Morning light pouring down in pillars through the redwood canopy

Nature

Redwood Forest

“A cathedral of trees, where the light comes down between the pillars”

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Photo: Library of Congress Life · CC0

Scenes

A forest path in the redwoods dissolving into fog — A path fading into the fogAnnette Teng · CC BY 3.0

Sword ferns thriving in the shade beneath the redwoods — Ferns covering the feet of thousand-year treesPeteBobb · CC BY-SA 3.0

Two redwoods rising straight up like columns into the canopy — Columns rising straight into the skyLibrary of Congress Life · CC0

The furrowed red bark of a redwood soaring up to its crown — The red skin of a thousand-year treeJana Taylor · CC BY-SA 3.0

Ferns and moss rising again from the hollow of a fallen giant — Life rising again from a fallen giantCarol M. Highsmith · Public Domain

Meaning

The trees rise so high you cannot find their crowns, and the light, filtered through them, comes down in slanting pillars. The ground is soft underfoot with a thousand years of fallen earth, and in a hush where even the birdsong has withdrawn, something very old settles around you.

The coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is the tallest living thing on earth, growing past 100 meters and living two thousand years. No religion raised this as a sanctuary, yet its scale, its silence, and the light filtered down through the canopy have long drawn something close to pilgrimage. The Indigenous peoples of this coast — the Yurok, Tolowa, and Karuk — have held these groves sacred, and people reaching for a word to describe them have long said 'cathedral.'

Field notes

Location: North Coast · California · N41.2° · W124.0°
Best time: Early morning, when fog fills the spaces between the trees and the light breaks downward in pillars
Getting there: The North Coast of California, USA; walk among the great trees along the trails of Redwood National and State Parks.
Etiquette: Low voices and staying to the trails keep the thousand-year forest and the life beneath its roots.

Sources

· UNESCO World Heritage
· Encyclopaedia Britannica

Official site Wikipedia

Photographs are freely licensed works from Wikimedia Commons and similar sources; the author and license appear beneath each image.