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| Trees |
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| The drive to Muir woods just north of San Francisco is a curly-q road where daredevil
blood boils behind a Ward and June station wagon. I visited those hallowed grounds where
ancient Lion trees first poked their heads out of soil more than a thousand years ago. As
much as I had looked forward to spending a quiet afternoon under their magical canopy, I
quit the place early. I visited with Muir Woods, and now I see the title as sarcasm. The trees in their surreal heights, unseen depths and timeless breadths felt to me frustrated and paralyzed. The conservationists caused gravel paths through the forest, replaced exploration with explanation. The trees heard not a human for a thousand years, and now can't not hear them from dawn to dusk (park hours). "Off-trail travel kills plants" is the posted discouragement. Of course, we are willing to accept the necessary limited loss taken by our sidewalks, in the hopes of general preservation. And now the trees are the preservative, their nature a perverse freak show, a butterfly collection too big to put a pin through. Now I can hear the shrieks of the trees at the pops of a thousand flashbulbs. One thousand years ago a forest without rules shrugged gravity. One thousand years later there are rules for where to walk. And on the exit boardwalk, a varnished shrine (wood formaldehyde) to one dead and dropped depicts in subtle rings thirteen visits of Haley's comet. 900 AD tree born. |
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