Spring species hunt
I went with purpose to see the Giant Sequoias in Sequoia National Park on my drive down to San Diego this week (very out of the way...) but I had read about and wanted to see them for a long time. iNat helped to elaborate on that curiosity. I was able to really see the confined forest area that they grow which is, more specifically, an area comprising only 144 km. I looked at the previous observations of these trees before going and there were not very many, maybe 8. But I would say that's because they've been there for so long they don't need to establish their existence via the internet, everyone knows these beautiful trees.
I'm well familiar with coast redwoods and love them very much, but had never seen a Giant Sequoia. Just before you enter the forest reserve you see the first one and IT. IS. JUST. HUGE. and so out of place amongst it's other tree friends. I'm really glad my boyfriend was driving and had seen them before, otherwise I may have crashed in awe.
The second beast was right at the park entrance where you pay a day fee, and for all I know the guy could have charged me the $20 sixty times I was so distracted by this dang tree. It's something that cannot be conveyed by a photo, they're just too huge. But I tried, and now my observation sits amongst the other attempts.
These trees are amazing and I'm so glad we went the 5 hours out of our way to southern CA in order to see them. General Sherman, the LARGEST TREE ON EARTH, was standing tall and proud. I also learned of their near complete fire resistance, which is why they are able to prosper for so long. I walked around on a couple different trails and saw quite a few of these trees, but unfortunately not much else in terms of critters as it was very dry and wintery (though there was very, very little snow left). Though I did see a Yellow-bellied Marmot who crossed paths with me pretty nonchalantly. I think marmots are great and the only other one I've ever seen was on top of Half Dome, so seeing that one was great.
Sadly the Giant Sequoia is listed as Endangered and due to fire suppression efforts by the park, the sequoias cannot spread their seeds. Invasive species as well as carpenter ants are checked by these fires too and also contributes to their stunted new growth. The largest of them all by volume, General Sherman, lost its largest branch in recent 2006, and it was so large it cracked the pavement and decimated the fence beneath it. That is incredible.
The observation that stood out to me was this one:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/47700
The reason why is it was really the only good photo, though small, of the entire length of the tree. Most were of the base or in poor lighting, both which are understandable because they're SO BIG!
The last thing I would like to point out was a sign there underneath General Sherman which stated the perspective a 6 foot tall human gets staring up at the tree is the equivalent to what a mouse sees looking up at a 6 foot tall human. This made it easy to feel "small" in the world and see the bigger picture of the connected earth system we are all apart of, and I wish everyone could see and feel that.
We are extremely lucky to have Sequoia National Park, among other incredible parks, in California, and I'm happy to have checked another one off my list.
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