Sunday, January 5, 2014

A Tree Called Sherman 1994

This year our annual Sierra Nevada Wilderness Managers Conference was being held at a fancy resort only a few miles outside Sequoia National Park. After a too-long drive from Bridgeport on an overcast October day, the four of us had finally arrived and were in Montecito-Sequoia Lodge’s spacious lobby. Last to check in, I started following my cohorts back out to our green truck for my “things” (being an old-school ranger, this meant a beat-up backpack, not a suitcase). But I paused in the foyer and quickly scanned a big rack filled with brochures and pamphlets hoping there might be free maps of the park. No maps. Instead, an emphatically happy statement caught my eye:
The General Grant Tree is America’s Christmas Tree!
It was a photo caption on the cover of our rustic lodge’s summer brochure. This grainy little picture—the size of a domino, the big kind—was of an obviously immense tree (…almost as tall as a football field and forty feet thick at its base, the rest of the caption stated). Other slightly-blurry images showed off snow-covered peaks and happy campers lounging around a  swimming pool surrounded by tall pines. Things to see and do during your stay.
Probably it was from being both hungry and road-weary but that phrase’s incongruity stirred my easily-aroused cynical streak. The seemingly innocuous words were a textbook example of this sort of superficial triviality. (Just the sort of thing that bothers me way more than it should…and no one else even notices.) Too late—I was already off and running with one of my wordless rants that was largely feelings but, verbalized, might’ve gone something like this:
Who had the effrontery, the chutzpah, to come up with this idea of national Christmas trees in the first place, I wonder? (Didn’t even know there was such a thing!) Then tag one of our most magnificent living things with yet another presumptuous label? Maybe it’s so that our tree gets to be bigger than everybody else’s. (insert hrrumph or derisive snort) Maybe a Park Service maintenance crew drives trucks and cranes out there on the day after Thanksgiving to deck the foliage with glass balls and tinsel, drape those giant branches with a mile-long string of colored lights. Good lord, spare us! Et cetera….
No, none of that. More than likely it’s a Chamber of Commerce affair. Perhaps all nations in Christian parts of the world have designated their own special trees to represent some kind of solidarity by promoting “holiday spirit” and the General Grant Tree happened to be our hapless recipient. I’m such a Scrooge. But the mental image I’d conjured seemed, to me, about as undignified as having our President do a tap dance—televised—on Christmas Eve to “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” dressed in an elf costume. But I took comfort knowing that our National Christmas Tree took no notice whatsoever of its name nor special status but simply continued being on a grand scale: growing, shedding dead tissues, helping build soil, converting sunlight into even more life by providing homes for literally millions of other organisms, of so many kinds—from bacteria and fungi to birds and mammals—just as it’s done, faithfully and without cease, since well before that very first Christmas.

