I just spent two and a half days in Silicon Valley. I flew in on a plane and landed in San Jose, stayed at a hotel in Sunnyvale, and had two days of training in Cupertino. In my drives around town, I passed by Apple headquarters, eBay, Seagate, Pixelworks, and many other giants of the tech industry.

I probably should have been impressed. But the fact is, I wasn’t. What impressed me was my drive into the Santa Cruz mountains, up winding, two-narrow-for-two-cars-to-pass roads that had such a thick canopy of trees that sunlight didn’t show through. About an hour west of the industry of hub of Silicon Valley is California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park.  At the bottom of the road, the trees were big.  Bigger than most old-growth trees I’m used to seeing in the midwest.  But as I and my little rental Kia traveled higher, the trees got bigger.  Much much bigger.  Near the top, some of the trees pushed up against the road were as wide as we were.  At the top, the trees were big enough to be houses.

I have never seen anything like this.  These trees are so huge that they put you in your place in the universe.  A very very small place.  These trees live to between 1,000 and 2,000 years old, and grow to heights of 400 or more feet.  They grow in little groups or pods, with five or ten in a circle, sometimes with a space in between like some sort of tree coven, sometimes with their lower trunks touching.  Most of the larger, older trees show evidence of lightning strikes and fires that probably burned or smoldered for months before the rain put them out.  These lightning strikes and fires do not kill the trees, at least, not quickly.  They live for hundreds of years after such damage, which rarely goes deeper than the bark, which is nearly five inches thick.

With all the destruction of forests over the years, with logging de-nuding much of the west over the last two hundred years, you might wonder how the Redwoods survived.  The fact is, Redwood isn’t good for a whole lot.  It is relatively weak, and can’t be used for lumber.  It isn’t pulpy enough to use for paper.  When cut into smaller pieces, it becomes quite crumbly and weak, basically disintegrating.  With no commercial application of the wood, these trees were left to continue to grow.

This was just about the most quiet place I’ve ever been.  Unlike other pine forests, the wind in the tops of the trees made no sound.  The wide canopy of the trees hushed out anything I might have heard, like airplanes.  And within the forest, with the younger Redwoods and other deciduous trees filling in, muffled any sound that might have gone through at ground level.  Even birds were limited, just a few finches and a blue jay were all I saw.

I’m glad I got to have this experience.  As I get older, I realize that all the things I can squeeze into my life are going to be worth it.  I had about six daylight hours to goof around before I would be stuck in training for two days, and I took full advantage of it.  Who knows when I’ll ever get to see such a thing again?  As I like to say often, never waste a nice day!

Santa Cruz Mountain Vista.

I was so tempted to walk this trail just to see where it went, but my ankle said no.

The hollow of this tree would have made a spacious bedroom.

That’s a darned big tree.  That is a building next to it on the right.

Redwood cluster.

Canopy.

Rings on a tree that had been cut down.

Burls at the base of a Redwood.

Burnt out Redwood.

The view from inside the burned out Redwood, looking upward.  Amazing.

 Mother Redwood.

Father Redwood.

This plaque contains the information for the big slice of tree in the picture following.  The little plates on the slice referred to events in history next to the ring that would have grown that year.

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