What can you tell from a picture? Redwoods (lots of them!), gorgeous and rich canopy, soft and forgiving forest floor, morning, partly sunny, likely not winter, lightly trafficked trail, non-technical terrain, somewhere in Northern California (or possibly even further north), etc. Other aspects are less apparent, if not apparent at all. Is this spring, summer, or fall? Did it rain the day before? Is this 2021, 1981, or some other year? Was this captured during a weekend hike or mid-week, on a day off work, a flitting escape from screen time and a now almost two-year pandemic (which, soon, it is hoped, will become endemic).
There is a bigness and smallness here. The hiker (me, in case there was any doubt) is both inconsequential to the frame (the second-growth redwoods are the main attraction) and critical (to show the scale of the trees and the density of the forest). Little, if anything, needs to be said about the timelessness of the scene. Countless, similarly majestic trails branch off Skyline Boulevard, about 25 miles south of San Francisco, parallel to Highway 280; I hiked my first such trail in the mid-1990s. The experience was largely the same, minus, of course, the confidence that GPS affords.
The original redwoods were logged in the late 1800s, as source materials for The Painted Ladies and other Victorian homes in San Francisco and beyond. Arguably, these would have been more impressive than the second-growth ones, but I am not one to complain, and there are still a few original ones in Huddart, Purisima Redwoods Open Space Preserve, and other protected areas along Skyline Boulevard. Once in a while, you might hear a plane overhead, usually flying to Los Angeles or other destinations to the south and/or east. A car or two might be heard as you approach Skyline Boulevard, but, usually, this is a welcomed sound, signifying the end of a long and somewhat challenging hike. Besides that, and the occasional hiker (or runner), it is quiet. You have time and space to think (or not), to untangle the previous week and to plan the next, to breath in the forest, and to breath out the frustrations and annoyances that have accumulated since your last hike. This is all very salutary.
I suppose that once in a while food writers, as they describe a sublime meal, become hungry. It seems that I have hit the same nerve; time to plan my next hike.
Comments welcomed.
The Peninsula Hiking Club 