Speaking of trees Speaking...

I recently had my own awe-inspiring tree experience. Last week I and five of my friends backpacked through the backcountry of Yosemite for three nights, with one day of campground-camping on either end. We got off the trail with plenty of daylight left to explore a few of the more "touristy" things the park had to offer. Our first stop off the trail was a grove of Giant Sequoias. Let me tell you, if you have never seen these trees, there is nothing that can really prepare you for them. They are big, bigger than you think, bigger than I can make you think. To put it in biblical terms (it's always bigger when it's biblical) they were big when Jesus was a born, and I don't mean that there were also Giant Sequoias in the time of Jesus Christ, I mean that the same tree I was looking at last week was about 1000 years old when he was born. They are the largest living things on the planet, but they are neither the tallest nor the oldest. It wasn't their size that did it for me however, I'm not sure what word to use to describe what these trees were making me feel about them, but the words "majesty," "awe," "reverence," and others that I associate with being in the presence of something divine, or much greater than myself.

This is how they start out.

This is what they look like when they die.

For scale.


A live one!!