Redwoods – Surrounded by Giants
Among Redwoods – Waking Up Surrounded by Giants
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SURROUNDED BY GIANTS
Photograph by TREY RATCLIFF Can you imagine waking up to this in the morning? Trey Ratcliff shows us a cabin at the Glen Oaks eco-lodge in California’s Big Sur. This is one of several cabins at Glen Oaks. The huge trees surrounding it are the famed Californian Redwoods. Located on Highway One in Big Sur Valley, Glen Oaks has 26 rooms consisting of a large main lodge and a number of surrounding cottages and cabins. – via Trey Ratcliff on Flickr and |
Some Observations on Redwoods
VISITORS to the groves of California’s giant coast redwoods stand and gaze up in silent wonder. Surrounded by the huge trunks towering upward, the leafy canopy high overhead, the shafts of light slanting down through this green ceiling, you feel small and insignificant. With the silence, the stillness, the shafts of light so dramatically defined against the shade of the great forest engulfing you a feeling of reverential awe steals over you. Many relate to these forests of giant redwoods.
Ladybird Johnson Grove is a great-one stop destination amid an entire region dedicated to the redwood forest experience. Near Orick, in northern California, Lady Bird Johnson Grove showcases massive three hundred-foot trees in old-growth forest. The 1-mile loop nature walk with hollowed trees reminiscent of Tolkien’s elf-dwellings has a sense of scale that is difficult to describe. The interpretive trail has 13 numbered stops along the way explaining a bit about the ecology and history of the redwoods.
Redwood trees over 200 feet (60 m) are common, and many are over 300 feet (90 m). The current tallest tree is the Hyperion tree, measuring 379.3 feet (115.61 m). The tree was discovered in Redwood National Park during the summer of 2006 by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor, and is thought to be the world’s tallest living organism. The previous record holder was the Stratosphere Giant in Humboldt Redwoods State Park at 370.2 feet (112.84 m) (as measured in 2004). Until it fell in March 1991, the “Dyerville Giant” was the record holder. It, too, stood in Humboldt Redwoods State Park and was 372 feet (113.4 m) high and estimated to be 1,600 years old. This huge fallen giant has been preserved in the park to allow visitors to walk along its trunk.
Redwoods – Author: Jason Chin: An ordinary train ride becomes and extraordinary trip to the great ancient forests A subway trip is transformed when a young boy happens upon a book about redwood forests. As he reads the information unfolds, and with each new bit of knowledge… Read more …
The northern boundary of the species’ range is marked by two groves on the Chetco River on the western fringe of the Klamath Mountains, 15 mi (24 km) north of the California-Oregon border. The largest (and tallest) populations are in Redwood National and State Parks (Del Norte and Humboldt Counties) and Humboldt Redwoods State Park (Humboldt County, California), with the majority located in the much larger Humboldt County. The southern boundary of its range is the Los Padres National Forest’s Silver Peak Wilderness in the Santa Lucia Mountains of the Big Sur area of Monterey County, California. The southernmost grove is in the Southern Redwood Botanical Area, just north of the national forest’s Salmon Creek trailhead.
News About Redwood Forest
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