So it’s spring. At least that’s what I hear. In Alaska, it’s hard telling. The days are longer, but temperatures are still hovering somewhere between 10 below and 10 above (Fahrenheit) when I wake up, and it never gets above freezing most days. White is the predominant color. The only other colors you see are the brownish-gray of bark and the deep dark green of the evergreen spruce trees. It will be quite a while yet before the snow melts.
I miss color. For over a decade, I spent every March in the California desert, chasing the wildflower bloom. I’m really missing those flowers. My only consolation is that the desert wildflower season this year is a bust because it has been so dry. If I’m going to miss a year, this was a good year to miss.
But I’m still craving color, and warmth. It’s going to be locked in white here, and anywhere else I could drive to, for quite a few more weeks yet. I could use a change of scenery.
If there are no flowers in the desert, I guess I should look somewhere else for color. How about the redwood forests of northern California? There’s plenty of green there and a few flowers, too. Might be a nice place to travel to, even if it is only in my imagination!{
Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, over 50 feet taller than any other species. They are one of the largest trees on the planet, too. Redwood trees you can drive through are a popular northern California tourist attraction.
They are fast-growing and long-lived. Although the average age for an old-growth redwood is 500 to 600 years, some specimens have been recorded at over 2,200 years old!
Redwood trees are water hogs. They have to be, they’re so tall. It’s hard for water to make it all the way from the roots to the crown, 100 meters up. Even though they live in a seasonally rainy climate, the trees depend on fog to survive. They can absorb water through their bark and their leaves, and 30% of their water needs are filled by fog.
The rainier and foggier it is, the taller the trees grow. The tallest redwoods grow deep in the valleys where the fog settles in. One of the challenges facing redwood trees in these days of global climate change is that there is much less fog than there used to be along the northern California coast.
Once their forests spread for millions of acres throughout California’s central and northern coastal lands, all the way from Big Sur to southern Oregon. Then gold was discovered in 1849.
Redwood trees were a lumberman’s dream come true. Not only were the trees humongous, the wood was really something special. Light and beautiful, it absorbed water and resisted rot because of all the tannins it contained. Low in resins, it was also much more resistant to fire than most woods.
Less than 5% of the original old-growth forest remains. These forests, which had thrived undisturbed for thousands of years, were decimated in less than one human lifetime.
By 1908, the California Federation of Women’s Clubs presented a children’s petition with 2,000 signatures to the Forest Service, asking them to protect some of the remaining trees for future generations, to create a national redwood park before they were all gone.
By 1918 the Save the Redwoods League formed, part of the same conservation movement that created the National Park Service. In fact, Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, was an integral part of the formation of the League.
However, there was no Redwoods National Park until 1968. Instead, the Save the Redwoods League saved the trees. They raised money and bought up tracts of virgin redwood forest wherever and whenever they could. Eventually, they established 66 different redwood parks and reserves. Many of these groves formed the backbone of California’s state park system.
All these facts and figures and history of the redwoods may be fascinating, but there are no words to describe the most important things about a redwood forest. Anyone who has spent time in the redwoods would agree, though.
These forests are magical. They’re enchanted. Although they have no words, these ancient beings will speak to you if you give them a chance. Call me a treehugger, but a living redwood is a sentient being.
Walking in a redwood forest is a healing experience, a meditation. You will emerge a calmer and wiser soul than you were when you arrived. I highly recommend it for the next time you are craving a change of scenery.
Thank you, Beth, of Wandering Dawgs, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, “A Change of Scenery”.
