Redwoods

Again, I stood in redwoods, from Hunboldt, thru Prairie Creek, to Jebediah Smith parks. I had seen many redwoods before, but never like this. Here were some pure stands of the tree, only some sword ferns and sorrel beneath. There was a path to follow thru Founders Grove. So I took it for as long as it could teach me, then went over the land as the first people had.

The natives of this land did not go into the redwood forest since it did not hold much in the way of food or shelter and grizzly bears were abundant. Even when the Anglo-americans came, it was still nearly a hundred years before manageable ways to cut the trees were devised, and so thankfully public sentiment had a chance to build to a preservation movement - the Save the Redwoods League - before the last of the greats were cleared away. This then is a land that, aside from a single trail, has never known the touch of man. 

These trees stand now as they did when the gates shut on Eden and the last whispers of creation could still be heard. They are not of our time. Nor are they from another lost one. They are separate, immune to hours, and years, as they pass from age to age. These are the relic reminders of the greatness the earth held - and is yet capable of - that to stand before them shod seemed transgression. This is sacred ground. Here I am confronted with the terrible silence of the great.

Comparisons are sometimes made between places of natural beauty and manmade churches and temples. But what are those artfucial structures but attempts to recreate the natural? I have been to the medieval churches of Europe, and the experience was not a bit like this. Those places were packed with people, cameras, gift shops, commodifying a god they sold every Sunday. If these trees were at all like a temple, it would be like those ancient ones of Egypt and India that I have heard of but never seen and so which have always been pure places - in my mind - of high empty vaults where the wind blows against stone. Surely there is no place I can otherwise liken this to, for there is nowhere like it.

This is the way to experience nature. Go into it thinking you might not get out. Learn to accept it. Then, to prefer it. I made sure to go far enough and to take enough turns to get lost. 

At dark, I crawled into the duff in the fire-scarred hollow of a Titan and slept. In the morning I wandered till I found an elderly couple from Ohio looking at a fallen tree. After speaking with the woman for ten minutes I realized that the entire conversation we had was in hushed whispers, as though wary of rousing the giants. But truly, it was in reverence. We were respectful of the indifference without arrogance that these trees emanate. They seem held in a great patience, awaiting the trumpets, or the return of the dinosaurs, or some distant event beyond our limited grasp, that whatever we pygmies do in their shadow is nothing to them. Even with the decay and death of the largest, new growth quickly emerges to shoot, wait, and outlast us in turn, as days, years, and centuries mold to redwood.