Sequoia

Solitude permeates the snow-covered Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. On a late afternoon in December, I wander among the elders of the forest—Columbia, Telescope, the Grizzly Giant, and resting my hand on the rough, cinnamon bark of one tree nearly 3000 years old. I am moved to be touching something living that is this old.

The air is crisp and filled with the earthy scents of the pine forest. The roots of each sequoia are intertwined with the roots of the others in the grove for support. Bundling my coat around, I listen to water trickling through the ice of a nearby creek, and watch black-capped chickadees hop through bare bushes searching for remnant seeds. 

The openness of the grove feels like I’m walking in the sanctuary of a great cathedral that is centuries old. The trunks of the sequoias, 30-feet around, and without any branches for the first 100 feet, are the columns that hold the green roof 300 feet above my head.

Picking up a dark-green sequoia cone, I cradle it in my hand. Its seeds are so tightly bound that only the trauma of a forest fire will open the cone and release the life held inside. The seeds are surprisingly tiny, yet they will grow to become these massive trees. Near their parents, teenage sequoias twenty-feet tall are growing. I can only guess that they might be 100 years old.

As dusk settles over the land, the colors of the sunset intensify from yellow to red, then fade to rose before deepening to purple. The evening sky clears of clouds and intensifies to cobalt blue. The constellations, named by ancient peoples to express their dreams and discern the future, emerge from the darkness of the night sky and join the radiance of the cosmos. I imagine that I can see van Gogh’s swirls of gravitational energy that connect each star to its neighbor.

All living things eventually end, yet I believe that the life force within each of them continues. In the northern hemisphere, the natural world has begun turning from the darkness back towards the light. I pause in the silence of this night and savor standing for a moment outside of time. I think of the struggles of the past year, the deaths, and the roots of friendships that provided needed support. 

I don’t know where my search will take me in the coming year, but here, in this sacred grove, walking through snow that sparkles with starlight, I am lost in the wonder.