Story and Photos by Xenia Slabina
I spent this Spring Break in the Redwoods, camping and hiking among the tallest trees in the world with my four University of Oregon friends. 
On Saturday, March 24^th, around 10:30 a.m. we embarked on a Redwoods National and State Parks tour. International students Ethan Park from South Korea and Shiro Yamaguchi from Japan were fascinated by the sunny and warm weather, wishing it would be like that throughout the entire trip. Kodiak Atwood, the initiator, was giving driving directions to Michael Worcester. While driving, Mike was singing songs, replacing the missing radio in his good old 1989 Suburban.
It took us around five hours to get to the Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park. We started our first 4.3 miles hike on the Hatton Trail. The main thing that catches your eyes in the Redwoods is the awe-inspiring tallness of the trees around. Sequoia sempervirens, which in translation from Latin means “ever living,” can weight up to 500 tons and stand taller than the Statue of Liberty, according to the information from the camp side handout. The diameter of the trees is enormous, too. Some of them are 13.5 feet wide. We tried to embrace one of the trees, but did not have enough “arms.” As we climbed inside the hollow trunk of the fallen sequoia, we agreed it’s possible to design several small compartments (or apartments) inside of it! That was like in a Jonathan Swift’s fairy tale “Gulliver’s Travels,” except that instead of being in Lilliput land, we were lilliputians ourselves.
That same day we went to the Stout Grove, a small half-mile walk along the giant fence of perennial plants. These trees are centuries and some of them millennia old. What makes them so impervious to weather, fires, and insects, is their foot-thick bark. Many trees continue to grow even after being seriously damaged by fire. Kodiak mentioned he heard that somewhere in the Redwood Parks there was the tallest tree in the whole World, and it would be nice if we could find it.
We started our Sunday by walking down the Smith River in Stout Grove.
“Look at this green water. I wish my camera was able to picture its real beauty,” said Shiro as he approaches the river. For some reason, the water in this river had an unusually lovely turquoise color. We suggested it was either because of the minerals, or because of the amount of the reflected light in that place.
Later that day we also hiked a beautiful .9 miles Simpson-Reed Trail and 5.2 miles Boy Scout Tree Trail. The surface of the ground is pretty homogeneous in Jedediah Smith. Ferns, fungus and moss cover the ground and the trees, and giant coast redwoods bloom in a great amount.
It’s fascinating that many trees in Redwood Park grow with or on each other in “family groups” of two, five, seven and more. We read in the information handout that saplings use the parent tree’s root system to support themselves. Redwoods have no taproot, and their roots penetrate only 10 to 13 feet deep, but they spread out 60 to 80 feet wide. I thought that fact was pretty astonishing.   
The next day, after arriving to the Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, we embarked on the Miner’s Ridge and James Irvine trail, the 11.6 miles world’s best redwood hike, as the Redwood hikes Web site described it. I agree. It was the most diverse and challenging hike of our entire trip. One hour walk, break, second hour walk, break, third hour walk… Kodiak stopped.
“Hey, guys, if we turn left now, we can go see the Fern Canyon. Do you want to go?”
“Sure!”
Fern Canyon looks like a shallow river with many fallen logs in it, surrounded by 50-foot walls with seven kinds of ferns grown on them. We had to jump a lot while we hiked there. Just like Roosevelt elks, which we saw in the meadow located near the Fern Canyon. Some of them were nibbling the grass, and others were gracefully resting on it.
Finally, we turned to the trail, which led to the beach. There, the Pacific Ocean inspires with its giant waves, and refreshing wind. We walked along the beach about an hour, and met no one but some seabirds.
Mike was already in the car when we returned. While waiting for the rest of us, he went to the visitor’s center and got postcards for everyone. Mine was with a Harbor Seal on it. The skin of the seal on the card looked just like the pulp of the dragon fruit.
“I got news,” Mike said, “That special world’s tallest tree we wanted to find is in this park, but it’s no longer the tallest. I was told in the visitor’s center that its top recently fell off during the storm.”
That was a little disappointing, but not surprising. They say the tree used to be 367.8 feet long.
Tuesday morning was wet and our tents appeared to be in little puddles of spring “deluge.” It continued to rain all the morning long, and we started to negotiate new plans. Since it was raining nonstop, and many of us got cold, we decided to drive back to Eugene, visiting the corkscrew and the whale watching point on our way home.
That was the end of our short, but adventurous journey. It’s great to travel and explore new places, especially with adventurous friends. Even though we did not see the bears and whales, we had fun hiking and camping among hundreds of world’s tallest trees, which are the green “lungs” of our planet and the active providers of oxygen for every living organism on earth.
 
 

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