Ambassadors From Another Time

A brief note from vacation.

"The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time."

― John Steinbeck

I’m on vacation this week in California, so talk amongst yourselves! Preferably using Notes, Substack’s new feature for short posts, comments and shares. I’ve had a chance to play with it a little, and feels like it could be the replacement for Twitter that a lot of us have been hoping for.

In the meanwhile, here’s a photo from Humboldt Redwoods State Park inside a “fairy ring” (also known as a “family circle”), where a mother tree nurtured a group of siblings around her.

It’s worth remembering that these old-growth forests still exist because of the efforts of early conservationists, but that these civic-minded individuals often also were in thrall to the dominant ideologies of their time, as this sign at Founders Grove briefly explains.