“This is it,” says Brian Buma, Integrative Biology Assistant Professor. He’s draped head to toe in orange and black rain gear. Straddling hummocks, he re-checks his compass and mutters “cool.” Few things in the natural world can be identified as the true end, the last of a kind, the edge, Buma tells me. He pulls a measuring tape from his daypack and starts appraising a recumbent trunk, one just a few inches south of the rest. “It strikes me that we should know where these things are,” he says.

The expedition was also featured on Nat Geo podcast, Overheard, where Buma and colleague Craig Welch relive their incredible journey.

The tree at the bottom of the world—and the wind-blasted trek to find it
National Geographic, July 7