Last Sunday afternoon, DH and I were driving home on Highway 9 towards our town, Boulder Creek and the traffic came to a complete stop. Thankfully we were in a cell service zone, so I could check what was happening, unfortunately a head-on crash. One person helicoptered out to the higher level trauma hospital over at Stanford, and four more people in ambulances. We sat for a while and then decided to double back a bit and go through the much smaller Highway 236. This road goes through Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
I haven't been on 236 since the Lightning CZU Fires in August 2020. I'd seen the other side of the mountains from the Pacific Ocean in 2021 and it had really really bothered me. Gutted me, really. When you're a forest dweller, you tend to identify with the forest you live in, at least I do. So it's been four years and I knew it probably didn't look as bad as I'd been imagining by now.
The redwoods are mostly all still alive. They've lost their big wide branches, and now look like green furry phone polls or those fake cell phone "tree" towers. The usually reddish trunks are almost all a solid ashy black.
This is from the top view looking back towards the unburned (so far at least) mountains where we live.
Really bizarre looking!
Most of the other sorts of trees are not showing much signs of life, the oaks, firs, pines, etc. at least in drive-by mode. Looks like the Redwoods will rule for a while. It's going to be so interesting to see what happens with this forest over the next few years. It seems to have things well in hand and underway to recovery with no help from us. That's how it should be I suppose. I'm relieved that we went through and saw it with our own eyes. Now I think I can go back and go for a hike. Big Basin has a couple of trails opened. It was very very strange to drive through the main part of the park and see no permanent buildings, they're all gone. But the trees are still there, that's the important part.
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