My Pilgrimage to the Giant Sequoias

I couldn't fly into Fresno without seeing one of my best friends from college and his wife. They had just flown back from Spain five days before, having spent a month and a half walking the Camino de Santiago where they trekked five hundred miles in total. While I am in awe of both their spiritual and physical stamina, I was actually visiting Fresno to make a pilgrimage of my own. I'd soon cover almost the same distance, albeit in a rental car, on a journey to bear witness to living entities often just as old as Christianity itself. The giant sequoias were awaiting me.

It's been close to forty years since I've moved to Arizona, and I've visited California dozens of times. But surprisingly I've never visited three of the state's national parks: Giant Sequoia, Yosemite, and Kings Canyon. Except for skiing near Lake Tahoe, the wonders of the Sierra Nevada mountain range had eluded me. However I have been to Northern California and witnessed the cousins of the giant sequoias protected in those parks, the coastal redwoods. Those redwoods are the tallest in the world, their lumber harvested for their beauty, light weight, and resistance to decay.

As their name infers, these evergreens have adapted to grow close to the coast, where moisture from the Pacific Oceans is consistent. Giant sequoias, on the other hand, grow much farther east, in the Sierra Nevada, where the trees rely on the moisture provided by snowy winters. While not as tall as the coastal redwoods, the sequoias live much longer and are much more massive. In fact, they are the largest living organisms known on Earth.

Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite protect most of the giant sequoia's natural range. Sequoia National Park is home to the majority of the identified groves of these behemoths, so it's an obvious place to begin any pilgrimage to witness them. While most of the park is wilderness straddling the High Sierra, Generals Highway provides easy access to many renowned trees. Most famous is the largest sequoia, General Sherman in Giant Forest Grove.

This tree is estimated to be as old as 2700 years. Its base diameter is more than thirty-six feet. While its height is 275 feet - more than 100 feet less than the tallest coastal redwood - its especially wide girth contributes to a total volume that makes it the single largest living organism in the world. While the numbers clearly sound awesome, viewing the tree is even more astonishing.

Access to the grove requires a long, steep walk from the parking area through a mixed conifer forest that includes smaller and younger giant sequoias. Viewpoints along the way provide distant glimpses of General Sherman - first its crest at eye level, then its canopy, followed by its trunk as you descend lower in elevation and approach nearer. You're so far away at first, that the tree just seems like any old tree. But the trail builds up your anticipation over fifteen minutes until you reach the colossus and have to finally confront its immensity.

First of all, it's as tall as a twenty-six story building. Its trunk's diameter exceeds the width of many city streets. And its circumference is over a hundred feet. You can barely imagine how many tree huggers it would take to love this tree to death!

A network of trails through Giant Forest Grove leads to hundreds of other trees like one named President, and to various groupings like the Senate and Congress. The pathways were very quiet during my mid-October visit, most visitors preferring to crowd around General Sherman. The fresh air, surely highly oxygenated by the respiration of the surrounding giant sequoias, motivated me to finish the 2.7 mile Congress Trail loop. It was a peaceful, tranquil setting, where it was easy to appreciate early advocates like John Muir who fought to protect the environment.

Shortly later, in contrast, the long drive to the main gateway entering Kings Canyon National Park revealed a vastly altered landscape. Wide swathes of burned ponderosa pines, white firs, and other flora attested to recent forest fires that have ravaged the area. Fires have been a natural phenomena in the American West throughout history, even benefiting giant sequoias by clearing habitat for the growth of saplings. Mature sequoias have also evolved to survive most of these events. However it remains to be seen how the sudden onset of unprecedented and extreme conditions accompanying our climate crisis effects these giants in the future.

Kings Canyon protects more of the foothills and mountains of the Sierra Nevada, along with much of its namesake Kings River Valley. But near the main entrance of the park, General Grant Grove is home to the second most-massive giant Sequoia, General Grant. The paths through the grove are every bit as peaceful, but much easier to walk, than the much larger Giant Forest Grove in Sequoia.

National forest land protects much of the montane forest and mountain peaks that lead north to Yosemite National Park. In fact you can even hike there along the Pacific Crest Rail. I opted instead to drive for four hours back through Fresno to reach the park a bit faster.

The Yosemite Valley landscape is some of the most revered scenery in North America, if not the world. Massive specimens of giant sequoias exist in three specific groves in the park, one close to the preserve's south entrance. In the Valley, where granite landmarks like El Capitan and Half Dome awe visitors and challenge rock climbers, a number of non-native giant sequoias now grow.

Most old-growth coastal redwoods were logged within the first hundred years of California's statehood. Fortunately the wood of the oldest giant sequoias was too fibrous for much more than matchsticks and shingles. Foresight from conservationists and the government was nonetheless needed to protect the trees from logging. Today the species also thrives in peaceful gardens and vast habitats around the world where the trees have been introduced. More giant sequoias now grow in the United Kingdom than in California. One was even planted in Courthouse Square in Prescott, Arizona, my summer home.

Of course the trees are prized as ornamentals for their beauty and size. It's difficult not to admire their cinnamon color and to touch their grooved, cushiony vertical ribs before gawking up at their unimaginable height. But the giant sequoias are also useful in their capacity for capturing carbon, a hopeful subject being discussed by many scientists studying the climate crisis. Beauty and hope along with peace and awe. My pilgrimage was complete.