IN WHICH I WALK AMONG GIANTS
Updated: Jul 23
Continuing in my quest to infuse more fun into my life on the reg, I have been trying to explore more of California. When I first moved here, the sky was apocalypse orange, there was ash in the air, everything was shut down due to the pandemic, and most of my family wouldn't see me because vaccines had not been distributed yet. Things have changed a lot since then, thank God. I live in such a beautiful place; why should I still be living in Pandemic Stupor? It's time to get back out there and explore like I loved to do. As such, I decided to take a spontaneous trip to the Sequoia National Park with the pups. I threw some clothes into a suitcase and bought some apples and meat and vegetables to cook. I woke up early and loaded up some excited pups into the car. We drove four hours west and were swimming in Hume Lake by noon. Good old Jelly scrambled up the energy for a 3 mile hike with Waffles and me and was so tired after that she had to be carried to the car. I rented a 1930’s cabin on a farm a few miles from the park's entrance where we watched the sunset over the pasture and drank cucumber water and cooked chicken on the grill. While Jelly snored softly on the porch, Waffles chased wild turkeys around the barn and we were happy.
I would not see a Giant Sequoia tree until the next day, but my imagination was going 100 mph. I have great nostalgia for the books I read over and over again in my formative years, and one of my very favorite books was “My Side of the Mountain”, in which a young boy, Sam Gribley, calls his parents' bluff about letting him run away to the Catskills. He finds his Great Great Grandfather's farm, burns out the inside of a giant tree, and begins living off the land. He goes on to train a falcon, make his own acorn pancakes, and bathe each day in a spring. He stalks a deer and makes his own deer skin suit, and befriends a vagabond on the run with whom he makes matching coon-skin hats. He takes notes on the plants and animals he observes. He makes friends with a librarian in town who keeps his secret and helps him learn all about the land he is experiencing. As a pretty day-dreamy kid who loved nature and lusted after secret places to call my own, this story was like crack to me. I thought for years about the majesty of living in a tree. Being from the Midwest, trees are beautiful of course, but they don't grow so big you could live in them. It was a hard thing to imagine, but I loved trying. On my bookshelf, “My Side of the Mountain” is right next to my copy of “The Farthest Away Mountain”, which is right next to my illustrated copy of "The Secret Garden"— sense a theme? My family sometimes wonders where my wanderlust came from, but if I look back it was always there between the pages. It’s so lovely to run away in a book.
The next morning I left the dogs to sleep off their adventure and made the hour and half drive into the park. My goal was to see the General Sherman Tree (the largest tree in the world), and then to hike the Congress Trail (3 miles at 7000 feet that would take me through some of the biggest sequoias in the park). Some of the trees were split apart or had hollowed enough to crawl inside. It was an amazing sensation— the smells of pine and redwood and bay; the creaking of the enormous tree shifting above me as it swayed in the wind. I felt that even Sam Gribley would be in awe of this place.
It is so hard to fully capture the experience of being dwarfed by something so giant and so old. I have only had one other experience that even came close. Years ago, when I was in Barcelona, I decided to spend my 27th birthday at the Sagrada Familia.
Inside the cathedral, there are huge support columns that congregants weave through. Each is looming and ominous and larger than life. Colored light filters through the stained glass windows like sunlight through leaves and casts soft, pastel shadows. Anton Gaudí designed the interior of the cathedral to simulate the feeling of walking through a giant forest and he knew what he was doing. It is quite something to be in the presence of something so grand that I feel so small in the world. Precious. Unfathomably lucky to be here living my one and only precious life. It’s one of the feelings that keeps me traveling. It’s one of the stories I chase.
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