It was another early wakeup and another predawn drive to the west entrance of Yosemite National Park.  I was on a mission to maximize my two day visit to the park. Fortunately, there was no line at the gate and after showing my National Park Pass, I was waved through.

I started my hour long drive down narrow roads, around sharp curves, and up and down steep mountains.  Passing by a number of scenic outlooks I saw people sitting patiently in camp chairs, standing in clusters, wearing coats or draped in blankets waiting in the chilly morning air to see iconic sunrise views.  But I was not to be deterred from my destination, a long held dream for this tree lover, a walk through the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.

Pulling into the welcome center parking lot I found an open spot, got out, shouldered my backpack, and hustled, well, actually limped over to the shuttle bus stop as my legs were stiff from yesterday’s steep hike up the Mist Trail.  I took my place in the long queue of grove visitors.  The bus pulled in and we all jammed in close together following the repeated urgings of the driver.  Think here of morning commuters being shoved on to a Tokyo train. Snugged in close to my fellow passengers, I could feel the anticipation and excitement in the air.

After a ten-minute ride the bus stopped and along with the crowd I stepped out, walked past the famous Mariposa Grove sign where people lined up to take selfies and group photos, strode onto to the boardwalk and headed into the grove.  After twenty yards I stopped still, stunned by a scene completely different than I had imagined, a scene more majestic, more complex, and lovelier than anything I had pictured.

The bark of these giant trees, illuminated by the soft, angled morning sunlight wasn’t gray or brown or black, but instead a rich cinnamon color, like the color of those cinnamon sticks that go into a mug of warm apple cider in the fall.  No, somehow this color was brighter and more luminous than any cinnamon stick.  I reached out and touched the bark of a nearby tree.  It was soft, spongy and thick.  Think of putting your hand on a puffy coat filled with wood chips.

Contrary to my expectation these trees didn’t stand in a neat isolated grove, but instead grew in a complex environment with other trees; incense cedar, white fir, ponderosa pines, and sugar pines.  They were one member of a complex forest habitat.

I also noticed that these giant trees weren’t perfect in form.  Instead, they looked battered and weathered with broken limbs and lightning-struck, wind-ripped, truncated tops.  They were a band of survivors and their obvious health in spite of these injuries, scars, and imperfections imbued them with an aura of resilience and an impression of depth of character.

There were fallen trees, those that had succumbed to the challenging forces of wind and fire.  I walked by the massive roots of the “Fallen Monarch.” There were also young trees, six foot saplings, even twelve inch seedlings, growing, biding their time, looking for their opportunity to flourish if granted enough sunlight and enough water.  Only a few would succeed, but there were many at the ready.

Close enough to a sapling, I reached out and touched the needles.  I thought they might feel dry like the needles of white pines that I know from my home in Pennsylvania, but the foliage of the sequoias was different; thin, flat, more cedar like, and even a bit sticky to the touch.

Celebrities

Mariposa Grove is home to a number of celebrity trees, the names most likely given by early advocates of the park in an effort to increase the count of visitors.  No need to do that now as Yosemite annually attracts 4 million visitors the majority of whom make the journey to see these giant sequoias.

It was to these celebrity trees that I and my fellow visitors from all over the world were drawn.  I followed the crowd along the popular lower Mariposa Grove Trail hearing excited voices in Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Norwegian, and Hindi to name just a few.  Some of my fellow walkers were older, maybe checking off an item on life bucket list, others younger and on the vacation of a life time, and there were families with children from toddlers to teens, parents trying to give the gift of experience to their offspring.

The first celebrity on the trail was the Bachelor and Three Graces, a cluster of one tall tree and three fellow travelers.  I’m not sure who named this cluster and why, but there was something inherently pleasing in the view of one big and three adjacent smaller trees.  Given their proximity to one another their roots are most likely intertwined.  If one fell they would all fall, a social unit, their fates linked, their strengths pooled.

Further down the trail I came to the most famous celebrity in the grove, the Grizzly Giant, a towering massive tree standing 209 feet tall, weighing around two million pounds, with an estimated age of around 3000 years.  I could see some other history buffs gazing at the tree and trying to do a rough calculation of what was going on in the world when the tree began its growth journey through time.

Three thousand years ago, meant that this tree started its life journey around 700 BC a time when the Greek city-states formed, when the Assyrians ruled the middle-east, and the Etruscans, the forerunners of the Romans, were setting up shop in Italy.   Seven hundred BC has also been designated as the start of the so called Axial Age when foundational developments occurred in philosophy and religion, when Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Judaism emerged.  This tree, I thought, has seen a lot during its life time; its age was downright hard to comprehend.

