Long Trails and Tall Trees

The family started day seven of their Sierra Nevada travels by eating breakfast outside in the gentle morning sunlight, shooing bees away from their food as they watched a flock of wild turkeys strut by. They were at We Three Bakery, a sweet little restaurant along the road leading into Sequoia National Park.

The journey to Sequoia National Park began with a steep, serpentine road that was flanked by the same dry, tired landscape of the valleys below. As the altitude increased, the forest thickened, the turns tightened and car sickness suggested itself in more than one passenger in the car. The road was wilder than some roller coasters. Halfway up the mountain, B stopped the car so OneSon could take motion sickness medicine and switch to the front seat. 

The Road into Sequoia National Park

The family watched eagerly for glimpses of the famous sylvan giants, but as they passed the gate into the park, the only trees they saw were of plebeian dimensions. It wasn’t until they threaded their way through a few more hair-pin turns that they were finally blessed with the terrific sight. It was like coming across a lumbering dinosaur in an ordinary forest. Giant trees.

Outside the visitor center, they stopped at a plaque introducing The Sentinel, a tree that was 2200 years old. It had been a seedling before Christ walked the earth. AJ lay a hand flat on the mortal bark, touching the outside edge of living, breathing millennia.

“This is what history looks like when it’s recorded in wood,” AJ muttered to herself.

The trees were the court recorders of the world, ticking off time and dates in squiggles and lines only partly comprehensible to us. 

After a short mosey through the informative visitor center, they headed to the Big Tree Trail. It was a short trail that looped around a swampy area, surrounded by a high density of big trees. The trees dip their toes in the marshy wet indentation, but never ventured out deeper, because to have water pooling around their roots would kill them. Proof of the fact lay with a horizontal carcass of a humbled giant that had succumbed to water-logged roots.

The lofty, thick trees overwhelmed AJ’s sense of being. They were the superlative-est things on the earth. They were the oldest living organisms, one of the tallest, and the largest living organisms on earth. It would have taken a hard bitten or infinitely ignorant person to walk amongst them and not be awed. The trees had withstood thousands of years unshaken, licked by flames but undaunted. They were monuments to perseverance.

The family wandered around the short loop, stopping to bend their necks back to gaze to the top of the behemoths. B sighed and gasped, frustrated as he tried to get a complete tree in frame of his camera. 

Next, they took a park shuttle to one of the many trails in the park, that she later dubbed, The Deceptively Long Trail. The trail started with General Sherman, the name given to a 2200 year old, 275 feet tall, 1385 ton tree. It was not the oldest, nor the tallest tree, but it did get the prize for being the most massive. In human terms, it was big-boned. 

As they walked down the dusty trails, AJ tried to absorb the experience. First and foremost, her sense of smell was piqued. Every forest had a specific smell depending on the kind of plants it contained. 

“Can you smell it?” she asked anyone who would listen. “In Muir Woods, the odor was sweet and cedar-like. Here, it’s similar, but with a darker, muskier tone. And with a little burnt ash, a faint dairy smell. Probably because of the burnt wood.” Her observations brought nods, but no real answers. 

After visiting the popular General Sherman, The President and The Senate tree displays, the family marched on into the sparse, but shaded forest, stopping sometimes to admire particular specimens or to wait for B and Tripod to take pictures. The longer they walked the fewer people they saw, the more huge trees they encountered. 


As mentioned in a previous entry, walking long distances enhances word recall, invigorating the mind in a way that makes conversation and moods on the trail particularly pleasant. 

During hikes in the past week, the conversations involved Star Wars and Lego and movies. B would have TwoSon consider his surroundings and then ask him, “What planet in Star Wars would this be?” or “What movie does this setting remind you of?” This hike was not different, but after the first few miles, TwoSon started asking his own questions. 

“I wonder who the first person in the whole world to have six toes on each foot was?” he asked, jogging a little to catch up with AJ. His mind was busy working on eight-year-old mysteries, which slowed his legs. 

“Jesus,” B piped in. 

“No, he did not have six toes … well, actually I can’t confirm that he didn’t, but if he did, he wasn’t the first. I think Goliath in the Bible had a cousin who had six toes on each foot.”

