After eight years of teaching and service to Alaska Pacific University, I was granted a sabbatical. I felt like a kid getting out for summer vacation.

The sabbatical officially began July 1, 2001 with a trip to the Giant Sequoias in the Sierras of California where I met up with my collaborator from Humboldt State University, Steve Sillett and one of his grad students. There, in the open, scented woods of fir and 200 foot tall "fatties" as Steve called the giant sequoias with trunks 25 feet across, we climbed into one of the trees and headed east. For three days we moved from tree to tree, never coming to the ground, using "magic missiles," "split-tailed lanyards" and "mini-grapnels" to cross gaps between crowns. We slept in hammocks and hauled water and food across on our traverse lines. It was all quite an adventure and proved that our ideas and home-made gear would work.

Returning to Alaska, I hand wrote a proposal to the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council asking for travel funds to visit the tallest hardwood forests on Earth located in Australia and Borneo. Not long after I competed in the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic race across the Wrangell Mountains, an overland and river wilderness race, 150 miles long. I took second. Two weeks later my teenage son and daughter and I joined a Japanese expedition for a 10 day research trip on the Harding Icefield. While the Japanese maintained a base camp and collected data on iceworms and algae, my kids and I skied a 75 mile loop around the 375 square mile dome of ice and snow, collecting population estimates of iceworms and collembolans as we went.

In September, after the Harding project, I studied moose behavior for three weeks, then flew to Washington State with a handful of APU students who worked with me on a forest canopy structure project in collaboration with Evergreen State College professor, Nalini Nadkarni. In October I raced the New Zealand Eco-Challenge where our Team Earthlink tied for fourth. In November and December I wrote up results of canopy research conducted with APU students and discovered that the National Geographic proposal had been accepted: we were going to Australia and Borneo.

I left with my family for Tasmania where we hiked the 45 mile Overland Trail; watched Tasmanian devils, pademelons, and quolls; then visited the "Hawaii-of-Australia," Lord Howe Island. That island, 400 miles northeast of Sydney, is fantastic with its towering green cliffs topped with Gondwanaland relics, its snow white terns, sea turtles, and black anemone fish. Our kids made friends with some Aussie juniors. My family left to fly back to Alaska while I solo "packrafted" (small 4 pound inflatable boat) down the Franklin River, Australia's wildest whitewater river. Then Sillett and colleagues arrived in Melbourne and we spent a month trekking and studying the beautiful 250-300 tall Eucalyptus forests of Victoria (see March 2003 issue of National Geographic Magazine, "Geographica" section). We made a 5 day canopy trek across the strange and beautiful mountain ash forest, always more than 200 feet above the ground with cockatoos, parrots and marsupial gliders our only company.

I returned to Alaska in March 2002 and worked up the data from Australia and skate skied the trails of Anchorage until the big dump of snow at the end of the month. Then my 15-year-old son and I flew to Borneo to meet the canopy trek crew for the next expedition. This time I spent two months doing canopy research in the 200 foot tall trees of Sabah. I saw flying squirrels, flying lemurs, even flying lizards and a flying snake: what a wild sight to see a snake swimming through the air as it crossed a 100 foot gap between trees. And a great time to introduce my son to science as he helped me collect and analyze data.

We returned home in late May when I could finally catch my breath, just in time for the end of my year long sabbatical. What a fantastic year.

Download a quicktime movie of Roman Dial in the canopy: