James Aldred climbs trees. Partly he does this for the purposes of making programmes like Nature (Radio 4, Tuesday, 11am), where he is one of a rolling team of presenters on the series.

But mostly it is because he just loves to go up through the treetop canopy with his bedroll and his microphone, to see the view from the top and to paint it for us in word pictures.

"It's beautifully backlit in the autumnal afternoon sun," was a typical example here.

"I can see just the shimmers of traces of spider web floating down through the canopy all around me."

Having recently tackled California's Giant Redwoods, the globe-trotting Aldred was in Morocco this week on the trail of the Atlas Cedar.

In 2013 it was catapulted up the so-called "red list" of endangered species kept by the International Union For Conservation Of Nature due to the 75% decline in its numbers that has been observed since the 1940s.

A helpful Berber shepherd Aldred met said this was because his goats like to eat cedar saplings, though clearly climate change has a role too.

As a means of addressing the dangers facing the Atlas Cedar, Aldred planned to find a good one, climb it and spend a night camped out at the top.

That's what the bedroll was for.

"When I look at that, I just see endless hammock possibilities," he purred when a 140ft monster with a twin trunk caught his eye.

"That would be a very good tree to spend a night in - perfect from a rigging point of view," (if you want the technicalities, that rigging perfection had something to do with it having lots of "dead snags", apparently).

Earlier, Aldred had described the ground level view of the cedars as being "like the cloisters of a great medieval cathedral" stretching into the distance and he brought some of that same religious reverence to his depictions of the night-time scene too, as moonlight bathed the landscape and an owl whooped near him.

Perhaps his lack of sleep added to the trippy, euophoric feel of it all but, whatever the individual ingredients, the resulting dish was affecting, funny, personal and vivid - even for someone with a fear of heights.