THE TALLEST TREE IN THE WORLD

I am a lot like everyone else in the sense that I am grabbed by headlines—"The biggest," The Richest," "The Bravest," and in this case, "The Tallest".

Ever since arriving here in Ukiah, I’ve been exploring all the things that seem interesting and unique about this place. I’ve made it a point to take road trips in all four directions of the compass and to see what many who have lived here for years might not even consider going to see. It’s the old story: the native New Yorker who has never visited the top of the Empire State Building or taken the ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty.

A life-long local might never think of visiting a grove of redwoods about 15 miles west on Orr Springs Road—the grove which I read in the "Mendocino Visitors Guide" was home to the world’s tallest Redwood tree, billed as "the world’s tallest living thing."

It would take the "new guy in town" to take the time to drive the curvy, continually narrowing and often precipitous road to see a grove of redwoods—one, which to somebody who grew up in these parts, might possibly look like just another bunch of redwoods. To me, this grown-up kid from Connecticut, redwoods—any redwoods—are spectacular. I could string out a line of adjectives: awe-inspiring, thought provoking, massive and way taller than I imagined.

Speaking of what "I imagined" before hand, my first memory of redwoods was on a trip to California which I’d taken with my family when I was fourteen. It was one of those views, which would better be called a glimpse, from the back seat of the rented Chevrolet convertible, a place I certainly did not want to be at the time.

Now, here I was four decades later, pulling into the small dirt parking area beside a stream the road had been following down and down into this hollow. With the carrying strap to my trusty Nikon slung over my shoulder, I headed up the trail taking me into the musty woods happy to be alone. When I decided to pause, a young woman hiker caught up with me, happy, as I was, in the lonely place to have a companion to walk and talk with. My first question to her, as you might expect was, "do you know which is the world’s tallest tree?"

Lauren, studied journalism at Berkeley, had a wealth of information to impart. We got to be fast friends as often happens in places like redwood groves, and shared our stories quite easily as we continued along the path which lead from one redwood grove to another. I asked her to take my picture beside the tree that, I thought just might be the "tallest in the world." In return, I took a picture of her, which I promised to send.

In the silent spaces between the words we spoke, I caught glimpses of the real beauty of the place. The beauty didn’t come from the fact that the tallest living thing lived somewhere—unmarked—in that grove. It was subtler than that. It was contained in the soft feel of the redwood bark, the lush floor of the grove carpeted by huge ferns and the biggest clover leaves I’ve ever seen.

Since there really was no way to see the tops of the magnificent beings that were the trees, I had to be content with human scale pictures of the giant tree trunks which had been seated calmly and firmly there.

Lauren pointed out the rings on a fallen tree that had been sawed through. There were thousands, as she showed me, which showed that many of these trees had stood in the grove even before Christ walked on earth.

After that I looked up—feeling like a little kid again—trying to see the tops of the Redwoods. "I guess I’ll have to climb one to find which is the tallest," I told my friend, only half-joking.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever make it to the top of a redwood but I do think I’ll be paying another visit to Montgomery Woods. It’s the most wonderful place I’ve been lately to put a life into perspective.

By the way, I’m quite glad that the one tree that stands 367.5 feet remains unmarked. Because it isn’t, it takes away some of what is so dumb about our time—the need to know what is the richest, strongest or tallest. Life is not finite; it is much more of a relative thing

Posted by Tony at November 18, 2003 02:06 PM