Among Giants

I have been disappointed by more than a few tourist destinations in my life.  Not so with California’s Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  Upon entering the forest of giant redwoods, my own smallness produced a sense of slow-motion that overwhelmed me.  The first urge was to stop the car and step outside in an effort to measure—to fathom what surrounded me.  The next urge was to walk deep into the so-called “darkness at noon” created by the shadows of the giants.

Something about everything changed once I wandered out among the trees.

I touched one of the giants and looked up.   The trees are so tall, I could not see the top from where I stood.  Some are so broad at the base, they might be mistaken for buildings.  The scent of ancient earth and the silence of untold years enveloped me.  Looking back at that girl among the trees and the tiny car just off the narrow road, a sense of my human frailty came clear—a feeling not so different from peering up into the endless arrangement of stars from the open prairie late at night.

Some things are beyond my simple forms of measure. 

  

Imagine.  These giants were alive and old when my great grandmother’s great grandmother was born.  Some of these goliaths have been alive for 2,000 years.  Whole human empires have risen and collapsed at the feet of these titans.  A fallen (freight-train-sized) tree might remain extending across the ferns on the forest floor for hundreds of years.

I have always been interested in the biology and the science of the clockworks and beasts that surround me.  But upon entering the redwoods the impact was entirely sensory and emotional for me.

Posted are two photographs from deep in the redwood forest.  That girl (you will find her in both photographs) provides some perspective of size for the redwood trees.

--Mitchell Hegman