My third Meander begins beneath the Giant Sequoias

At first, I was underwhelmed. Or maybe I was just tired.

I spent the morning driving into California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range and then bouncing from campground to campground looking for a decent spot for myself and some friends who’d be arriving two days later.

It was raining. We didn’t have reservations. And it was Fourth of July weekend. Oops!

Finally, I settled on a campsite, ate a quick lunch, and set out for my first visit to the ancient giants of Sequoia National Park.

As the Generals Highway swerved past its first Giant Sequoia, I got a brief thrill. Very brief. I was still grouchy. I tried to psych myself up for my 35th national park since 2012. It didn’t quite work.

I did not have a beginner’s mind. I compared those first few Giant Sequoias to the Coastal Redwoods that I’d fallen in love with two summers earlier. I regretted stopping at the smaller sequoia groves in Yosemite National Park the prior summer.

It was not a great start to a third Meander – a Meander that I finally kicked off after nine days of post-breakup soul-searching.

Fortunately, I recognized it. I prayed to see the trees through fresh eyes.Giant Sequoias at Round Meadow

Finally, I did. About 100 yards into my first hike, I was mesmerized. The trail looped around a large green meadow surrounded by 250-foot Giant Sequoias. The rain clouds finally parted, allowing the suns rays to bounce off the reddish bark of the titans.

The meadow’s expanse offered me my first opportunity to appreciate the entirety of a big tree – Sequoia or Redwood – in a single view. My attempts to photograph big trees have always been stifled by their enormity and by my lack of skill with panoramic mode on my camera.

Giant Sequoias aren’t just big ol’ pine trees. They’re conifers, just like pine trees, but they’re in a totally different class along with Coastal Redwoods and China’s Dawn Redwoods.

They’re so large (the world’s largest living things by volume). So rare (growing only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada). So ancient as individuals (living thousands of years). So prehistoric as a species (dating back to the time of dinosaurs).

They deserve protection, preservation, from all that man throws at them – from logging to industrial tourism to climate change.

The Giant Sequoias ringing that beautiful meadow snapped me out of my funk.

And then, this happened …

Black bear at Sequoia National Park

This black bear cub and its twin were abandoned by their mother earlier this year. Now, they’re custodians of the state, raising themselves under the watchful eye of the National Park Service.

Free from fear of a protective momma bear rushing to her cub’s defense, I watched the little guy stroll along the meadow snacking on grass for more than 30 minutes. At one point, he hurriedly crossed the trail within five yards of me. Again, thankfully, momma bear wasn’t around!

Eventually, the cub wandered too far from view, and I sat down on a bench next to the meadow.

The sun had broken through the rain clouds to cast its light on the meadow and surrounding trees. The birds chirped. The breeze blew through the 250-foot tops of the giants of Sequoia National Park.

Finally, I was ready to Meander.

Long hair don't care

My Bodhi tree is a Coastal Redwood

I’m sitting inside the hollowed base of a very tall tree. How tall? I don’t know. Maybe 200 feet? Its circumference is at least 25 feet around the base. I know because I just tried to spoon it six times.

My Bodhi tree is a Coastal Redwood.

My Bodhi tree is a Coastal Redwood.

They say you can’t see the forest for the trees. When you get lost in details you miss the big picture. With a tree of this size, it’s all about the details. Why? Because you can’t get far enough away from a Coastal Redwood to see the whole thing.

At Yosemite, I tried to photograph a Giant Sequoia. I failed. Then I figured out panorama mode. I failed again. I’d try again today with a Redwood, but I dropped my camera in a tide pool earlier today. Oh well. There’s no chance I’d capture this entire majestic Redwood in a single shot.

The base is massive. The bark is moist and springy to the touch like a very dense sponge. Inches deep wrinkles run the vertical length of the ancient trunk. The air inside these crevices is musty and old.

Each chunk of bark and each deep winkle is an ecosystem unto itself. Moss and funguses cling to the surface. Small spiders call the crevices home.

And when one of the giants falls, countless plants – including new Redwoods – grow from its corpse as it decomposes slowly over the decades.

You look up. The green branches don’t start sprouting for at least 40 feet above the forest floor. And then the tree just keep going and going, reaching toward a sun that’s obscured by dense fog from the coast.

The trees grow in such tight proximity that their fallen needles and their skyscraping tops mingle to enclose the space between a cushioned floor and a dark canopy. The trees are so overpowering that they not only block cell service but they also block consumer GPS signals.

There’s no sound. Redwoods are impervious to insects, so even the chirp of birds is rare. Occasionally, you hear water dripping down the sides of ravines. That’s about it.

To me, it feels claustrophobic. After an hour or so in the forest, I’m ready to retreat to the sunny meadows. The Redwoods are truly a force. A force of nature. And, for me, a force of spirit.

The oldest Redwoods are 2,200 years old. That places their birth sometime around 200 B.C. – right in the spiritual sweet spot that spawned three of the world’s four largest religions. Buddha was born around 550 B.C., Jesus around 4 B.C., and Muhammed around 570 A.D.

(Hinduism, the world’s third-largest religion, doesn’t really have a founder.)

Often, we nature-loving folks are lumped in with atheists or agnostics or stamped with Match.com’s ridiculous spiritual not religious designation. That is unless we live in an aboriginal culture, in which case we’re dumped into the folk religion category.

I propose that nature-lovers are given our own category. Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and the Hudson River School painters will be our apostles. The Redwoods will be our prophets.

Redwoods are bigger than hoodies.

Redwoods are bigger than hoodies.

Got a question about my trip? I’m compiling a mailbag to commemorate one month on the road. Leave your question in the comments!