Tall Thoughts by Brontë Goodspeed-Gross
A deep , charcoal blackness hangs above me . Packs sprawled around my sleeping bag , I am sprawled out inside a coastal redwood , Sequoia Sempervirens , the tallest tree in the world , stretching over 300 feet into the air . This tree , despite a fire-etched cavity taller than a school bus , is still growing around me . If trees had heartbeats , this one would feel like the subterranean thump of Jormundgandr , writhing in his sleep . Two friends and I have been biking through the redwood forests of Northern California for a few days now , living in a world of giants , dodging rays of sun slanting through the thick forest and onto the road . A few days ago we were taking a day of rest on the pebbled banks of the Smith River , a starkly blue snowmelt ripple swathing through the giant glades . Normally inseparable , we split up to idly wander the woods on our separate paths past the feet of titanic wooden columns , wraiths in an ancient cathedral .
Above me , knurled trunks arch gracefully into a twisting blue sky that danced between the canopies . Their creased and furrowed bark looks like laugh lines on weathered faces , wrinkles that testify their longevity . Standing here among the redwoods makes you feel like a bacterium , flagella waving in a colossal , breathing world . In this dark and silent glade , the final forest , perspective packs its bag and skitters to the back of the mind . Instead , perspective ’ s job is left to imagination , and suddenly the forest is filled with blue whales , elephants , limousines and monster trucks , stacked in piles , balanced end on end , measurements of a different kind , crowded up to the edge of vision . I lowered myself to the ground , and above me all such comparisons fell apart , a strangely graceful tumble , whales pinwheeled to the floor and bounced among the moss . Soon , all that was left were the trees , the earth ’ s prayers to the sky , and these too faded with the sun . We slept that night on an abandoned pathway , alarms set to get us out before the park rangers clocked in . In the early hours of the morning we set off , possessions packed away , three souls swimming in the day ’ s first sunbeam . The cars that shared the highway were matchstick racers in a deep green meadow , lost among blades of grace twining upward .
Staring back at the darkness of the cavity of the redwood , I lie back and think of the dirt beneath my head . Somewhere under my skull , this tree started as a seed , the fevered dream of a few strands of DNA . Thousands of years of sunshine and rain have powered the growth of a titan , through earthquakes , gales , and fires , a thousand disasters big and small . Inside this tree is the heady smell of a long and slow life in an unstable world , a resinous pine scent , blackened by fire . Before I drifted off to sleep , I thought of the first sprout of that seed pushing up through a rich loam , still moist from the rain the day before . Its DNA knew the plan from the start , coded predictions that all rang true . In its prophecies there were blueprints to survive every chaotic fire , every violent earthquake , the bark ’ s fibrous cork woven just thick enough that I wondered if there was a silver thread connecting that sprout to the future , a spinning helix filled with the promises of two thousand years of light and life , stretching past the fires and the axes . I saw the forest in the last light , each tree tethered by its silver strands , and before my eyes closed , I saw my own tugging me into the darkness of sleep .
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