红杉树国家公园Redwood National Park

Last July we went to California’s far northern coast to see the redwoods. A century ago, cutting these trees made Eureka rich. Driving through today, it is hard to see much of that wealth in the city. A good deal of the forest is still there.

It takes seven hours to get to Redwood National Park, so the night before we stopped in Ferndale. Ferndale had its boom too. Its streets are lined with Gothic Revival and Queen Anne houses, and the Gingerbread Mansion, where we stayed, is no exception. The parlor cannot have changed much in a hundred years. It really is of that era.

The next day we drove into the groves. Redwoods stood one after another beside the trail, their tops out of sight, with ferns already up to our shoulders. By the time sunlight reached the ground, only small pieces were left. I made the photos bigger. This is one place where a long page helps.

Closer to the ocean, the redwoods thinned out and spruce took over. The trees were still big, but now every trunk was covered in moss. We were still in California, although the forest looked much more like the Pacific Northwest.

We walked Trillium Falls Trail, and in the evening came back to the water near our Airbnb. Someone walking a dog was ahead of us. The dog kept its head down the whole way, inspecting each piece of driftwood along the tide line. Back in the room, even the lamp no longer seemed dim.

The next morning we walked the Grove of Titans. An older couple ahead of us kept a better pace, and we never caught them. When they reached one of the big trunks, the two of them suddenly looked small. The wooden houses in Ferndale were only about a century old. These trees were old before anyone started building them.

The fog was still there when we came out of the woods and reached the coast highway. An old Volkswagen bus came toward us with its lights on, with a cyclist beside it farther down the road.

Then again, the fog is not here to block the road. It barely rains here in summer, so the redwoods depend on the fog for water: it condenses on their needles and falls back into the forest, drop by drop.

We kept heading back. Not far inland, the fog finally gave up. We got out, and the trail threaded between fallen redwood trunks.

For the drive home we skipped the freeway and turned onto old Highway 101. The old road stayed among the trees after the new freeway was finished. Evening sun came through at an angle and fell across the pavement in long strips.

It has never been easy for people to get here: every evening the fog rolls in from the Pacific, the ferns cover the trails again and again, and the road has stayed narrow. We were only here for two days, but these trees live on a different clock anyway.