My friends, I want to help you understand that the redwoods are big.

They are big trees.

They are trees so big that, after you see them, trees that you formerly thought were big don't seem so big afterwards.

I hope you trust me enough that, when I say the redwoods are big, you'll believe me about their inherent bigness.

If you have doubts, however, this photograph should serve as Official Government Certification.

(For you anarchists, I have to vouch for the Government's signmakers in this instance;

that is a big tree.)

Today at work I was talking with a technical trainer out of LA. I mentioned I had visited the redwood country recently, and he said,

"Oh, yes! Wonderful, wonderful place. When I was up there, I ran into Danny DeVito hiking the backcountry."

I'm not sure whether this says more about the redwood backcountry or about LA culture.

I might have spotted Amelia Earhart on the trails, but for me, that wouldn't have been the main impact of the place.

Okay, Amelia Earhart would have made an impression, I guess.

Penelope Cruz, maybe. The redwood forest is way prettier than Penelope Cruz.

The Government hasn't certified Penelope Cruz with a rustic billboard yet, right?

The Park Ranger told me to drive up to Klamath Overlook, and check out the 10 gray whales that hang out by the mouth of the river.

Nope, no whales.

The Ranger at Jed Smith Redwoods told me, be very wary about bears!

Nope, no bears.

So I camped at Elk Prairie, where you pretty much have to beat the elk off with a stick.

Nope, no elk, although I did see elk poop all over the place...
sorry, didn't snap any pix...

My predilection is to seek the animals, and in their absence, I am confronted by the majestic trees.

But the redwoods are so big, I can't really see them. They're too much.

I'm left looking around the trees, at the way the light flows through the forest.

Tiny details emerge in the slivers of sunlight that slide between those wonderous trees.

The slices of sunlight illuminate details in the overwhelming forest.

The details, I can grasp.

A single branch,
a chunk of broken redwood,
a patch of sunlit beach on the far side of the river...

I know people of great insight whose experience is different, but the redwood forest does not speak to me. For me it's aloof and dispassionate. Both size and time, the scales are too disparate for me. I am nearly too intimidated to enter. But when I look more closely, there is an individual leaf, a smooth-polished stone, the fallen feather of a gray bird, and I remember,
a cat may look at a king.

Mendocino Lost Coast Redwood Forest