On Monday I drove from LA up to Sequoia National Park and spent the day exploring. Instead of a full account, here's an entry from my journal:
"And I climbed. 3000 ft, 4000 ft, 5000 ft. Up and up, into the nearer sun, like a four-cylinder Icarus. Then, around yet another hairpin, a snaking line of stopped cars stood in the road, the passengers milling about on the pavement like a scene from some apocalypse movie, though in significantly better spirits. Laughing Italian voices spilled out of the car ahead of me, Korean ahead of them. As new arrivals joined the line, the drivers would all stir initially, wandering up the queue then returning to their vehicles in resignation. "One lane road 15 miles ahead," said the Ranger who swiped my pass at the Park's entrance, "Opens once an hour, on the hour." I'm in no hurry."
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| 400 stairs to the top of Moro Rock. From there you can look out over the Great Western Divide and much of the Park. |
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| Panoramic view looking south & east from Moro Rock. |
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| Panoramic view looking north from Moro Rock. |
"And then the trees. Rising from the mountain, like the great pillars of some unseen celestial structure. Unapologetically dominating the view in any direction. Never so much have I not been able to see the forest for the trees. The sun's long light skirted about the trunks, casting a glow that was at once green, red, and golden. It was the kind of glow you feel you could almost drink, not with your mouth and stomach, but with your pores and bones."
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| "Tunnel Tree" |
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| It's preposterously hard to capture the sheer size of Giant Sequoias. This is the General Sherman tree, the most massive (in terms of volume of wood) recorded tree in the world. The base is about 36 ft in diameter. |
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