A few words about Sequoiadendron giganteum, the giant sequoia or big tree:
They’re an ancient species—living relics whose ancestors once were spread over vast areas of a continental landmass far different, geographically, from what would eventually become western North America. Fossils have revealed their extensive former range. They thrived during a much more temperate period, with warmer winters, cooler summers, and significantly greater rainfall. The survivors live exclusively in a narrow elevational corridor on the Sierra Nevada’s west slope where such conditions still persist: a strip of land above the foothill zone, about 250 miles long, between elevations of 4500 and 8500 feet. All but eight groves (“groves” being a fairly arbitrary designation) occur in a belt south of the Kings River, only sixty miles long, in which none of the groves are more than five miles apart. They’re the dominant plant species in what is otherwise a typical west slope association of white fir, sugar pine, and incense cedar with similar, fairly sparse under stories.
By the late Miocene Epoch, roughly 7 million years ago, the giant sequoia had retreated from all but its current range (at which time it was likely much more common than today). The tree’s present scattered distribution is a result of isolation by subsequent, periodic glacial intrusions and from a general warming trend that followed the close of our last ice age (some 10,000 years ago). In time, more drought-resistant species have taken its place. On average, each grove is home to about 20,000 mature trees and covers roughly 2,500 acres. The northernmost, in Placer County, covers barely three acres and contains only a half-dozen mature individuals. All told, there are a bit more than 35,000 acres of native giant sequoias left on the planet.
They were “discovered” in 1852 (we really do need a word for those things unknown only to newly arrived emigrants). While the region was being settled and exploited during the rest of that century, they were harvested for lumber by wiry loggers wielding ridiculously-long crosscut saws. I’ve seen marvelous photos from that time showing two men—one on either end of these extinct tools—standing on narrow, wooden platforms driven into the tree’s trunk, well above its broad base. This was during the era of western expansion when nature was still seen as an adversary to be either vanquished or at least tamed, its inexhaustible productions created expressly for human use. So I can easily imagine the appealing challenge these lumbermen faced and their elation when, after days of hard labor, a giant finally fell; what a rewarding sound it would’ve made, reverberating through the forest…such evocative smells.
But the difficulty and expense of transporting and milling such huge logs meant the sequoia was never to compete with coast redwood as a source of lumber (despite their similar, top-quality wood). In addition, they were brittle and tended to shatter or split upon falling. Still, small milling operations—which often wasted up to 75% of felled trees—produced sequoia shakes, fence posts, and grape stakes for the small farming communities in San Joaquin Valley. An instant public fascination with the colossal trees and indignation at their wanton, wasteful harvesting quickly led to legislation (championed by none other than John Muir) that resulted in creation of several protective groves and parks.
Giant sequoias are second only to bristlecone pines as being the longest-living, non-clonal organisms. No one knows when the largest specimens burst inauspiciously from the ground because coring instruments can’t begin to reach the center of a thirty-foot-diameter trunk. By examining cut cross-sections of fallen trees, patriarchs have been estimated to be around 3,300 years old. They live to such venerable ages by virtue of their spongy, exceptionally thick bark—up to 18 inches in the oldest trees—which contains insect-resistant tannin. The bark is also sapless, greatly decreasing its flammability. (Additionally, this overall thickness provides the inner wood with insulation from intense heat.) These co-evolved features are critical because all big trees, once they stand much above the surrounding forest, are repeatedly struck by lightning throughout their lives. Cross-sections of fallen trees show scars from, literally, scores of burns and most have deep ”cat-faces.” These burned-out cavities can extend several storeys up into the trunk. All mature specimens have “spike-tops” and have stopped growing vertically. The branches then grow up around the trunk so that old trees appear curiously stunted, with their incredibly massive boles encircled by relatively sparse foliage.
Sequoias are the fastest-growing organism in the world in terms of bulk added yearly. (Bamboo would probably take that prize if considered in the context of net annual tissue increase.) Their growth-rings can be up to a half-inch wide. A sequoia’s prodigious growth and mass leads to the likeliest cause of mortality—tipping and falling—after becoming imbalanced by giant limbs breaking under heavy snow loads, or from gradual soil erosion. (Though extensive, the tree’s root-system is surprisingly shallow.)
Not only are they the most “successful” organisms in terms of total growth but the biggest specimens are the very largest living things of any kind on planet Earth.

