Sunday May 10, 2015: It is overcast this morning. I take a few photos before building a little campfire to keep me company while I write in the journal. Here it is May and a campfire and a wool poncho are welcome parts of my life. I love this weather.
Big Leaf Maples are huge and covered with golden-green moss that looks like fur.
By time I am done writing, it is too sunny for good photos in the forests what with bright splashes of light and deep shadows. But I go for a walk, anyway, just because the forest is so wonderful.
Light and shadows in the forest
Trees along the Newton-Drury Parkway in Prairie Creek State Park
Back at camp, I download photos and edit until my laptop battery is dead. Then Clifford and I decide to go for a drive up the Newton-Drury Parkway, which is a road right through the heart of the redwood forest in the Prairie Creek State Park.
Driving the Newton-Drury Roadway
Shamrocks and ferns, as well as moss, grow out the decaying wood of dying and dead trees
In addition to driving the 10 mile length of the road, admiring the great trees as we go, we stop and follow paths to a couple of the most outstanding trees in the area.
Clifford and Carol in the Prairie Creek Redwood forest
Tree-peeker
The Corkscrew Tree
The Corkscrew Tree is a redwood famous for the unusual entwining growth of its four trunks. It looks quite different depending on the angle at which one approaches, but it is no doubt unique, no matter where one is standing.
Corkscrew Tree – a very twisted Redwood
Clifford looking up at Big Tree
The other famous redwood in this forest, Big Tree, is a single trunk 20 feet in diameter with a 68-foot circumference. This wonderful giant is about 1,500 years old.
Clifford and Carol at Big Tree
Big Leaf Maple leans precariously as Clifford looks upward at other tall trees
The big leaf maples are also amazing… so very tall with great branches reaching out, covered with moss like golden-green fur.
Moss-covered Big Leaf Maple
Leaning Big Leaf Maple
I am in such awe of these giants of the earth and reluctant to leave them, but on back to camp we go. I continue reading “Legacy of Luna” by Julia Hill, admiring her great courage and stamina to stand up to adversity of all sorts while living for two years in an old-growth redwood near Eureka, done to bring awareness to environmental issues and logging practices.
A redwood like Luna, but smaller. Could I live in her branches for two years?
As I walk in the forests in the evening, I look up at the old-growth redwoods around camp and consider what it would be like to live in the upper stories of one of these giants, never setting foot on the ground for over two years.
I am so in love with trees, tall trees, short trees, straight trees, leaning trees, crooked trees, furry trees. I’ll dream of trees tonight.
