Wandering around the vast redwood forests of Humboldt County in Northern California gives a sense of the prehistoric. The forest is absolutely silent, except for the families with children or rowdy teenagers running and squealing along the trails. But if one can get a moment alone in the Land of the Giants, the silence is absolutely overwhelming.
It’s beautiful.
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My road trip buddy Steven and I made a road trip up north a couple of weeks ago to go tent camping and to look at the trees. It’s not like we don’t have our own stands of redwoods here in the Bay Area to go galavanting around in. It was more about getting out of town and into somewhere new, for me anyway.
Steven and I have opposite-end travel styles. He likes to be in constant motion. I like to pick one place and thoroughly explore it for however long it takes – whether that’s a day, a week, a month, etc. – absorbing the place and feeling its story. Creating a study. Being in constant motion makes it difficult to write about a sense of place. Catching snippets here and there. Only beginning to feel the root-like energy of the trees envelope me before having to move on.
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The day of this photograph was spent going on and off trails, dipping toes into the river (ok, I fell in …), seeing as many trees as possible. I shot all of my images in color, but I wondered if some of them wouldn’t be better in black and white. Experimenting with that BW button in photoshop, I liked the black and white images, the contrast, the scale. But I also liked the color for their depth and warmth. Putting them side by side, almost like a stereoscope, seemed practical, almost. I didn’t have to make up my mind which one I liked better.
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We once had a governor in California, before my time here – who doesn’t even need to be named because what he said is now an infamous comment to anyone who has an environmentalist heart – who insisted that if “you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.” It was his response to allowing the forests to be harvested for capitalistic gains. I imagine that this person was a busy man, and true, if you don’t have the time to wander at your own speed, one redwood tree often seems to look just like the next.
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Whispering. It’s something I do in forests and cathedrals. The energy in both places is very similar. Both are usually ancient, both full of prayer. I find it natural to meditate when I am in the forest. Pick a tree and sit under it for a while, and take in the scent of the earth and feel it beneath me. Even being alone in the forest, I will whisper to the trees.
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At then end of the day, Steven asked me if I had gotten any good images, and I replied, “Yes. I have a couple of hundred images of one tree.”
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My last remark of the day was meant as a joke. Redwood trees, even though they have a very similar structure to them, are each unique. Their similarities are what makes an unobservant person think they are all the same. It’s not until one gets up close and spends time with a tree that they can see its uniqueness.
