A vision that stays
Another unsuccessful attempt to capture the indescribable: Muir Woods, May 2003
“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe…they are ambassadors from another time.” — John Steinbeck
It really is impossible to capture a forest of redwoods in a photograph, and not just because they are far too tall for even the widest angle. Walking through a redwood grove is a multi-sensory experience that permeates the soul. As many times as I visited Muir Woods, I never felt ready to leave. I always left later than I intended to, promising myself another visit as soon as I could get back. Now that I live on the east coast, I can only visit in my memory, but Steinbeck is right: the vision stays.
What are some of the places you carry inside your heart?
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: dreams, forests, groves, imagination, memory, Muir Woods, nature, redwoods, serenity, solace, transcendence, trees, visions, west coast
Defeat Despair 
Muir Woods indeed soothes! It feels like a walk with our Lord! I love to go there.
Beauty abounds everywhere in that forest of giants.
If someone asked me “where is the most serene place you’ve ever been?” Muir Woods might pop into my mind immediately. Once when my brother was on a layover in SFO, we went to Muir together to walk and talk about some family problems that were happening at the time. At one point, gesturing to the magnificence around us he said “I hope I’m not messing this up by talking about all these problems.” Without thinking for even a second I replied, “You can’t mess this up! It’s impossible!” Muir Woods is like a cathedral formed by God.
Thank you for reminding me of my one very fantastic trip to a redwoods park in California! It took some sleuthing but I found the place on a map — Stout Grove Redwoods. I found a Youtube video of it today, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ9eLedGeBs, although the video doesn’t capture the magic of forest.
We were exploring side roads and found this redwood forest in the early morning sunlight, right after a rainy night. The place was gorgeous beyond belief. I felt like we stepped back in time into a pre-historic forest of giant ferns and trees, and impressive huge fallen trees with huge plants growing into them. The leafy greens were luminous against the rain-darkened tree bark. I took oodles of photographs. Later I discovered that the camera malfunctioned and all I had left were memories 😦 But oh what beautiful scenes I remember!
It all happened during my one and only trip to California. How wonderful it would be to have had several visits to the redwood parks like you did! Do you think you’ll go back someday to see the trees?
Judy, I surely hope so. As you discovered, there are many places in California where one can see the magnificent Redwoods. I went to Muir Woods the most often because it was so close to home (and was right outside San Francisco, where I often spent the day). I would go into town via the Oakland Bay Bridge, and then come back home across the Golden Gate Bridge across Sonoma and Napa counties; our home county (Solano) was adjacent to Napa. I never made it to Crescent City or the park your video shows, but we did see the redwoods at the adjoining national parks of Kings Canyon and Sequoia. I hope you will be able to go back to California someday. Maybe we can go there together. Although that’s unlikely to be anytime soon. Meanwhile, we do have the memories! Thanks for sharing yours with us.