Walking amongst the Redwoods
March 25-31 2023
I recently went on a trip to the Redwoods with some peers and pals over spring break. Part of me had wanted to go home for the break, and I was planning on it for a while, but I decided that some time in nature would probably serve me well. I come back from days free from technology and full of fresh air feeling rejuvenated, feeling myself healing more actively. I love the feeling of coming home with a slightly sunburnt face and the freckles on my nose and cheeks showing again. Chapped lips, skin coated in a thin layer of dirt, the first shower and big meal after a week of lake, river, and ocean bathing and living off fruit snacks and refried beans. There’s something oddly ethereal about all of it. Being outdoors persistently increases my gratitude for the beauty of everyday life. I miss my bed when I’m away, and it becomes insanely more comfortable upon returning home. It also reminds me of the natural beauty and wonders that surround us, which we often forget to take care of and express generosity towards. The trees that have existed for over a thousand years before us, the fern species that have been around since the dinosaurs. Interconnected roots stretching across entire forests, connecting trees to one another and allowing them to communicate, to form families.
One of the reasons why I love spending time outdoors so much is because it reminds me of how small I am. It is easy to think we are taking too much space, with loud laughter or a raised voice or while spinning across a room in excitement. There is a certain shame aligned with being bold, confident, outwardly enthusiastic or joyful. And then you’re in the redwoods, and you’re surrounded by trees over 300 feet tall. Some have new growths beginning to come off of them, and some have fully grown trees emerging from the middle of their trunks. People come from all across the world to just attempt to take in the sheer length and age of these trees that have surpassed their great, great grandmothers by over a thousand years. It is difficult to conceptualize how long a 2,000 year old tree really has been around, and I’m not sure it’s fully possible. It’s part of the reason I love it, the lack of a full understanding. In fact, more people have summited Mount Everest than have been to the top of an old-growth tree. The trees have so many stories and secrets that we will never know, and that’s only a bit of their beauty.
Many of the redwood trees we saw had canopies, also known as sky gardens. Sky gardens are usually over a hundred feet off the ground, and made of moss and fern leaves between redwood branches. They are home to different species of plants and animals, including birds and salamanders. There are certain species of salamanders who live their entire lives in these sky gardens, never knowing anything else. They do not know of the soil or the water, much less of us. There is something pretty wonderful about that, too. The fern mats in the sky gardens can also absorb and retain an incredible amount of water, and redwoods benefit from this collected water by growing their roots further and spreading nutrients across the forest.
The redwoods also are pretty spectacular at sequestering carbon, and they take in more carbon annually than any other tree in the world. Carbon that we are emitting, somewhat carelessly. They are probably some of the most selfless creatures to ever live, and the strongest. Fire, flood, storm, wind, the passing of time- they only grow more beautiful. Although we admire and love these trees, we rarely demonstrate this love morally. Less than 5% of the redwood trees are left due to logging and deforestation, as a result of humans. It would be a global tragedy to lose these tremendously tall, beautiful trees, and we must work together to protect them.
It is integral to acknowledge the people who discovered this land, the Tolowa and Yurok. Most of the land we spent time on during this trip belongs to the Tolowa, whose lands extend north into Oregon and east along Mill Creek and the Smith River. In the 1850s, the California gold rush brought in outsiders, who displaced indigenous peoples who had been creating their homes here since finding these beautiful trees.
The ocean is just as vast and inconceivably large, even older than the multi-ringed trees we have been examining. We stood on the beach in the wind and rain, waiting for the sun to come out, which it did. It always does. I took some time to myself during our last day on the coast and sat on the edge of a rock for a while, listening to the wind and the seagulls, watching the tide rise and fall back again. I am cold, but I do not want to leave. Because even when the sun goes down, the stars come out, and there is yet another wonder of the natural world to soak in. Before we know it, the sun will rise again. It always does!
-B
beautiful beautiful
LOOOOOVE this esp the last paragraph!!!! Will be reading again and again