Who made this world? They couldn't possibly have done a more beautiful job. We've just cycled three days through what remains of California's old growth redwood forests. I've been lucky to have spent a lot of time in the redwoods - both in the Bay Area and in Mendocino - but I'd never spent time in the old growths. I've been watching Todd ride in front of me, not even an ant, a speck of red dust at the base of a world made up of trees. They are massive holy things, redwoods. In Prairie State Park we set aside a morning for a hike. I don't think we made it more than a quarter mile. We could have stopped and spent all day with each tree we passed. The campground and trails in the redwoods, Prairie and Humboldt Redwood State Park, are quiet places. Sanctuaries. Light falls in separate, dusty, rays. The ground is soft and bare. The tree beside you has been alive and growing for over a thousand years. What was happening a thousand years ago, we tried to think. Europe was in the Dark Ages when some of these trees sprouted.
Taking this trip at a moment when California's state government is considering closing - even selling - many of its state parks has added a weight. At one campground we heard that many parks may be shutting down after Labor Day. We asked the park ranger and she replied that the state legislature was made up of "ding dongs."
In Oregon and California we've been lucky to have cycled through a few stretches where it seems one state park leads straight into the next, broken only by teeny tourist towns with an RV park, a market, and a gas station. It feels like the way things ought to be (and surely is in many places): small communities of humans sharing a much larger, wilder planet.
One of our favorite discoveries about the state parks in Oregon, California, and Washington are the hiker-biker sites. They are shared, rustic campgrounds, $3 or $4 per person normally set aside in secluded parts of campgrounds. They have firepits, water, and picnic tables, and you walk into the regular campground for the bathrooms. In the hiker-biker sites people hang around and compare stories, give advice, and share hot chocolate or microbrew. They are lovely, warm little places.
Not guilty, of making the world that is, although I have some small part in it's ongoing maintenance and repair. I spent one day, some 15 years ago, amongst the redwoods outside San Francisco and your words have brought that experience flooding back to me. I remember that California has the oldest tree in the world (over 4,000 years), the tallest, over 300 feet, and the largest (in volume). What stories these trees could tell and I am certain they would be less than impressed with the performance and general carry on of their human co habitués over the last 50 years.
ReplyDeleteI was in a State Park in Wicklow (just outside Dublin) a few months ago and they had planted redwoods just over 100 years ago, mere infants and minnows in comparison to what you describe. Interestingly, because the redwoods do not block out light, the forest floor had become completely overgrown with brambles and the like. So they over planted with beech trees, which only grow to a fraction of the height, but which block out much more light. Now the floor is clear again and we have this wonderful mixed of redwood and beech.
Sorry to hear your journey is nearing its destination. As an audience we want the show to continue but as the actors and expenders of all the energy, I am sure you welcome the rest and return to the comforts, though with mixed feelings, as is usually the case at the end of a fascinating wandering.
Having spent a wonderful week in the company of your mum and observed her absolute determination to get out on the bike, I can confirm the testament to amazing women. She has now taken up the ancient art of juggling (initial instructions given to her by my son) and has shown exceptional mastery in a very short time.
Love your musings and reflections on the majesty of the giant trees. We, too, were blessed to connect with some recently ("see" being too weak a word), at Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias in Yosemite. Wow. We felt the great shimmer of life, that inifinitude from Mother Earth's center, flooding through root and center and bark and leaf, and we remember something, something ineffable yet essential, about being human and small and eternal.
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