Gazing up at the giant I saw that it had a snag at the top possibly caused by a lightning strike.  But another cause for the snag might be due to a sequoia’s ability to reduce the flow of water to the top branches during times of drought effectively starving off the top branches.  When the rains return the tree will again pump water to the top where another branch will take over as the leader.

The Giant Grizzly leans 5 degrees to the south and 1.5 degrees to the west.  Picture the Leaning Tower of Pisa here.  But this giant and its fellow sequoias don’t need engineers to install support cables as they have a two-fold solution to the problem.  First, they spread their roots more to the counter-list side.  Second, they intertwine their roots with other trees to get a little help from their friends.

I waited for my turn to stand in front of the tree and then traded picture taking with a young Norwegian couple.  Was this tree encouraging help from friends?

There was one more notable celebrity to see, The California Tunnel Tree.  Yes, it is gimmicky, with a tunnel through the trunk of the tree, a gap originally designed to be wide enough to accommodate a Model-T.  Clearly, this wasn’t good for the tree and also seemed disrespectful. But, there it was, the tree somehow survived this physical and aesthetic insult and I wasn’t going to miss it.  I waited my turn among the families and kids and found that in fact it was pretty cool to walk through a tree and see the thick bark, the healed inner workings, and gain another perspective on its impressive mass.

Time Warp

Taking a short cut I stepped off the popular lower loop trail and joined the much longer and steeper upper loop trail where there were fewer people.  It was a relief to get away from the crowds and to walk in a quiet forest.  I had one more celebrity tree that I wanted to visit, The Faithful Couple.

Twenty minutes down the trail I came to two giant sequoias joined at the bottom and parting at the top.  The tree had been named The Faithful Couple in the 1850s by Jesse Benton Fremont, a writer, an early advocate for Yosemite Park, and the wife of John Fremont. Wait a second, I thought.  As a history buff I knew John Fremont, the so called Great Pathfinder.  He was a famous explorer of the west, a politician, a self-promoter, the first Republican candidate for President, and an ineffective general in the Civil War. His wife wrote up and popularized his travels, encouraging many to take to the Oregon Trail.

I suddenly felt caught in time warp.  I knew of this name giver.  Her presence wasn’t as abstract as the era of the Ancient Greeks, but still the 1850s was a long time ago.  And since then these trees, oblivious to having been given a name that covered only a few blinks of their existence, continued to grow through summers and winters, through droughts, floods, and fires.

Reading more on the sign I learned how these two trees have joined forces underground, fused their roots, enabling them to share water and nutrients, a relationship that enhances the survivability of both trees.  Over time their trunks grew together at the base. I felt moved and wondered if Jesse Fremont, through her naming of the two trees was offering a guiding comment on the ideal human relationship.

Embrace

Every giant sequoia I walked past had old burn marks, some quite large, yet each of the trees had survived its encounter with fire.  I understood now the value of that thick, insulating protective bark barrier.  This was a tree that could take a fiery punch and keep on growing.

A sign in the grove explained the complex relationship between sequoias and fire. From 1850 on settlers and later park caretakers suppressed fires which ultimately interfered with the normal rhythm of a major lightning strike wildfire every 25-30 years.  By the 1990s, park rangers noticed that the sequoias were suffering from this fire suppression as white fir took over the landscape, grabbed the water and nutrients, and prevented new sequoia trees from sprouting.  It seems that sequoias count on fire to suppress their competitors.  More importantly, fire helps to dry out, open, and drop the egg sized cones to the cleared ground where the tiny seeds can sprout.  In 2000, park staff conducted a controlled burn which helped restore the grove to full health.

I had always thought of fire as the enemy of trees, but these sequoias have evolved to not only survive fires but to use the blazes to provide the right conditions to plant and grow the next generations.  Was this, I wondered, a kind of embracing, a kind of martial arts moving with and using the energy of the enemy?

Silent Walking

I continued along the trail ascending steadily toward the Wawona Point Vista.  There was almost nobody on the trail up here.  All I heard was the sound of my footsteps, the sighing of the wind through the boughs of the pines and firs and sequoias, and the occasional hoarse carruck call of a raven.  The path ahead and the forest floor were dappled with sunlight. All around me I saw diverse shades and textures of green, and every so often another tall cinnamon barked sequoia.

Stepping steadily along the trail, I thought about what is called silent walking, a newly popular approach to connecting with nature, one that has been found to relax the body, restore mental clarity, and rejuvenate the spirit.  The silence, I thought, was the absence of the many voices that I had heard along the lower trail.  It was also the gradual quieting of my internal talking about past concerns and future worries.

