They are just so huge and enduring, and I am so small and mortal. That’s the long and the short, the big and the small of it for the millions of people who have trod these roads and trails over the centuries, beholding the majestic, domineering, stubborn redwoods that are native to the remarkably unpopulated far northern California coast as it morphs toward the Oregon border.
Yes, human beings endure tangled relationships with humility. But to stand beneath a California redwood tree is to know that the matter was settled a few thousand years ago, leaving us no real choice but to genuflect in one form or other in worship of their existence, and then exult in the peculiar mix of soaring drama and inner peace that suffuses us when in their company, as few other living things can engender.
Here, we stand empty of idea and importance. Shoved to the periphery of the creation, all our personal challenges, triumphs and woes are rendered as mere dust, stirred up and away by “Sequoia semevirens,” fog-enshrouded, fire-scorched, capable of living two millennia and beyond, logged nearly to oblivion before a hardy band of right-thinking humans (also known as “Save the Redwoods League”) banded together more than a century ago to keep them reigning still as soul-stirring titans of the forest floor.
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One can hardly enter a redwood forest and not be struck by thoughts of eternity. And from eternity it has proven but a short leap for humans to fathom some face or other of a god as the source of it all. None of which should surprise us.
Walk into any awe-inspiring garden or house or museum and before your jaw hits the floor you’re asking, “Who is responsible for this? And just how did they do it?”
Towering redwoods, endless dunes and other such natural marvels posit those questions on a cosmic scale, answers unknowable as fact and therefore giving way to typically soaring human imaginations and a kind of baseline gratitude for the simple fact that such magnificence is, and that it has been presented to us.
Here, I can feel, or at least identify with, the feeling of walking with God, under God, in a garden of the gods, even though I don’t believe in the reality of any such divine being. But under these trees, more primal even than the conjuring of God as a being is a feeling state of some Source, some manifestation of Creativity, of Generativity, of all that is and has ever been.
Which includes the profound Silence and Stillness that pervades redwood forests, our minds undistracted, freed from the incessant incursions of the pinging-honking-buzzing-whirring-grinding-percussing-demanding world.
After the forest’s almost nightly blanket of dampening fog, the mid-morning sun softens every sprightly youthful tree and every craggy shard of holding-fast bark that has criss-crossed its fire- or lightning-assaulted neighbor, adapting as it must to survive.
Nearby lie the hollowed-out husks of long-dead comrades in the latter stages of their 700-to-1,500-year cycles of decay and final decomposition, these stirring symbols of eternity wordlessly conforming, in the end, without whimper, to the human coinage: “dust to dust…”
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The world’s tallest coastal redwood, location a well-kept secret, reportedly stretches 381 feet up to the sky. I didn’t measure its fallen comrade here, but I do know it took me 58 seconds to walk its length at a steady pace…
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Your words and photos are great. Those of us who’ve been fortunate to walk among these giants or hear the roar of the nearby Pacific truly appreciate this rare gift nature has bestowed upon us. Those of you who haven’t been to Redwood Country put it on your bucket list. You won’t regret it. The finest words and most brilliant photos can’t match just being there. We must be vigilant to keep this special place beyond the reach of economic “progress.” I want my eight grandchildren to walk among these giants or hear the roar of the nearby Pacific as I have.
Armstrong Woods comes to mind
Indeed, Robert—if anything brings to mind notions of generativity, legacy and endowment for those we leave behind, this would be it. Thanks for emphasizing that point.
Right Tim, that’s a special place, though to use a phrase of the times, this far north coast is Armstrong Woods “on steroids.” The vastness and scale here are remarkable, and it’s all so far off the beaten track that many fewer people trample upon it than, say, Yosemite. Works to its advantage for all parties, I suspect.
Haven’t been to the Redwoods for some time, but you have captured the magic of the silence and majesty of walking among the Giants. Two of my marathons were run on the “Avenue of the Giants “. Sometimes we don’t appreciate the luck we had in being raised in California
Beautiful in every way, Drew. The imagery, the writing, the photographs, all a welcome respite from other intrusions into the psyche. Thank you!
My girlfriend and I got lost in a redwood forest one day a few years ago, we kept wandering around in circles before we finally found our car, dead tired, it was one of the best days of my life.