Great Outdoors

Muir Woods

Redwood Respite

Upon arrival at Muir Woods, I crane my neck to see the tops of the famed Redwood giants, their crowns forming silhouettes against patches of blue sky. Looking up to the sun, I follow its light as it clings to leaves in the canopy before twisting between tree trunks. The golden air never quite reaches the ground, leaving the atmosphere around me robbed of its usual warmth and glow.

Park visitors enter an artificial dusk in the shade of sequoias on a wooden path that insulates rich, dark soil. The boundary maintains a strict division between humans and wilderness, bearing signs that warn not to stray off course and to minimize the noise of footsteps. Nevertheless, the groans of the path’s creaking boards join the soundscape of fluttering birdsong and burbling water. Distant voices intermingle with snapping twigs, but all sound is muffled by the constant hum of the wind and the distant roar of the Pacific.

The ocean also gifts its hues to the coastal redwoods, bathing the sequoias in teal and cerulean blue. Some ferns remain immune to this wash of color and frame the misty silver clearings with amber fronds. The precise symmetry of the ferns contrasts with the gnarled knots of tree trunks, whose muted crimson exteriors hold the patterns of a raging river frozen in place, currents and ripples stopped in time and wrapped around columns. With their roots firmly anchored, the Redwoods bow precariously towards us, reaching down into the cool air with spindly branches. For a moment, the movement makes my imagination run wild with images of treants—fictional, sentient trees—and a part of me believes that the trunk in front of me will form feet and erupt from the ground. But the vigorous swaying only induces the precipitation of needle-like leaves, covering the footpath in a slippery mat of deteriorating foliage.

Even in the absence of monsters and fairies, the forest is filled with magic, a charm that masks all signs of decay with new life. From the thick mass of leaves, clovers sprout to form homogenous carpets of heart- shaped blades lying parallel to the earth. When viewed at eye-level, the varying stem heights and dense population creates the illusion of a miniature forest, an enchanting microcosm along the edges of the footpath. Open stumps and tree hollows host mysterious lumps of fungi and the beginnings of nests. Fallen logs appear like shipwrecks in the greenery, dripping with moss and harboring countless new communities of iridescent insects.

The most striking example of regrowth is the “Family Circle,” in which five or six new trees jut out sharply from the ground to form a ring around a charred snag. From every angle, one can only catch glimpses of the black, burned stump, as it remains hidden behind a sharp shell of new, red bark. Prior to the Family Circle’s growth, the trunk of a single large redwood was killed by wildfire. Yet, below the ground, the tree maintained a massive root system that was full of vitality. As a park sign explains, “Despite such terrible damage, the tree did not die. Before long, hundreds of young bright- green burl sprouts began to come up around the circle formed by the root crown of the original tree.” While the fires caused bark to burn, the heat allowed the Giant Sequoia’s cones to open and drop seeds onto the newly cleared soil. Through ash and embers, the trees of Muir Woods re-emerge as piercing, defiant obtrusions, standing in monument to the ability of life to persist after widespread decay.

The ecosystem’s exhibition of death and rebirth may have fueled the connection that John Muir found between wilderness and religion. Muir viewed nature as a manifestation of God, identifying forests as “temples” and “cathedrals” and describing the subject with lush, spiritual language and in countless letters and journal entries. In one such entry, Muir says,

“In June small flecks of the dead, decaying sod begin to appear, gradually widening and uniting with one another... The ground seems twice dead. Nevertheless, the annual resurrection is drawing near. The life-giving sun pours His floods, the last snow-wreath melts, myriads of growing points push eagerly through the steaming mold, the birds come back, new wings fill the air, and fervid summer life comes surging on.”

For Muir, the regeneration of wildlife was a divine occurrence that incited imagery of Biblical events. This sense of consecration permeates his woods—witnessing the magic of rebirth will pull you away from the mundane into the sacred aura of the landscape.

Both nature and religion can act as frameworks to understand mortality, frameworks which bring a sense of stability and belonging for a soul drifting in the grand scheme of existence. Even today, park visitors can be found lying prostrate in front of sequoias, lost in thought with their head on the earth. Others lean against rough bark, holding loose stems or leaves while meditating peacefully.

Alone, beneath a steeple of redwood canopies, I began to worship the wilderness. And at that center of rebirth and death, I knew the whispers in the leaves that answered me could be those of angels or ghosts.

Words: Anjika Pai

Photos: Samhita Sen