Montgomery Woods: "Even that dog looked high"

Wish my camera was better on my phone for moments like this. Joel came to visit me for a bit, and we decided to go on a day hike in Montgomery Woods State Natural Reserve. These groves of redwoods are majestic, stretching hundreds of feet into the sky. The main trail skirts a swampy area where a little stream disappeared into the porous forest floor. Photos can't do justice to the experience of being in these woods. Standing next to trees this old and massive makes you feel small a similar way to looking at the night sky. Only, looking at the night sky is a lot like looking at a picture of the night sky, and being in that forest was so incredibly different from looking at pictures of the redwood forests.

Later, when we came home, I talked with our friend Brian about wanting to buy land and settle down somewhere. I had to confess that I was not hopeful for this area of Northern California. I worry that the place will be mostly desert in 20 years, and if I want to invest my energy in a stretch of land, I want it to have a water-secure future.

But who knows? Maybe we will get our act together and start caring about the environment. Maybe I should't be worried about climate change, and I should stick my head back in the sand. That said, though, a future without stands of old-growth forests like this is certainly a bleak one. Hope we can get off the path to wilderness destruction sooner rather than later!