On that Monday afternoon, we’d all arrived to cloudy skies with a cold autumn storm on its way. An old friend and coworker was also attending the conference. Martin and I hadn’t seen each other for some time so, that first evening, we enjoyed a fine pink-cloud sunset over the Great Western Divide while strolling down a nearby logging road. Later, it rained, and we awoke in the morning to heavy overcast and several inches of new snow. It was still coming down. This precluded much in the way of hoped-for outdoor activity between sessions.
During the next few days we heard rambling talks such as Applying Ecology to Manage Wildland Fires and Resource Monitoring Overview: Why, What, When, Where? There were range management “workshops” and such. (In actuality, we come to these conferences primarily for an opportunity to visit with seldom-seen friends and associates.) By Thursday people were clearly getting restless, feeling that peculiar form of exhaustion caused by sitting in a stuffy room all day with seventy others listening to talk, talk, talk. The bad coffee seemed to no longer take effect after copious meals I felt obliged to eat since they’d already been paid for.  
In lieu of attending a final workshop, Martin and I decided to play hooky. It was a brilliant day—well past time to get out and breathe some crisp mountain air. (Plus, I couldn’t sanction driving 250 miles to a National Park and going back home without seeing some of the sights.)  Our bosses, enrolled in different workshops, would never know and probably wouldn’t have even cared. So, right after lunch the two of us hopped in a green truck and headed off without any plan aside from finding some grove of gigantic trees to amble around in. But our knowledge of the park was virtually nil and, minutes after passing through the entrance kiosk we were essentially lost. (As expected, our Forest Service truck was waved through but we’d opted to not stop and ask for a free map and risk having to pay the entrance fee.) Our last session began at three o’clock so we had only two more hours; seeing the sign for “General Sherman Tree parking” up ahead we figured it was time to stop.
Right off the main road, this is one of Sequoia Park’s famed tourist attractions. I’d actually been there as a child but remembered almost nothing from that day. (No doubt the parking lot and trails had been re-engineered, enlarged, and paved since my family visited back in 1968.) Martin and I had exercise in mind, something more in the way of a real hike, but since we were there it seemed like a good idea to visit the world’s largest living thing.
And that’s precisely what this so-called General Sherman Tree is: our Earth’s biggest, most biologically-successful living organism. And it’s just an easy, two-minute stroll from the huge parking lot which, even on this cold October weekday with slushy snow on the ground, was thronged by eager visitors. Neither of us, being rangers, much liked playing tourist but we swallowed our vanity and ambled over to the main attraction—just two more, lost in a crowd.
We passed several fairly large sequoias along the broad, paved pathway and stopped to gape; both of us had been quite young when last we’d seen the likes of such trees and had simply forgotten how magnificent they are. During my previous visit to this national treasure on our summer camping trip I’d ignored the DO NOT sign to clamber on its fabulous, spreading base (which got this nine-year-old a good scolding) but, in fact, remember only great expanses  of shreddy, cinnamon-red bark whose color and texture induced delight. No memory remains of its height or mind-boggling breadth. I couldn’t recall really seeing it because, as a child, General Sherman was simply too big to fit inside my little brain. And the thing is still way too big for my slightly-larger brain. I’ll soon forget again. In fact…I already have.
So when we came into the presence of this leviathan it was brand-new. And I can say with conviction that photos of the grandest Sequoias (even superb, large-format images) completely fail to capture their essence, their vegetable charisma. They’re one of those things that has to be personally experienced. That, of course, can be said of a great many things but is especially true in this case. To stand before a big big tree is to have your entire worldview altered, if only temporarily. The extreme limitations of our senses of time, scale, and overall significance in the grand scheme are painfully exposed. Make no mistake: it can be painful.
Coming closer, we’d gone silent; words seemed utterly superfluous. I felt a strange stew of emotional sensations, none distinct: almost light-headed, confused, giddy, faintly uneasy. Alarmingly, I’d shrunk to about eight inches tall. It was just too much to take in. As a diversion I read the old sign: General Sherman, the largest living thing, is 275 feet tall. The average diameter at the base is 36 feet; at 60 feet the diameter is 18 feet, and at 130 feet—where the first branches arise—14 feet. The first branch is 8 feet wide, which makes it larger in diameter than virtually any pine in the Sierra. Just the main trunk weighs in at over 2000 tons. The tree is estimated to be about 2500 years old.
We weren’t alone. Apparently, two tour buses had dropped their loads, because most of those around us spoke either German or Japanese. And there were a bunch of school-kids, laughing and throwing snowballs. The pathway was fenced on both sides but in one spot an enclosed corridor extended within 30 feet of the tree and, opposite it, a similar corridor allowed a place to “stand back” for photos. From that vantage, another large wooden sign just in front of the tree proclaiming GENERAL SHERMAN allowed the photographers’ friends and loved ones to be framed in front of the tree with sign included. While we were there I saw a number of people being captured on film, a lot of them doing silly poses. Meanwhile, much comment and chatter, much snapping of photos, and a very noticeable lack of anything resembling reverence being paid to the object of it all. Or even much curiosity, amongst the teens (who seemed much more interested in throwing snowballs, a true novelty).

At the time, I felt bitter and disillusioned by the circus atmosphere, made my typical, cutting sort of remarks to Martin who endured them patiently. But now I understand: we were all in a confrontation with something outside our usual framework, were standing too close to the flame. A fleeting glimpse into eternity can go a long way; this was too much. People want relaxing entertainment when vacationing, not be compelled to squarely face their mortality. It isn’t that the visitors aren’t paying attention—they’re trying to not get sucked into the void.

As we all stood there being tourists, steam emanating from that magnificent trunk rose slowly upwards. Globs of heavy, melting snow were falling with goopy thud!s as well as a continuous rain of big drops—sun-lit, glistening orbs that took ages to hit the ground. Squirrels and birds were chirping. This day, the first sunny day since we’d arrived, had that crystalline quality and the fresh forest smells were intoxicating. Meanwhile, the tree called Sherman silently pumped life-giving water back up to the very tips of its ancient limbs—a living factory whose thump and hum was smothered by our noisy presence.
Martin and I soon left to hike up into a nearby grove so we could visit with some less-famous big trees. Once out of sight of the trail and out of ear-shot of cars, buses, and voices I finally felt that sanctified forest-purity. We walked apart, seldom speaking (but when we did, in hushed tones).
It was an entirely different experience.
And on another day, if I’d been calmer and clearer inside, perhaps I could have heard that sound, apart from all the other forest sounds, of those great trees solemnly building themselves in their eternal fashion using the light of old Sol and moisture from the Earth—the pulsing of life on a grand scale. I know it’s there—always is, day and night—but couldn’t hear because my shoes were soaked, my feet were cold, and we were going to be late (I’d been watching my watch) for one more talk neither of us had the slightest desire to hear entitled Federal Perspectives on Wilderness Management. And I was thinking ahead to the long drive home.


10 Oct 94, 22 Jan 14

                                                                                                            ©2014 Tim Forsell