“It’d be funny if it were George Washington,” TwoSon said with a laugh. AJ smiled.

AJ loved the silly questions. She encouraged them, because they were easier than the not-so-silly ones like, “Why do people die?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?” 

“Can you pour pine sap on pancakes?” was the next question to come from behind her. See? Easy. 

“Pine sap isn’t really like Maple tree sap. Pines and Maples are two different kinds of trees and the saps are made up of different things.”

AJ made a point to walk behind the daydreaming TwoSon so he wouldn’t be left behind as B, OneSon and Tripod plodded ahead at a brisker pace. The wake of the plodding feet kicked up sparkly clouds of dirt. There was probably silica in the soil that twinkled in the sun. These sparkly dust clouds increased as TwoSon started to drag his feet. 

“I hope I am that decrepitly beautiful when I’m 1/2 dead,” AJ said when she came upon B and Tripod photographing a 1/2 burned tree covered with moss.

AJ walked along, notebook and pen in hand, ready to jot down a few words whenever B stopped for photos. 

“What are you writing?” asked the patriarch of a family that had been hop-frogging them along the trail. 

“It’s so I can remember everything we did when I get home. I always forget by then,” AJ said. She wanted to remember, to be able to relive these rare, beautiful moments. 

\”Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we return it shall not be like other travelers without being able to give on accurate idea of anything. We will know where we have gone-we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarreling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers!\” Volume 2, Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

The man nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

As they walked away from the place where B and Tripod had been working, the quizzitive patriarch’s daughter stood up and said something (English was not their native language), as she pointed into the woods. But she didn’t need to speak English for everyone to understand. The awe on the little girl’s face had AJ, B, OneSon and TwoSon looking as well. In the distance, a medium-sized black bear lumbered in and out of view behind trees, stopping to dig in the ground every so often. The girl’s little brother suddenly ran after it, camera in hand. 

“No, no, don’t go up to it,” AJ whispered under her breath, then sighed in relief when the bold boy stopped and took a picture. 

The trail led the family up steep slopes, down into valleys, past curious boulder formations and thousands of beautiful gigantic sequoias, and through one unfortunate felled tree. As the miles piled up behind them and the hour grew late, B and AJ were pricked with concern. Being lost in the unfamiliar forest wasn’t what they had planned. The Agenda had them leaving the park before evening.  

Well before the sun started its western bow, they descended yet another wooded hill and spied a golden prairie below through the trees. It was a sign that the end of the trail was near. In all, they had hiked seven miles through the land of the mighty sylvan giants. With sore legs and dusty feet, they climbed on the shuttle bus back to the parking lot, sitting in the last few open seats, with no pity for the people who had to stand. 

“That was the best hike of the whole trip, I think,” AJ said as they got into the car. “It was my favorite. But I feel as if I haven\’t appreciated those trees enough. They deserve more admiration … somehow.”

“It was longer than I expected,” B said in a sigh. “It puts us a little behind schedule.”

“Too long,” TwoSon chimed in from the backseat. He did well on the hike despite a few complaints toward the end. 

OneSon shrugged. 

“Can I take off my shoes?” TwoSon asked from the back seat. 

After stopping at a sub shop for dinner on the road, TwoSon shed his dusty, worn shoes and turned on his video game.

The road to Anaheim took them by Los Angeles, through five lanes of highway each way. AJ looked out the window, watching as the trees along the road thinned and gave way to scorched hills, oil fields and thirsty orchards. The contentment and wonder the awe-inducing trees had knitted around AJ as she walked through Sequoia National Park was fading, as if there were a string attached to the dear giants, and moving away from them was unraveling it from around her heart. 

The landscape flanking the highway tried to replace her contentment with bright lights, crowded cities and long strips of stores, but it only brought more longing. That night they pulled into the Howard Johnson Hotel, a few blocks from DisneyLand in Anaheim, CA. In a somber daze, glazed over with fatigue, AJ helped roll the luggage in and up to the hotel room, then helped the boys settle in while B bravely returned the rental car.