Nothing Muir About It

Another of the places we hit in California was Muir Woods. This redwood grove is in a valley near the coast in Marin Country, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It was amazing to walk through a dense grove of trees that grew taller than most of the buildings I've ever been in. I found it next to impossible to get any pictures that imparted the majesty of these trees, but I hope maybe these shots will give you some sense of what it's like down at ground level. The shot above is a typical Ernie shot, looking straight up into the canopy, over 200 feet up. These trees are truly monsters.

The shot above is just the needles on the redwoods, but this time on a small tree that hadn't erupted out of sight yet. Somehow this branch had found a patch of sunlight in the eternal twilight amongst the redwoods.

Most of the vegetation in the shadows of the giants is adapted to very little light. Here some ferns mix in with what I think are fennels. I could be wrong about that.

At the base of some of the redwoods, young trees start to emerge from the burls on the trunks. Someday, when the conditions permit, these sprouts will take off and grow like wildfire (and perhaps because of wildfire), racing to claim their piece of the light far above.