralded the coming of the sun, and the breeze already carried the enticing smell of resin, but for now the forest around me was still in shadow. It was cold but not frosty, and I lay there, trying to muster the energy to swing out of the hammock and start climbing. My plan was to greet the rising sun from the very top of the tree, which was only thirty or so feet above me. The ladder of thick, strong branches would lead me there. I wriggled out of my sleeping bag and swung my legs over the side of the hammock to pull my boots on.
Taking in the slack on my sliding knot, I pulled myself up on the rope, stood in the hammock, and stepped off to swing in toward the trunk. Landing with my feet against the stem, I adjusted my harness properly, then reached up to hang from a branch by my hands to stretch out my back. The coldness had settled in my bones, and I felt a couple of clunks as the weight of my body straightened my spine, ready for the climb. Pulling myself up, I gave myself plenty of slack in the rope and moved quickly from branch to branch without stopping, until I was crouched beneath the topmost layer of foliage.
The branches here were smaller, more gnarly and weather-hammered. Lichen grew everywhere, and dust drifted down when I touched the tree. Several branches had lost their bark to reveal intricate lacy grooves where beetle larvae once lived. The topmost layer of branches had woven around one another to form a dense horizontal mat—a flat tabletop of foliage. Above this, I glimpsed blue sky. Repositioning my safety anchor to the branch just below me, I again gave myself plenty of slack in the rope, ready to take the next few steps. Pushing my hands up through the bristling needles, I emerged into the space above.
My torso was now completely above the canopy, just in time to see the first rays of sunlight burst through the crown of a neighboring cedar. The warmth of the sun was instant. I felt the rays sink deep into my bones, and I sat there with eyes closed, basking in its glow for several seconds. Aware of a soft buzzing sound, I opened them again to find myself surrounded by dozens of honeybees peacefully foraging in the canopy around me. Hundreds of slender, yellow, fingerlike cones stood erect on the branches. These were the tree’s male cones, which had matured over the summer months, ready to release their pollen now that it was autumn. The bees were cashing in en masse. The cedar’s needle-like foliage also stood erect, growing in little clusters atop short woody stems. Thick waxy cuticles gave these needles a bluish-green color, and I picked a few, rolling them between my palms to release the heavenly aroma.
Looking farther afield, I saw that my tree was one of a line of mature cedars of similar height and age standing on the edge of the crescent-shaped escarpment. Turning around to face west, I looked out over the valley toward the distant High Atlas mountains on the horizon. The escarpment’s shadow fell flat across this landscape like an enormous sundial, and although the top of my tree was now bathed in full sunlight, those below me were still in darkness. As the sun rose higher, I watched the leading edge of this shadow shrink back in toward my ridge until everything was in full sunshine. The trees growing below the shelter of the ridge were some of the tallest I’d seen in these forests. The books tell us that Atlas cedars rarely, if ever, exceed 130 feet in height. But I can say for a fact that the one I was standing in was at least 150 feet tall, and I’d happily eat a carabiner if those in the valley below me weren’t pushing 165 feet.
It was an incredible view. But farther down the valley to the south, a specter loomed. Many of the mature cedars there were dead. Large trees like the one I was in, presumably with many more years to give, had been killed in their prime. Their sun-bleached carcasses still stood over the surrounding forest, looming like ghosts. Trees die all the time, of course, and these may have been the victims of natural causes. But they definitely hadn’t succumbed to old age, and to see an entire grove of them standing dead and lifeless seemed ominous. I’d bet prolonged drought was the cause. A thick understory of evergreen holm oak had now grown up beneath them, and it seemed extremely unlikely that any cedar saplings would be able to compete with them for light in the future. Not that I’d seen any young cedars growing anywhere in the forest so far. The large roaming herds of domestic sheep and goats had presumably seen to that.
Despite the sight of those dead trees, I felt my spirits rise when I took in the rest of the view one last time before climbing back down. The vast majority of trees around me were in a fine state of health. Even those that had lost major branches or whose crowns had been snapped off by high winds were still growing vigorously, and clearly had many more decades left in them.
By the time I de-rigged my hammock and abseiled back down to the forest floor, Dad had packed up and was waiting for me. Smoke still curled from the hot embers of his campfire, and I was a little peeved at having to pour the last of our drinking water on them to prevent the forest from burning down around us. But as he pointed out with a smile and a shrug, there was plenty of mint tea waiting for us in Azrou.
We decided to follow a more direct compass bearing back, rather than the winding route suggested by my GPS, and after half an hour or so we came across a low fence running through the trees. It wasn’t designed to keep people out, so stepping over it, we continued on our way. Patches of brambles grew here and there and the understory vegetation of silverthorn and Italian maple seemed thicker here than anywhere else we’d seen. Grass grew higher and crocuses were more common. We’d clearly entered a protected area, and the low fence had been erected to keep livestock out.
It was then that we encountered a miniature forest of tiny green cedar seedlings, directly beneath a particularly ancient multi-stemmed cedar. A couple of hundred were growing up through the bone-dry leaf litter around us, apparently self-sown by the enormous tree towering above. It was a reassuring sight: our last day in these forests, and we’d finally found evidence of natural cedar regeneration. Here, sprinkled around us, was hope for the future. Two hundred seedlings do not make a forest, but it was a start. Sixteen years ago when I lived near here, there had been no protection in place. But this livestock fence showed that measures were being taken to turn the tide, and these forests were now getting a fighting chance. All nature needs is to be met halfway; it’ll manage the rest.
Taking off my rucksack, I lay down on my stomach among the parched twigs and debris of yesteryear to take a closer look at the seedlings. No more than two inches tall, each was a delicate cluster of soft green needles atop a slender chestnut-colored stalk. They looked impossibly fragile, and I could see how a hungry sheep would make short work of them. These were the little green tidbits and morsels that would get nibbled off straightaway. Resting my chin on my hands in the dry soil, I looked up past the seedlings toward the massive tree above them. It was a real mother of the forest, many centuries old, and once again I was struck by the seemingly impossible way in which such huge organisms start out. It just beggars belief that a fragile little wisp of life no bigger than a toothpick can grow into one of the great trees of the world, and the Atlas cedar truly is one of the great trees of the world. It’s certainly one of the most beautiful. I just hope they are still to be found growing wild in those mountains where they belong for many millennia to come. And who knows? Maybe one day the cedar forests of the Atlas will be the haunt of lions and bears once again.