Amidst the mighty, sacred redwoods
No picture can capture the enchanted grandeur of a grove of giant redwoods. I tried with my Nikon. I failed, so I looked for photos for sale by others.
No picture did the big trees justice.
The redwoods grow a few miles inland from the Pacific and run most of the way up the California coast north of San Francisco. They thrive where there is plenty of rain and fog.
Although the bulk of the redwoods were logged, several thousand acres of old growth redwood forest have been preserved. As you drive north on Highway 101, dozens of redwood groves survive in various state and and national parks for a span of 150 miles.
The largest redwoods can be over 1,000 years of age and up to twenty feet wide at the base. By way of comparison, if you cut down a redwood which was growing at one goal post on a football field, its upper branches could flatten the goal post at the opposite end of the gridiron.
A mature redwood requires about 400 gallons of water per day. Rather than take up the water through the roots and push it hundreds of feet up, redwoods absorb most of their moisture through their foliage from rain or fog.
Most redwoods are perfectly straight. Their trunk rises up 150 feet before there is a single branch. They grow so closely together that, from the forest floor, the crowded trunks look like the pillars of a Greek temple.
But statistics can’t really tell the story of the redwoods. They aren’t just big trees. If you come away from a trip through the redwoods with little more than a picture of your vehicle driving through a hole in one of the trunks, you’ve missed the point.
On a hike amongst a grove of redwoods, on a trail near the ferns and moss which form the undergrowth, past little streams which carry away the frequent rainwater, deep enough into the forest so the roar of passing cars is replaced by serene silence, one is made utterly quiet.
Although I was alone, I walked softly, trying not to make noise. When I whistled to hear if the sound would echo, I felt like a drunk in church.
Never have natural surroundings felt so sacred as the they did in the redwoods. The thin shafts of sunlight which filtered through the mist and upper branches to reach the forest floor recalled the play of light in a cathedral filled with a haze of incense.
Only better, for redwoods are the real thing. They are not man-made, built by egotistical medieval bishops, or by vain benefactors using peasant labor. They were not planted to draw tourists through turnstiles. The just happened.
I stopped at a general store tucked in the redwoods for a cup of coffee. The storekeeper, an middle-aged gentleman named Tom, wiped his hands off on his apron to visit.
Redwoods were his passion. He recited for me some of the statistics above. At the end of his lecture he leaned back with satisfaction, peered at me over the glasses at the end of his nose and said, “Redwoods are truly a magnificent form of life.”
He had not become blind to their grandeur despite years of daily exposure.
Tom’s store was dwarfed by the huge trunks which shaded it. In the deep shadows of the big trees, his little shack looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel, or Little Red Riding Hood, or perhaps Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
I suppose there are those who remain unimpressed by the sacred grandeur of the redwoods, those who could drive through them while discussing politics, or who could jog through them with headphones blaring.
They’re missing the point.
The redwoods can return the attentive and unjaded visitor to the fairy-tale world of a childhood bedtime book. Like a good bedtime story, the trees make one’s eyes wide.
At the same time, the big trees make one feel completely sheltered, protected, comforted — and humble.