Day 18
How do I describe something that defies ordinary description?
How do I photograph something that doesn’t compare unless there is something in the frame that gives it some perspective and scale, let alone fit it in the lens?
These are good problems.
For those of you who have had the privilege of visiting Sequoia National Park, you understand where I am coming from.
For those of you who haven’t, I will do my best to help convey the experience that we had yesterday and share it with you.
Everybody knows about Sequoia. Everybody has seen photographs. The usual superlative adjectives are thrown about with reckless abandon in a desperate attempt to describe these wonderful beings.
Are they sentient?
No.
Not that kind of being. But when you walk among them they are so much more than just trees. But, in fact, that is what they are.
Only, simply, basically, ……. Trees.
Most of the conifer type trees that grow here in the Sierra Nevada grow BIG. It’s the location. It has to do with tree cell make-up and metabolism. So, what’s the big deal?
You look around and see big trees all over here. White Fir, Douglas Fir, Sugar Pine, Incense Cedar, and Ponderosa Pine all grow almost as tall. They are all truly impressive trees.
But there is something else about Sequoias.
Something that you can’t quite put your finger on. It goes back to that list of superlative adjectives that I mentioned earlier.
You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you can put your hand on it.
Go ahead.
Put your hand on the bark of one of these monoliths.
Even the bark conveys something to us.
At up to two-feet thick, it defends its owner like a castle wall defends its Keep. It repels insects and fire. In fact, a Sequoia depends on fire to insure that it lives and reproduces.
What???!!!
Hey! Remember, Only You can Prevent Forest Fires!
Smokey Bear has ingrained that into all of us since he first rolled out of a New Mexico forest fire decades ago. But now we know that forest fires are good.
What???!!!
Yes they are. Fire has been a key component in Mother Nature’s Forest Management Program for as long as she has been around. It’s us, the human factors, that have messed up her plans and we have just (relatively) learned that suppressing naturally occurring fires has its downside.
So, Smokey’s message has morphed a bit and he now reminds us that, Only You Can Prevent Wildfires!
Wildfires are different than naturally occurring forest fires or prescribed burns. We now use prescribed burns as an intermediary tool to kind of bridge the gap between all-out Armageddon (in a human-desirable type location) and Nature’s need to scour that forest floor of detritus, undesirable insects, and other nasties.
So, Sequoia had a forest fire.
It is ugly.
I’m guessing that only the most hardened Naturalist and Forest Management scientist can look upon the charred remains of this once verdant woodland and smile. But I will venture that even they would secretly wish that this area had remained “pretty” if their families had been visiting for the first time.
But it didn’t.
I guess that the solace here is that our descendants now have a better chance of gazing in the same wonderment that we enjoy.
But not everything burned. Just enough to help some areas with their long-term health and, most of the Giants were left un-affected. Remember that fire-resistant bark? 😊
So now we get to get back to the fun stuff!
As you can see from the photos, we had another 15 on the 1 to 10 scale of weather. The road that climbs up into the heart of the park rises about 6000 feet and when you engineer that kind of road in a relatively small area you must use the dreaded switchbacks.
Which means that your road speed averages about 18 mph.
Which means that it takes another forty-five minutes to get from the Visitor’s Center to the Giant Forest.
Which means that by the time you get there you need to use the restroom!
That’s good because it gives us the opportunity to include the restroom building as one of those objects of scale that I mentioned earlier!
No matter how much time you spend here it is impossible to be unaffected by the massiveness of the citizens of the Giant Forest. I think that it’s a human thing. We are subject to evolution just like any other living organism on our planet. For gazillions of years we, as a species, has experienced trees. We’ve cut them down, used them to build things, climbed them, made tree-forts, and planted some in our respective castles and used them as a great landscaping tool.
We really only “discovered” these Giants a little over a hundred years ago. That’s’ way too short a time to affect our collective experience with trees. So, as a consequence, they still blow us away no matter how long we stay in close proximity to them. Even the Rangers here speak in awed voices about their Big Friends. My daughter Lorelyn was a Ranger here over twenty years ago and is still affected (nicely) by her experiences here.
Sequoia has more than Big Trees. It has the Sierra Nevada as its home. That means that one of the most dynamic mountain ranges on our planet is home to the Sequoia.
It is kind of fitting.
The only place in the world that has Sequoias is right here in these mountains. In a mere fifty miles or so, we go from the highest point in the lower forty-eight to the lowest point in North America and one of the lowest on the Earth. Mount Whitney tops out at 14,505 ft above sea level and proverbial stone’s throw away is Death Valley at negative 282 feet below sea level.
In a land of extremes, the Sequoia embodies that extreme.
The Sierra Nevada are mostly granite.
Morro Rock is all granite and is scarily cool to climb. Since the early 1920’s there has been a stairway folded into its cracks and crevasses for us to scamper up. Well, may be not scamper, more like laboriously put one foot in front of the other because at over 7000’ of elevation (unless you are acclimatized for this height) breathing is not the same as at sea level.
But then, the view isn’t either!
All of the peaks that can be seen looking eastward into the heart of the Sierra Nevada are over 12,000’. Looking the other way, way down into the valley, you can see the road snakeily (that word is not in spell-check!) winding its way through the different levels of the landscape until it emerges up here in the Forest.
We made lots of Rock Friends on the climb up and down!
The last thing that we did was to pay a visit the largest living entity in the world and that is the General Sherman Tree.
It is not the tallest.
It is not the oldest.
It is the most massive.
And ….. the top is dead.
But the bottom keeps growing! Somewhat ensuring its remaining at the pinnacle of this list.
That concludes our lesson for today. I hope that I have not over-exaggerated any of the attributes of this area. I believe that it is impossible to do so as there really are no words, or pictures, that can take the place of an actual meeting with our Giant Friends.
Come out here and meet them for yourself.
