California Baseball: Day 9
Sequoia National Park
Danny and I got an early start the next day, having breakfast at the Gateway Restaurant, and once again overlooking the persistent rushing of the Kaweah River. The rate and volume and urgency of the flow made it seem impossible to maintain, even overnight. But it had not let it up one bit, this violent thrashing of water against rock, and it would not let up for weeks.
We drove back north into Sequoia National Park, alongside the river and then above it, climbing up on switchback roads back into the forest of giant sequoias to an area called, not coincidentally, The Giant Forest. On the way, we passed Tunnel Rock, a huge boulder that has fallen into a spot where it serves as an archway over a path big enough for a car.
We parked in the Giant Forest and crossed the highway to see The Sentinel, a 257-foot-tall specimen that is said to be the 43rd tallest Giant Sequoia in the world. The tree sits in front of the national park’s Giant Forest Museum, a pleasant stop for orienting yourself to local ecology.
Just east of the museum is the beginning of the Big Trees Trail, which follows the highway for a bit before crossing over into a large, brilliantly green pasture circled by sequoias. Here the trail becomes wooden, suspended above the grass to prevent flooding. The effect of defining the path for tourists so absolutely lends an added reverence for what feel like museum pieces in the open. We took our time admiring the peaceful scenes on the short, flat, relatively quiet trail, the weather in the Sierra Nevada once again warm but comfortable.
Next we drove further north to the Sherman Tree Trail, a 15-minute, downhill walk to the largest living tree in the world, the General Sherman Tree.
OK, here are the stats: The General Sherman begins at its base with an incredible diameter of 36.5 feet. Six stories above that, the trunk remains a whopping 17.5 feet wide. Go up three times that height, at 180 feet tall, and the General’s trunk is still going strong at 14 feet in diameter. The first branch comes at 130 feet, and one of the branches is 6.8 feet wide. The tree is 274.9 feet tall — about 100 feet shorter than the tallest redwood — but with a total trunk volume of 52,508 cubic feet. I know that feels like an abstract number, so imagine this: If it was filled with beer, the General Sherman Tree would top off more than 2.6 million pint glasses. And yes, that would be undeniably glorious — a gift to mankind, giving new meaning to “tapping a tree,” bringing a constant source of new joy to the forest.
But we’re getting off track. You get the idea. It’s an impressively large tree, and humbling to experience.
The Kaweah Colony and the Karl Marx Tree
The 2,200-year-old tree was named after American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, a military strategist known for his scorched-earth strategy against the Confederate States. It was also briefly named for a very different yet prominent figure of the 19th century: By 1886, the tree and its surrounding land came under control of the Kaweah Colony, a community that governed itself in the remote mountains under the ideals of utopian socialism. It grew out of the International Workers Association in San Francisco and was comprised of skilled laborers and trade union representatives passionate about the Marxist-socialist ideas expressed in Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. During this time, the General Sherman Tree was renamed the Karl Marx Tree.
The U.S. government ended things in 1890 with a sudden and legally questionable eviction to help pave the way for the establishment of Sequoia National Park. The world’s largest tree retook the General Sherman name.
We continued north for lunch and shopping at the Lodgepole Visitor Center, then backtracked down to Tunnel Log, a fallen sequoia with an 8-by-14-foot oval cut out for cars to pass through. This we dutifully accomplished, though only after waiting for a woman to finish posing for roughly 62 photos while standing atop the centerpiece of the attraction.
Nearby, there is a brief trail up Morro Rock, a granite dome carved with steps to allow guests to ascend to the top. The way up offered views of the High Sierra to the east and the route back down to our hotel in Three Rivers to the west.
We had one final sight to see: Crystal Cave, one of at least 240 known caves in Sequoia National Park. The entrance to the cave is located 6.5 miles off the highway, at the end of a windy road that seems to go on forever before reaching its destination. But this is just the beginning. To join the tour, you must walk through a solution designed to help protect bats in the cave from white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has killed millions of bats in North America since arriving here in 2006. At some sites where white-nose syndrome has appeared, more than 90 percent of the bats have died.
As we wiped our shoes in the solution, yellowjackets buzzed about our legs, attracted to the substance. I felt Danny harden. All buzzing insects bother him, but bees have complete and total control over his psyche. He did not want to continue. He began to mumble his intention not to continue. I told him he would be fine, to look straight ahead and just walk.
This he did, and we were through to the next stage, a 15-minute hillside trail ending amidst the dramatic waterfalls of Yucca Creek.
Just across the creek, a fence in the shape of a giant spider’s web covered the entrance to the cave. As we approached, we could feel the cool air from the cave, which remains at a constant 48 degrees. The tour guide led the way inside.
Discovered by park employees in 1918, Crystal Cave is a superb collection of rooms carved by subterranean streams that have breached fractured marble. It has more than 3.4 miles of passageways (most not opened to the public), the third largest of any cave in California. (Lilburn Cave, also in Sequoia National Park, has the largest known cave system in California, with nearly 17 miles of passages.)
Water dripped over polished marble on ceilings, walls and floors. It sat in little pools on ledges and rushed through dark places as it moved deeper into the cave. The scenes of elaborate stalactites and stalagmites, of cave curtains and soda straws, were all lit nicely to highlight the delicate grace of these unusual formations.
We emerged from the cave with a mellow coolness and slowly made our way back up the trail in the late-afternoon sun. As we drove back down the mountain, we took a little more time to appreciate these ancient sentinels of the Sierra Nevada, some of the oldest and largest living things on earth. What good fortune, and what an affirmation of life it is to be in their presence.