The trees are all spectacular, but I was anxious to see the Rockefeller forest. I read in David Rockefeller's Memoir (a must-read book) that in 1930, a large tract of giant redwoods was about to be cut for lumber and there was an urgent - and to that time, hopeless - need for a donor to save the trees as it contain 100 giants of which 40 were among the world's tallest trees. The Rockefellers immediately provided $2 Million: a lot of money in 1930, which was matched by the State and saved 10,000 acres on Bull Creek from destruction by the Pacific Lumber company.
The 2nd and 3rd photos are part of the Rockefeller tract. In one there is a falling trunk across the center of the photo, and you can see two new trunks growing bravely skyward right out of the falling tree truck.
The tree stump I am shown in front of was more than 2,000 years old when it fell, and that was more than 500 years ago.
That old Chandelier is the one of millions of postcards where cars drive through a tree. As the nice the lady in the gift store had nothing better to do (I was the only one in the vicinity - she was trapped with me) I asked her what creatures inhabit the large redwoods? She said Wild Turkeys - and they have a lot of them there. I was surprised at that, although I had thought the redwoods, though majestic did not do a lot for forest animals. She said they have some deer in the area, but they never grow to be v. large or old as the coyotes, wolves and bears get them. Maybe I missed something, but you might think that turkeys which nest on the ground would almost be more endangered by such predators than even swift footed deer.
Hill billies so close to sophisticated SF. I stayed overnight in a nice Marriot in Novato - about an hour in heavy traffic north of the Golden Gate bridge. It seems to be a tech city. But once you go N - E. or West from there, it is quite astonishing that you are so close to Silicon Valley, Stanford, one of the greatest universities in the world and a great modern city like SF, and you find yourself immersed in hill billies. Now there are some major crops of oranges and vegetables there, so there must be some farmers or agriculturists, but all I encountered for days were out and out hill billies. They were happy and pleasant hill billies, true, but they all could have been existing 100 years ago if deprived of their Ford F-150's and their "Hullo, yeah, yeah, ok, yeah, Bye" cell phones. Maybe I read too much Cormack McCarthy and then just finished The Englishman's boy as well, but although seemed quiescent, almost inert, I could not help but expect that they would burst out of the Main Street pasta bistro, form up a F-150 posse and ride off the put down yet another injun rebellion. I must admit I did not see any apparent injuns there, so maybe they have co-opted or been abolished.
I did not see the word Library for the few days I was there, and there must have been a legit bookstore (not just tourist lit) somewhere, although I did not see one. That is lumbering and mining country, but I saw little of either - although one does see loads of cut redwood lumber heading south every hour or so.
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