OK, so here we go with the story of northern California’s redwood forests. Remember that Karen and I are home now…these were taken back at the beginning of February… :-)

When you first drive through these hoary old forests, you start to understand where the imagery for JRR Tolkein’s Mirkwood forest comes from. Even though, as far as I know, the man never set foot in northern CA, this place or one like it surely served as the inspiration for those stories. There is an ancient-ness here that defies description. Taking a step off the paved road of civilization, silence descends…sunlight streams through gaps in the dense cover of needles, and a sense of awe comes over me just as profound as standing at the summit of a Wasatch Mountain, or the Pacific coast.

You should know that even though I plan to show you some pictures, they truly cannot capture the majesty and scale of these wonderful forests. Anyways. Have a look:

I took this one standing *inside* the trunk of one of these monsters:

Here it is from the outside:

And a somewhat blurry shot of Karen standing inside this old man’s trunk – for the sake of attempting to describe scale:

And here, look! It’s the performance art of the litterati!

More to come…