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| Parking Lot, General Grant Grove, Kings Canyon National Park, Steve Brown 2022 |
The giant trees. That can mean two different species in California in two very different climates--the coastal redwoods, which is what I knew well as a child, and the giant sequoia, which until 2022, I'd never really seen before. I wish I remembered the latter better. Perhaps, as I write, I will.
What I recall most about that day, which isn't much, is how shocked I was at the up and down of the highway through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. I'm used to high passes. Going over Donnor Pass was a frequent occurrence during my childhood as well as Tioga Pass to the south, and I have been over many passes in the Rockies. But there was something wonderfully wild about driving the Generals Highway. It's narrow, curvy, goes up and down, up and down, and is surrounded by a tangle of thick, snow-beaten conifers, and yet the drop-offs are so steep that even with the thick growth, these spectacular views still open up. It is one of the most untamed-feeling highways I've driven. And yet, for some reason, right now, I don't remember it that well. Perhaps we were just too tired to absorb what we were seeing. What doesn't really seep into the ground water doesn't bubble up well later.
I do remember being in the actual big trees was at first a bit disappointing to me. Like the coastal redwoods, I thought they'd be surrounded by a thick carpet of ferns and moss, everything bright green and dripping with moisture. At least in April, they were not. The forest floor was a typical Sierra forest floor littered with small twigs, needles, and very random, isolated grasses. I felt like I could have been around Truckee except the trees were much, much bigger. Marci didn't have the same experience though and was clearly impressed, and so vicariously, through her excitement, I slowly entered the moment and began to feel wonderfully small amongst giants.
We only stopped at one grove, the Grant Grove, located in Kings Canyon National Park. As I slowly let go of my expectations, the steely gray day and almost complete silence seeped into me. Birds were few. Visitors were few. There was plenty of space to just enjoy the sound of the trail beneath our feet.
Perhaps my favorite part of the hike was when the trail went lengthwise The Fallen Monarch, a downed Sequoia. I was amazed that there was a ten-foot-high ceiling above us and no doubt plenty of wood beyond that. It was like being in a cave, the wood sides polished like stone by people passing by and rubbing them time and time again. I half expected stalactites to hang down from above us so much was the log like a cave.
We had intended to stop at more groves, but the pass between the groves in Kings Canyon and the ones in Sequoia was high, wild, and curvy, and the already dark day deepened, broken by short moments of glorious gold as the sun neared the horizon while the clouds were slowly breaking up. We decided we would continue onto camp so that we wouldn't have to set up our tent in the dark. "We'll just drive back up in the morning," I said, fully meaning to.
After we dropped into the other groves, and drove on without stopping, we dropped and dropped some more, the road turning this way and then that way. And still we dropped.
That was good, for it was getting cold.
At dusk, we reached the turn-off for Buckeye Flat Campground.
Recollection for me is like this: recent memories flow mostly unbroken like film footage. Sure, they may break and have to be taped back together and rethreaded through the projector as I write, a glitch here and there, but they flow, mostly unified. But with time, the film breaks into smaller and smaller bits, and it gets harder and harder to stitch them back together. But the fragments are still intense. Sometimes it seems more honest and natural to just leave them that way--short, intense bits of a day that once was, now not connected to whatever came before or after because in my mind that connection is mostly gone anyway.
Buckey Flat Campground now feels isolated from the upper elevations of King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks--almost as if it were a separate memory.
This film ends with the headlights picking up the camp sign in the dusk, tall trees towering all around, Mountain slopes behind, and a narrow gravel road off to the left.
The last flick of film flashes before the screen, slides off crooked, so one can see the individual frames and the holes to the side. This happens in less than a second. And then all is white.
