San Francisco Recap #4:  Forms of Immortality

By Friday (May 25), the true extent of San Francisco's awesomeosity was beginning to reveal itself. Not only does San Francisco have dangerous tea gardens, tallships, sea lions, and flesh eating beetle displays, it also has the Untamed Shrew, a very dear friend from my internet board, the very same friend whose nuptials MB and I attended in Seattle last year.

She picked me up at my hotel on Friday morning, chocolate cupcakes in hand, and we jetted out of town, intent on avoiding the possibly scary  Critical Mass riders. (Sidebar:  don't get me wrong; I'm all for grassroots action and promotion of a less-polluting lifestyle. I just can't get excited about some asshole smashing up a minivan full of kids in the name of social change.)

On our way out of the city, we crossed the incomparable Golden Gate Bridge, which was wreathed in a typical if not-very-photogenic fog.


I'd seen the bridge from the bus on my first day in San Francisco, and my first impression was that it was both not as big and just as incredible as I expected. We also crossed it on the day that we visited the crooked section of Lombard Street, on a perfectly clear, fog-free day, and I foolishly sat in the back of the van and didn't take any pictures, since I knew I'd be crossing it again two days later. Genius, I am.


I learned at some point on the trip that the name of the bridge comes not from its appearance, but because it crosses a strait known as the Golden Gate. The NPS website has some cool geology articles if anyone else is as dorky as me and wants to read them. Anyhow, we walked down the bridge a bit, snapped lots of fog-enshrouded photos, and then took off again, heading for Muir Woods.

The large trees in Muir Woods are the coastal redwoods, the tallest of all living things, and some scattered Douglas firs. The tallest coastal redwood at Muir Woods is about 258 feet, approximately the height of a six-foot person stacked head to toe 45 times. Further north, these trees can reach heights up to 379 feet, 74 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. The average age of the coastal redwoods at Muir Woods is between 600 to 800 years, with the oldest being at least 1200 years old. This is still young for redwoods as they can live up to 2200 years.

I was expecting to be completely blown away by the size of the redwoods--they are, after all, the tallest trees in the world--but when we arrived, I wasn't initially amazed by their size. They are big trees, and very tall, and I'm sure they would've knocked my socks off if I hadn't seen the 200' - 300' Sitka spruce and Western hemlocks in the Hoh Rainforest last October.

Maybe moreso than any other forest, though, the wonder of the redwoods can creep up on you, and that's what happened to me. The Untamed Shrew and I spent the entire day at Muir Woods, walking the trails and chatting and generally absorbing the feel of the woods around us.



After an hour or so, it really started to sink in how huge the trees really are.



For all their height, they have delicate needles and really tiny seed cones.


They also have really neat, distinctive bark.



It's weird enough to think of these immense trees starting out as teensy seedlings, but redwoods can actually start as itty bitty sprouts around the base of a large tree.


Once the parent tree dies of old age and falls, the grown-up sprouts stand in a "fairy ring" around an empty circle called a ghost redwood.

Among giants, small things always look so much more delicate. As the Untamed Shrew so perfectly put it, "It's like the redwoods used up all the big, so everything else has no choice but to be tiny."

redwood sorrel

The large black areas at the base of many sequoia trees are fire scars. Even though fire may eat into the very heart of a sequoia tree, the tree can survive so long as the fire doesn't kill the living tissue all the way around the tree. Over time, the fire scars gradually heal over and disappear.

(Interesting tidbit that I didn't know:  Coast redwoods are Sequoia sempervirens. Giant sequoias are Sequoiadendron giganteum.)

Overall, Muir Woods was really amazing, and I'm so grateful to the Untamed Shrew for taking me to see it. It was a great start to phase 2 of my California experience, to be sure.



For more Muir Woods photos, as always, check out Shutterfly.

Hmm...good thing we didn't see these until we were leaving the park!

[Redwood trees] seem to be forms of immortality standing here among the transitory shapes of time. -- Edwin Markham





Lastly, for the lovely Alyndabear, here's a photo of Kitters with a yardstick for scale (he really is huge):






Reading:  Pants on Fire by Meg Cabot and Coast Redwood:  A Natural and Cultural History