So I just got back from a hitchhiking trip down the 101 costal highway in Oregon and California to see the redwoods. I've been wanting to see the redwoods for a long time, 'cuze books I've read and people I've run into tell me you have a spiritual thing happen when you see trees that big; many people seem to have some sort of spiritual awakening.
I'm sad to report this did not happen to me. I apprieciate what Julia Butterfly Hill wrote in her book about reaching the redwoods, falling to her knees in the duff and falling madly in love with the trees and suddenly finding meaning and purpose in her life, but this did not happen to me. I understood when a former gangsta in Florida told me he started trembling and crying and pledged to stop using crack and fighting in gang wars once he saw the redwoods. Again, this did not happen to me. I think there are several reasons I didn't have any sort of spiritual enlightenment while camping out among the redwoods; which are:
1) I realized all trees sort of evoke that kind of mystical love-experience in me, regardless of their size. A tree doesn't have to be 300 feet tall and 3,000 years old for me to love it; all trees are holy to me, and therefore, seeing logging trucks loaded with logs always makes me shutter as though I'm viewing holocost victims. All forests are sacred.
2) Scenes of parts of Return of the Jedi would not stop playing in my head. It is hard to have a holy experience when you keep expecting to stumble across some Ewok village somewhere in the middle of the "Forest Moon of Endor." Thanks, George Lucas, you ruined a potientally holy experience for me!
3) You can't evoke a mystical-spiritual experience. It either happens on its' own, or it doesn't happen, there is no way to force it. The rest of the trip was very mystical-spiritual for me (especially all the dreams I had,) but not the actual time I spent in the forest, although of course it was very nice and lovely.
Anyway, when I have more time I'll write more, but I have to finish some communications homework right now.
Love ya,
Carrot
I appreciate the Ewok village reference. And trees are absolutely amazing--plants in general actually--and while I might not love them to the point where logging trucks seem like corpse carriers I...
Maybe the spiritual awakening didn't happen in part because you were expecting it to. Like you said, you can't force it. Anyways, I went to the redwoods once when I was about six. I really don't remember the trees, although I did play in this hollowed out one that was big enough to park a car in.
Like what you've read? Well, then here's more:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tricia0711
water...moving...falling, streams, rivers, and oceans or lakes and ponds...I like them all.
“You cannot wean away an addict from the drug. It is not possible for me to walk away from Ranjha. If it is our destiny to be together then who, other than God, can change it?”
she's a spaceman, no walker, dreamer...maybe
I had a similar experience this week. Knowing in the first 100 miles that the trip wasn't really about the redwoods. It was the process of getting there. Right now it's the process of getting back. I'm stuck in the Seattle Public Library, but anyways...
But on the way back, of course, there were some moments that have given me a profoundly different perspective on living. I can't explain it with a keyboard, so I will not try.
Steinbeck says there has never been an accurate photograph taken of these coastal wonders. I think the same could be said of describing your experience amongst them.
Side note: on the hitchhike out of Fern Canyon, a friend and I rode on the tail of a pickup truck, cruising out of this place and I could just picture many a scene in Jurassic Park as imaginary dinosaurs came stomping after us.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford