Redwoods | Camino Bay Books

2022 The Northern Route – Visby Redwoods

Robin — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 19:00:08 +0000

Speaking of trees, I failed to mention about Visby something important—I discovered there was a botanical garden a mile from my hotel and since I am always happy in such places I walked there a time or two each day. It’s only about 5 acres and is essentially a park with specially chosen and cared for plants and an abundance of old trees of various species. But like all these it had an atmosphere that drew me in, a mélange of solemnity, wonder, gratitude for the existence of such life and beauty, and wistfulness for the lack of more such places. They also induce in me a meditative quietude that I appreciate and am happy to indulge.

After my first visit I read something that shocked me–in this garden there lives a Sequoia, which was planted in 1961 and is now about 50-60’ high. I was almost unbelieving and found it an interesting coincidence that I sat beneath it the first time I chose to just be present with all that was growing there, to silently admire the trees and other plants and feel the spirit of the place. Each time I came back to the garden, I sat beneath that tree. The informational plaque beside it was in Swedish and it took a while to find someone who could translate it for me, but it said nothing about how and why the Sequoia seed was brought to Visby, and that was my main interest. I’ll try to email and learn more. I found a sibling to Yosemite Valley in a Norwegian fjord and now a tree from the Sierra; so many connections. There was also a Dawn Redwood, a species I’d not heard of but that turns out to be one of the three species of which the Sequoia and Coast Redwoods in California are the other two making up the genus. The Dawn variety is native to China, a curiosity to say the least, and approached extinction but is now being planted in many places such as this botanical garden. It did not look like the Coast Redwood and I suspect wasn’t altogether healthy. The Sequoia, on the other hand, was flourishing.

Photos by Author – Craig Brestrup

Thoughts From My Journal – Stillwater II

Dr. Brestrup — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 13:30:04 +0000

11-17: Yesterday Twig and I walked what’s called the Canyon Trail (at StillWater Cove) along the creek eastward to its terminus at private property. (The distinction between a canyon and a valley is, even in dictionaries, very loose, which allows plenty of room for privately tinged definitions. I tend to think of canyons as rougher kinds of land and generally larger or deeper than valleys, so Grand Canyon fits very well whereas Grand Valley wouldn’t do. Yosemite Valley could easily have been Yosemite Canyon owing to its depth and vertical walls, but its softness [smooth granite, abundance of tall trees] makes valley fitting; habituation to the name surely plays a part as well. As often with language, I also trust my senses, particularly ear and eye, and some “elongate depressions of the earth” just feel/look/sound like a canyon or valley. This “Canyon” feels far more like a valley to me, but in deference to tradition I will grudgingly accept canyon.) I estimate the vertical drop from rim to creek as close to 200’ and most of the redwood at 100’ or so tall; it’s also a rather narrow canyon although it opens some as it moves away from its mouth into the sea, its sides clothed in downed trees, bushes, a few lower story trees, and dense fern. Our first day here the atmosphere was thick fog but yesterday had turned to bright sun. In both cases it was dark with shade along the trail and throughout. As second growth the trees are about the same height with little to obstruct the view through the forest except boles as the canyon widens. Its feel is of both mystery and foreboding, and its aura dramatically beautiful—I cannot imagine any way the space of this place could be more so, nothing could embellish, no improvement possible. I imagine the land, the trees and the ferns, happy in their life here with much comingling of roots with each other and with fungi, moist even during dry times, soil rich with fallen matter and indigenous creatures of all sorts, mostly unseen. It’s quiet, no more sound than a couple of woodpeckers and creek gurgling as it flows toward reunion with ocean mother a half mile downstream. For a century or more the canyon seems to have been left undisturbed; I hope it remains that way for as long as it can be. Its happiness depends on it.
No, I have no problem calling it a happy landscape. I’ve been in unhappy ones and the difference is unmistakable.

Photo from Unsplash

Thoughts From My Journal – Stillwater Cove

Dr. Brestrup — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 13:30:49 +0000

11-15: I walk the trail out of the campground [on the Pacific coast now at Still Water Cove a hundred miles north of San Francisco] and can make a left when I reach the valley bottom and find myself in a small cove a quarter mile to the west. A right takes me along a creek into redwood forest and fern-covered slopes to the top. I always want to speak of the beauty of such places but realize there’s a quality that precedes and encompasses beauty—what I can only call presence. In this case it’s an especially powerful presence owing to its comprehensive and coherent unity, the creek running with water from recent rains and lined with great second growth redwood and fir and the ubiquitous fern. In one remarkable spot there’s what looks like the ancient stump of a truly giant redwood out of which a half dozen or more hundred-foot progeny reach skyward. Part of presence is autonomy: This is an area that takes care of itself, that knows what’s needed and what belongs and that restored itself after the logging from the 19th or early 20th century. With all of this, how can there not also be great beauty of the sort that stops me in my tracks when I enter the trail and then proceed slowly downward to the creek. If there were sun it would still be darkly shaded and with today’s heavy fog it feels somewhere between foreboding and enticingly mysterious in its green-gray obscurity. The kind of place that evokes meditation and gratitude.

Photo by Matthew Jackson on Unsplash