How does it feel to stand among the tallest living trees? To be present with these time travelers of enormous proportions? To gaze up hundreds of feet to their towering canopy and to spread your arms around a fraction of their 90+ foot circumference? I had always wanted to know what it was like and for those that would share the same desire, I’ll describe it to you as best I can. So, come take a walk with me through a Redwood Forest.
Kristin and I were fortunate to spend several weeks exploring and hiking among these gentle giants on our year long journey across the country and never lost our sense of wonder at the magnificence of these forests.
The first sense to awaken when I encounter them is my vision. My eyes explode open to the site of a darkly enchanting greenish hued city of living sky scrapers. It really stuns you. You want to say something, but all that comes out is the faint sound of awe, escaping your lungs through your mouth.
No forest you’ve ever been to, nor movie you’ve ever watched, can even come close to preparing you for the moment. It’s not just the towering trees, but everything around you that your eyes absorb. Carpets of emerald and lavender colored clover greet you from below.
Every step is cushioned with a springy softness from rust-colored needles. Nurse logs sheltering tiny insects and animals turn into dark, rich, living soil with ferns and new life bursting from their trunks. Soft green lichens coat the sides of auburn-brown trunks as your eyes take in this foreign environment.
Then comes the smell. The scent in the air is next to overwhelm you. Earthy and grounding, yet freshly enlightening, with a slight feeling of a chill that surrounds you. In essence, the smell of life untainted by human influence. The thick bark smells of an unyielding strength, the kind of strength that has outlasted fires, floods, droughts and animals. The earthiness of your path is like nature’s perfume from the near constant falling of needles and twigs that rains down from the forest above. All of these important characters play a role in a collective aroma that breathes new life into you as you inhale the forest atmosphere.
Lastly, I find myself immersed in the sound of the trees. Or lack thereof. We don’t think of the trees as talking to one another, probably because their language is foreign to us. But they do. Like the birds in the air or the whales in the sea, I fully believe all life forms have their way of communicating. Trees are no exception to that. With no pocket translator to decipher, I attempt to hear what they are saying. Are they trying to teach me something? Are they simply talking amongst themselves? I don’t know for certain, but I’m intrigued.
At other times, I hear nothing. A nothingness so quiet, absent of all sound that the only sound I hear is that of my heart beating in my ear. I feel the giant sentinels are looking down on me with curious thoughts of my intentions. Unlike the loggers of a past era, I stand now in their midst with an appreciation of them, and somehow I think they know that. And then seemingly all at once, the sound of 300 pipe organs erupts, all playing on their deepest key as the trees begin talking to one another through the breeze now setting in. The swaying and creaking and shaking and bending produce an unreal bellowing sound that can be felt all through the ground, up into my feet, and clear through to my spine.
And with the breeze, comes yet another round of tiny detached pieces of these living specimens fluttering down from high up in the canopy above. For hundreds of feet there are no branches on these auburn pillars to catch the plummeting, tiny particles raining down.
We remove our hats and attempt to catch falling needles for good luck, before they fall to the forest floor, and indeed we do. Fortune favors us today. With my senses clearly overwhelmed, I have a love for this ancient landscape.
So what is it like to stand in the presence of a giant redwood forest? In a word, to me anyways, it’s like heaven. Forget puffy clouds and pearly gates, and putting aside the numerous religions and their afterlife, if heaven truly exists, this is how I would imagine it to be.
Cheers to the tall ones,
Matt