Humboldt Redwoods

GIANTS

Superlatives could be used (a forest of giants, the largest living beings on earth, ...) or facts to baffle with (in 1874 the Santa Rosa Baptist church was built from the timber of a single tree). But would that convey the experience?

Here, in the massive space between columns, a birdcall only echoes a feeling: that the lifespan of other, more common sentient beings (this waiting bird, a deer passing by, a bemushroomed human) are only that: just a birdcall, soon falling short in the purple silence of primeval forest, in the undisturbed stillness of primordial age.

But with so little remaining (2%) of what once was a vast green forest inhabiting the shore of a vast blue ocean, the same birdcall pierces through the infinite sadness that is felt to gives rise — in the wordless experience of what remains — to infinite gratitude.