Member-only story
My Summer Amidst the Sequoias
I was John Muir with a 1963 Rambler wagon
There are only a few places I have traveled to that have literally taken my breath away. The north rim of the Grand Canyon was one such place. Zion National Park was another. So too the first time I saw the ocean off the coast of South Carolina left me standing in awe.
Growing up in northern Wisconsin, I knew what a big tree was. We had white pines that were over 75 years old and stood 40 feet tall. These were the forest kings in the northland. We had large stands of red pines that looked like a vertical log cabin, straight and big and mature.
I had no idea how much a Sequoia would dwarf anything I had seen back home.
Traveling West
Sequoia National Park, located in east-central California up in the mountains, is almost 2000 miles from my home in Wisconsin. In the spring of 1981 at the age of 23, I quit my job in a factory, put some things in a backpack, and headed west.
My first stop was to visit friends staying in the Ashland, Oregon area who were house-sitting. For a few weeks, we spent time hiking in the area, going to the community college to utilize their sauna facilities, and just generally hanging out. We made a short trip to Redwoods National Park on the northern California coast…
