Standing tall in the woods
Counts himself lucky to be walking among the amazing trees in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in the United States. Fact file
Ashwin Bhardwaj
hen I look around this forest,’’ said ranger Jim Wheeler, ‘‘it has a tendency to give me perspective in life, to help me realise I’m just a very small part of a much bigger world.’’
The forest, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, is 515 kilometres north of San Francisco, and the perspective comes from the coastal redwood, the world’s tallest tree.
Coastal redwoods can live 2000 years, and reach 116 metres in height, but only in a narrow strip along the coast, where sea fog gives them the moisture they need. Redwood branches cluster at their crown, so the lower layers of the forest are open, like a green circus tent held up by giant columns of wood.
Wheeler had a more poetic metaphor.
‘‘It’s like a cathedral,’’ he said. ‘‘The way the light comes through the trees, and the freshness of the air... It’s just an incredibly beautiful place.’’
Redwoods produce a natural insecticide, giving the forest a lovely tannic fragrance. And when an old tree falls, new saplings spring from the trunk, creating ‘‘redwood nurseries’’ in straight lines. They race for the sunlight, reaching the forest canopy within a hundred years.
‘‘There’s nothing special about the young wood,’’ explained Wheeler.
‘‘But once they get to around 150 years old, the grain tightens up, squeezing out knots. The redwood becomes hard, straight and easy to work, making it perfect for construction.’’
I counted myself lucky to be able to see and walk among these amazing trees, such a tempting target to timber companies.
Indeed, the threat to them was already so acute this time a century ago that decisive action was taken to save them.
By March 1918, local timber concerns were clear-cutting forests, milling the wood on the coast and sending it south by ship.
Concerned by how quickly the forests were disappearing, William Kent, a congressman, and Stephen T Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, helped found the Save the Redwoods League. The league used private money to buy land, to stop it being logged, and created state parks like Prairie Creek. In 1968, Congress added 8000 hectares of national park to what the league had preserved.
‘‘In total,’’ said Wheeler, ‘‘about 5 per cent of the old-growth coastal redwoods were protected.’’
Prairie Creek today has 120km of trails, including the 16km James Irvine Trail. This track starts at the visitors’ centre car park, and climbs over a ridge, before descending to Gold Bluffs Beach on the Pacific Ocean.
In a meadow near the turnaround point, a male elk sat basking in the sun, and as we walked through the forest, it felt as if the trees were telling us stories: a knotty burl showed where a black bear damaged the trunk to get at the sap beneath; a ring of trees marked where a tree fell and saplings sprouted.
‘‘The burls are bud-tissue,’’ explained Wheeler. ‘‘They appear all over the trunk and roots, reproducing asexually to repair damage. They can even grow an entirely new tree if the main trunk dies.’’
The oldest redwoods are so large that it takes 10 people at full stretch to wrap their arms around a trunk, and information boards invite you to touch the rough bark and compare it to the moss-covered trunks of Douglas firs.
There was never any logging in Prairie Creek, so there is no soil erosion: the water in the streams runs unusually clear and the streambeds are gravel, rather than mud.
Further south in Big Sur, where the forests were completely cleared, storms in 2017 led to mudslides that wiped out the highway. It will take two years to reopen.
‘‘The timber industry was bad for the land, but great for the economy,’’ said Richard Stenger, of Eureka-Humboldt visitor centre.
‘‘Gold prospectors established the town of Eureka on Humboldt Bay, but when it proved hard to extract gold commercially, they turned to the redwoods.’’ Eureka grew rich on the ‘‘red gold’’, with vast mansions
Trees by numbers:
❚ 1 tree makes 10,000 picnic tables
❚ 7 days was the time it used to take to chop down a single redwood
❚ 10 people are able to wrap their arms at full stretch around a trunk
❚ 40 per cent of the moisture the trees need comes from sea fog
❚ 116 metres is the height of the tallest redwood
❚ 2200 years is the age of the oldest living redwood
❚ 240 million years is how long the redwoods have been around
Getting around:
For inspiration for your own road trips check out the Hertz USA road trip planner, with 25 inspiring routes, insider guides and quirky pit-stops (hertz.co.uk/p/american-road-tripplanner).
Staying there:
Redwood Coast Vacation Rentals (redwoodcoastvacationrentals.com), The Inn at Newport Ranch (theinnatnew portranch.com), Timber Cove (timbercoveresort.com).
Eating there:
Samoa Cookhouse (samoacook house.net), Piaci (piacipizza.com), North Coast Brewing Co (northcoast brewing.com).
More information
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springing up in the town. Logging teams trekked into the hills and railways snaked down to the coast, carrying logs to be milled and loaded on to ships.
The biggest mill was at Samoa, with dockyards over a mile in length. It had its own post office, rail workshops, shipyards and houses, all owned by the timber company.
The sawmill closed in the 80s, but the Samoa Cookhouse still gives a taste of company life, with bottomless portions of fixed-menu meals.
A serving of French toast, sausage, biscuits and gravy overwhelmed me, but the museum next door showed how the loggers justified such a breakfast: it took a week to chop down a single redwood, with handsaws the length of a bus and wood hooks the size of anchors.
When settlers arrived here, they found the native Wiyot tribe living on the land. The Wiyot were moved south to the Mendocino county reservation, and an army garrison was placed at Fort Bragg to keep them there. In 1867 Fort Bragg was demilitarised, the reservation was sold to settlers and the Wiyot moved elsewhere. Then the timber industry moved in.
Newport, at the top of dramatic ocean bluffs, was the first town in the area. Some 1500 people lived around a sawmill that used a chute to send wood to ships waiting offshore. When Fort Bragg harbour opened, the mill moved there, and the people moved with it.
Newport is now the site of a luxury inn and the only visitors to the cliffs are whales. The 800ha estate is full of gigantic tree-stumps; a poignant