Drive THROUGH a Giant Redwood

National Geographic: Climbing Redwood Giants

Amazon Price: $12.61 (as of 02/17/2012)

National Geographic reveals the unexplored environment of the California redwoods in an epic, year-long exploration. Obsessive redwood climber Steve Sillett of Humboldt State University investigates their monster crowns, tallying biological material and discovering new record-breaking trees, while escaping falling branches and crashing trees in the process. Down below, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Mike Fay charts the redwood range to size up the past and future of these primeval trees threatened in 21st century California

Hunting Big Redwoods (From The Atlantic Archives)

by: John Muir

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This 1901 essay is the perfect introduction to the writing and thinking of John Muir. It was published after Muir had founded the Sierra Club and become an activist and conservationist; he was determined to protect the wilderness, especially its groves of Big Trees-the coastal redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, and the inland Sequoia gigantea. "God's Big Show" is what John Muir called Yosemite and the mountains that lift up from its valleys. In the early l870s, he spent three years "mountaineering," exploring the mountains and valleys, searching out the groves of Big Trees, doing careful field studies with only a mule to carry his pack and keep him company. He spent the rest of his life writing about this pristine wilderness, sounding the alarm when it was threatened. Here Muir recounts his adventures in the Sierras, seeking out the groves of Big Trees, going first into elaborate historical detail (the tree reaches its prime in its 1,500th year; redwoods were alive when Jesus was born). Then he switches to scientific features (the bark of a full-grown tree is one to two feet thick). He rhapsodizes about "nature's wild, immortal vigor," and imbues his descriptions with religious overtones. Clearly, the minister's son found his own religion in the mountains and forests of the West Coast. He meets a hermit who has left the gold fields to live out his life amid his own grove of Big Trees. Muir runs into "a grand fire" and, noting that "fire is a master scourge and controller of the distribution of trees," he gets within 300 feet to offer a chilling first-hand account of the devastation. He concludes: "Only fire and the axe and the ravages of flocks and herds threaten the existence of these noblest of God's trees."

Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Striggles to Save the Redwoods

by: Julia Hill

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A young woman named Julia Butterfly Hill climbed a 200-foot redwood in December 1997. She didn't come down for 738 days. The tree, dubbed Luna, grows in the coastal hills of Northern California, on land owned by the Maxxam Corporation. In 1985 Maxxam acquired the previous landlord, Pacific Lumber, then proceeded to "liquidate its assets" to pay off the debt--in other words, clear-cut the old-growth redwood forest. Environmentalists charged the company with harvesting timber at a nonsustainable level. Earth First! in particular devised tree sit-ins to protest the logging. When Hill arrived on the scene after traveling cross-country on a whim, loggers were preparing to clear-cut the hillside where Luna had been growing for 1,000 years. The Legacy of Luna, part diary, part treatise, and part New Age spiritual journey, is the story of Julia Butterfly Hill's two-year arboreal odyssey.