But it wasn’t really complete silence.  Into the space created by quieting the external and internal chatter flowed the surrounding sounds of nature.  Into the open attentional space came greater awareness of the sights of this forest.  Into the silence came awareness of the sensations of feet rhythmically touching earth, of dry air touching skin, and of the fragrances of pine, and cedar and fern.

The silent walking set the stage, allowed the emergence of sensory awareness, a pull into the present moment, what I like to think of as the healing, refreshing space of “nature mindfulness.”

As I walked in silence and blended into surrounding nature animals appeared.  A mule deer crossed the trail right in front of me.  Who would expect to encounter a deer is such a busy national park?

Further up, when I reached the vista, a raven perched on a rock a mere twenty feet away. Was it offering a greeting, an acknowledgement, or encouragement?  There was something cheeky about these Yosemite ravens flying around the hordes of human, scouting for morsels of food, or maybe waiting for winter when once again they would be the rulers of the park.

The Grace of Place

Pausing for a while at the Wawona Point Vista, I rested my legs, and took in the vast panorama of forested mountain and valleys stretching out as far as I could see.  I felt gratitude toward all the men and women who advocated for setting this land aside, for designating it as a national park, and for protecting it through the years.  Sheer genius and foresight it was; the giving of a great gift to future generations.

I walked back down the trail toward the shuttle bus stop.  This was my last day in Yosemite and there were more items on my to-do and to-see list, namely a hike to Taft Point for a view of Yosemite Valley and a visit to Glacier Point to see the sunset light and colors on Half Dome.

Walking quietly and steadily back down the trail I savored the sight of the occasional cinnamon barked giants illuminated in the sunlight.  These trees, I reflected, have through the years had a profound influence on those who have viewed them.  Jessie Benton Fremont of the Faithful Couple was so moved by the beauty of the trees that she used her skills as a writer and her political savvy to help to persuade President Lincoln to sign the Yosemite Grant in 1864 that protected both Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove.

I came again to the Grizzly Giant.  It was here, in front of this tree on May 15, 1903 that President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir started what has been referred to as “The Camping Trip that Changed the World.”  Roosevelt was so moved by these trees and by the other sights in Yosemite that he became an ardent supporter of setting aside such marvelous natural resources for posterity.

In his autobiography Roosevelt wrote the following about his visit to Mariposa Grove:  “The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose around us like pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived by the fervor of the Middle Ages.”

Turning his impressions into actions, Roosevelt subsequently expanded federal protection of Yosemite and later signed into existence 5 national parks, 18 national monuments, 55 national bird sanctuaries and wildlife refuges, and 150 national forests.  

The National Park Service describes the effects of viewing the Mariposa Grove sequoias as “The Grace of Place.”  As I moved on from a final view of the Grizzly Giant, I thought about the effect these trees had on me.  For one thing, they had given me a pretty stern wakeup call.  I realized that I had suffered from a complete failure of the imagination.  My preconception of the grove of sequoias was, and there were no other words for it, limited and inadequate.  For some reason I carried with me a mental picture of a neat, homogenous orchard of very tall, gray-barked, perfectly shaped, giant Christmas trees.  

I had not imagined the thick, spongy, luminous, lovely cinnamon bark.  I had not realized that sequoias were one member of a complex forest habitat.  I had not anticipated their battered and weathered yet persistent and resilient appearance.  I never guessed at their complex adaption to fire.  And I never truly grasped their incredible longevity.

The sobering take away for me was that just about anything was likely to be more complex, more nuanced, and more interconnected when you had a chance to see it up close and study it a bit.  Down with the preconceptions, I thought as I arrived at the shuttle bus stop ready to catch the bus, return to my car, and continue my explorations in Yosemite National Park.

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You can read about more sit spots and wander walks on this blog and in my book The Stillness of the Living Forest:  A Year of Listening and Learning available on Amazon and through Shanti Arts Publishing.

The Stillness of the Living Forest: A Year of Listening and Learning: Harvey, John: 9781947067592: Amazon.com: Books

The Stillness of the Living Forest, John Harvey (shantiarts.co)

Here is a link for more information on the benefits of and the steps involved in silent walking:

https://www.today.com/health/mind-body/silent-walking-rcna101793

The quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s autobiography was found on page 211 of Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that saved Yosemite Valley by Dean King.  This book is a great read on the efforts to preserve Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for future generations.

More information from the National Park Service on The Grace of Place can be found at this link:

https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/roosevelt-muir-and-the-grace-of-place.htm