The First Giants — Bohemian Grove

Stop here a moment and just look up. Go on — tip your head all the way back. That's a coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, and there is nothing else like it alive. This stretch is called Bohemian Grove, after a club that used to hold its summer revels out here among the trees more than a century ago, and it's your first good look at the giants.

Here's what you're seeing. The coast redwood is the tallest tree species in the world — taller than a football field is long, taller than the Statue of Liberty, taller than a twenty-five story building. They grow only in a narrow ribbon of fog along the coast of Northern California and the very bottom of Oregon, and nowhere else on the planet. That reddish, deeply furrowed bark can grow a foot thick, soft and stringy if you press it — and go easy, because the roots underfoot bruise. The trunk goes up straight as a ship's mast, clean of branches for a hundred feet or more, reaching for light.

And notice what it does to the sound. It's hushed in here. The thick bark, the spongy floor, the high green canopy — they swallow noise, so the loudest thing is usually the creek and your own footsteps. People drop their voices in a redwood grove without being told to. There's a reason folks reach for the word cathedral in here, and we'll get to the grove that actually earned that name. For now — keep walking up the trail, and let your eyes get used to looking up.