Geek Rant vs the Redwoods Rally- Stage Two. "The Monoliths of Nature"

Greetings Geekranters!

Welcome once more to the cornucopia of creative chattering that is my ever humble blog. I as always blessed that you are here, I hope you enjoy it.

Last time, I left you on somewhat of a cliffhanger, with my wife and I heading intrepidly onward into unknown territory. Okay, so it wasn't that gripping a cliffhanger and it wasn't for us either, but cliff hanging would come. But more about that later.

I have two younger sisters who are twins. Now, why would I bring such a piece of information up like that, in the middle of talking about something else entirely, I hear you cry. Well the answer to that question has a lot to do with... penguins. "What about penguins?!", I hear you call out in confusion!

The younger of my sisters loves penguins, always has and always will. Someone wants to get her a present, even now at 27, with her being a fully qualified nurse and all that, still the way to her heart is through penguins. Most of us have something like that in our lives, an animal we like above all others, a fandom that no one else quite gets. A place that we just have to see and we can't quite say why. 

My wife felt the same way about the Redwoods. I'm not claiming for one moment that I wasn't monumentally impressed by the majesty beauty of these arboreal wonders but, in the long run, I got used to them much quicker than my wife did. She loved the Redwoods and much of the next few days of our journey was to be dominated by that desire to see all of them that could be seen. 

We entered California on a early July afternoon in which the sun filtered gently through the green canopy of a thousand evergreens onto a road that seemed to stretch off endlessly into sun dappled oblivion. Everything seemed so still, the air close around us and strangely deadened. Its like that old philosophical question, "if a tree falls in the forest with no-one to hear it, does it make a sound?", I'm pretty sure that a tree could have fallen right in front of us and we would never have heard so much as a whisper. We were entering a secret place, a landscape far older than most of human civilisation. It wasn't that there was no life here, just the opposite in fact. The place teemed with life, still it was a life untamed and unaffected by human existence. A life that kept its secrets close to its chest, as it were.

We were driving into history, through trees thousands of years old, the only visible change in the landscape in all those millennia was the thin asphalt colored ribbon of the road snaking off into hazy verdant imagination. The one sign that we had even crossed into a different state was the simple "Welcome to California" sign, blue against the green of the forest. It would be days before we saw anything that could have been described as a major city or even large town. We were cast loose, it seemed from everything that we had once known, feeling both incredibly small and incredibly blessed at the same time, dwarfed by everything that surrounded us.

Our first destination within California was the Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park, part of California's Redwood National and State Parks. The park sits in the very northern fringe of California in the suitably named "Del Norte County" and only a small distance from the sea, although as we to find out, distance in California is truly relative.

Now while both the UK and the US both possess national parks as a means towards the conservation and preservation of areas of natural beauty and scientific interest, in practice they are not totally the same thing. I've been in many of the U.K.'s national parks in my lifetime and while they are areas of often tremendous beauty and are preserved in a wonderful manner, they are still landscapes defined by humanity's existence. What would the Yorkshires Dales or the Moors be without dry stone walls to separate one field from another, the rocks skillfully balanced without mortar, echoes of man's relationship with the land?

American National Parks on the other hand, seem to concentrate more on the preservation and conservation of landscapes that man hasn't bent to his will yet. Places where nature somehow dwells in its primeval state, fantasy lands more amazing than a thousand movie sets. Therefore, as we drove into the park, we could forgiven for thinking we had entered some Tolkienian landscape. 

The Redwoods were now huge, towering so far above the road that they blocked the sun and signs ahead warned us to turn on our headlights though it was still relatively early in the day. We were surrounded, enveloped by a universe of green, driving blindly onward. The only building we saw was the visitor centre for the park, which sat set back from the road in a slight clearing with a car park. 

Even here, the trees rose high above us like ancient monoliths, their branches touching the sky, as we ate our picnic lunch seated at a simple table on the edge of the car park. It was beautiful and definitely a welcome antidote to the busyness of our everyday life. There was barely a breath of wind but here the space beneath the great boughs was cool although wherever the sun broke through it was stunningly bright.

We walked trails that afternoon, getting lost amongst the greenery, walking past fallen trees the width of motor cars which the forest had already started to grow upon once more. We were overcome by the peace of this place and even now I struggle to find the words to describe it. We drove to a river, the cleanest I had ever seen outside of books and tv. and I sat in front of it for what seemed like hours watching the sun dance along its surface. We saw trees that had been touched by massive fires and survived, huge ferns and my wife's personal favorite, a banana slug.

It was beautiful, it was peaceful, it was epic, it was...impossible to truly describe. As I have written this blog, I have found myself out of my depth, how can I hope to describe such beauty? How can I adequately express such sights? They lie in my memory and yet the true glory of them lies there and then. Lies only in the moment when the place commands your attention and everything else fades away. Like a symphony echoing in the heart long after it is played but only truly as an echo.

Yes, my wife loved the Redwoods and I was overcome by them.

Till next time,

Goodbye Geekranters.