Silence and Awe

Journal Entry #27

April 17, 2021

So. I sat and contemplated. I drafted and re-drafted in my head. I had every intention of writing a longer, more sweeping entry on our hikes in the ancient redwood forests along the California coast, home of some of the oldest, tallest trees on Earth. But now, a few weeks later, I realize that I simply cannot find the words to capture the feeling.

Suffice it to say it was as close to a divine spirit or some sort higher power than I have ever experienced.

I shed tears of… I don’t know what, actually. I felt a sense of connection and rootedness of all things. I felt a profound awareness of time and our journeys in the continuum which are just the very briefest of moments. Pictures do not do the redwoods justice, but I think I will let a few of them speak here.

Sunlight on a “snag” (standing dead tree, a platform for new life)

Giant, burled and ancient tree

Roosevelt Elk dwarfed by the redwoods

Cathedral to the sky

The vast exposed rootball of a fallen Goliath (now a nurse tree for new life)

Shelter and comfort

Silence and awe- A sense of the divine

“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. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.”

~John Steinbeck