Wanted: a forest for awe-inspiring redwoods

in a greenhouse through the Michigan winter, David Milarch, co-founder of Archangel, told Stielstra, a fan of his work, that he was sending the trees to Seattle.

Stielstra was too smitten with the idea to refuse.

“I don’t feel saddled with them,” he said. “I feel honored to be finding a place for these trees that people can watch grow up and learn from.

“I have a passion for finding a place for these 100 trees.” Trees, anyone? Stielstra is no stranger to challenges. For his 70th birthday, he decided to get 300 of Archangel’s saplings shipped to Seattle, where he distributed the trees free to 30 communities around Puget Sound.

The 100 redwoods represent phase two of his dream to be part of Archangel’s assisted migration vision, providing a haven for the giant coastal redwoods as climate change affects their California coastal habitat.

His dream is that someone out there, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, has enough property and the wherewithal to keep the grove of giants-to-be together, planting them in a forest that only future generations will ever see in its grandeur.

With the trees set to arrive on a refrigerated truck by the first week of July, Stielstra is hoping someone steps forward by then.

Why trees? Why these in particular? Why not, at age 71, just be retired from Boeing and call it good?

For Stielstra, that’s not the plan.

“I decided what I wanted for my 70th birthday was to be able to know at 90 that I planted some trees,” he said. The 300 seedlings last year were just the start.

To Stielstra, there’s just something so special about a redwood grove that he can’t imagine Earth without that experience.

With its more temperate climate, the Pacific Northwest could be a Noah’s Ark for wonder, far into the future.

Besides, the redwoods are special. They were propagated by Milarch, who divided the 500 miles of redwood forests along the coast into five segments and collected samples from some of the largest trees in each.

The trees arriving at the end of the month are from those scions, the biggest of the big. Each cutting is in a 30-gallon pot.

“They are so unique; it is a microcosm of the entire redwood range,” Stielstra said. “These are not just any redwoods.

“The range of genetic diversity, from such a unique group of trees, well, finding a place for them to be planted together, that is the real challenge.”

Asked just what it is about him and redwoods, Stielstra grew quiet.

“There is something about these trees that is just so awe-inspiring, so wonderinspiring,” he said. “There is something about these beings that have lived here on this Earth for over 2,000 years — they seem to know something and have wisdom we human mortals just don’t have. I just feel awed in their presence.”

Now, he just needs a place where awe can grow.