We Walked Among Them

You knew photographs never did them justice but you never know how much, or rather, how little, until you are actually there with them. In the redwoods, the forest is the trees. Huge, massive trunks that you just can't love enough, you hug them, but can't even manage to encircle them 1/3 of the way. You try to photograph them, but can't get far enough away from one to get it in the camera window. At first they are overwhelming, and bring you (me) to tears. Once you've spent a little time with them, it begins to feel just right

We asked the Ranger for a good 5-6 mile hike to see a really big tree (as if we weren't already surrounded!). He pulled the park map out and began highlighting the various hikes and trees in great detail. We decided to hike the 5.4 mile Boy Scout Tree Trail. After a quick trip to the foggy shore of the Pacific Ocean, the mists which make the existence of giant trees possible, we drove west up into the redwood forest. Off a dirt road that often narrowed to one car width between massive tree trunks, we found the trail head and began hiking. The Ranger had shown us a picture of The Boy Scout Tree, a black and white, circa 1920 image of ten boy scouts gathered at the base and climbing up to through the crotch of a massive 'double' trunk tree and seeing it in person seemed as good a destination/excuse as any to walk amongst these trees. Because really, that is what I wanted to do – just be there in this new forest with them.

It takes 3000 years for a redwood to reach maturity. The forest we were walking through was much older. The top of Mt Mazama blew off 12000 years ago,forming Crater Lake, the Cascades had been growing for millions of years, and the White Mountains, my backyard stomping ground, had formed 124 to 100 million years ago. Walking among the redwoods, the youngest of them all, I felt not only small, but also quick. A blip. And it both pissed me off that for the most part, people had felt they had the right to decimate the trees, and the earth, and it also felt like a big joke. Man's existence is a blip on this massive time scale where 3000 year old trees are but a second, where one volcano can bury an entire ugly city in one good blow, and no matter how much we try and mess it up, nature, the planet, the universe, gets the last laugh. If we're smart, if we can be comfortable with the meaningless of our part in all this, we can walk amongst it, and know, that that, in and of itself is enough.