10 August 2020

Giant sequoia (human for scale)


The image (via) is an old one (probably from a linen postcard).  Posted today because it brings back pleasant memories of a trip to San Francisco in the 1970s for a medical conference.  After my presentation was finished, a couple friends and I rented a car to drive to the Muir Woods.  I had only hard-soled dress shoes, but managed to get far enough back in the park to be away from tourists and sit for a while in absolute awe at the magnificence of the coast redwoods in that park.

It's like visiting the Grand Canyon, or maybe the an ocean for a first time, or one's first dark-sky view of the Milky Way - experiencing in person something you've seen in photos hundreds of times, and you know it's big - really big - but when you are there your brain's reaction is "OMG I never realized..."

5 comments:

  1. I've been doing the same thing since I reached 100 days quarentined with no end in sight.... Thinking back to trips I've taken and moments I've enjoyed. When I take a break from the unending terror, I can see that the pandemic has been teaching me a lot about what I value in life. Sometimes it's surprising, sometimes it's just a deeper understanding of what I already knew.

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  2. Stonehenge is, on the other hand, suprisingly smaller than one would expect.

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    1. considering the size of the stones and how far they came, i am in wonder it was ever built!

      I-)

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  3. Sorry to be that guy, but the Muir Woods trees are Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) which are different from the Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), which grow in the Sierra Nevada and one of which is shown in the postcard. Both species can become really really stunningly big trees.

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    1. "That guy" is always welcome to make corrections on TYWKIWDBI.

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