Walking Rancho Hermosa

A 2000 Year Old Hug

Today is Friday my Cinderella Day. If you are a woman who is the home caretaker you know what that means. So this morning sitting on the deck with coffee and paper, I looked at the treetops from my perch, and admired the huge very tall Norfolk Pines in our neighborhood. Procrastinating the Cinderella chore, I dreamed about the five years we spent living in Eureka CA. An Artists colony, it was a new experience in so many ways. The most splendid way was a miracle in the center of town.

Sequoia Park is a magical place located in the very center of Eureka. It is a place of the old, majesty, and spiritual calm. I can't really think of these giants as trees, for their very force of being is beyond what we think of as a tree. You can't climb them, you can't sit under them for a picnic, and walking around the bottom of the tree packs the earth so damaging their ability to absorb moisture. So, I walked on the paths, and sat beside the banks of fallen giants, and let the mystery of these beings seep into my soul.

One winter day there was a hundred year storm. It is said on some of the internet pages that sequoias can't be blown down. This is false. In this storm event, many of these giants toppled and crashed to the ground blocking the paths and the one maintenance road. It took two years to clear the paths and roads and in that time the park could only be accessed by foot. I would take my black German Shepherd and walk around the fallen ones, so large that I could not look over the trunk. The Shepherd was very wary of these walks, for there were wildlife in the park becoming more overt in their presence. We did tread very softly on these days and did not venture too far into the park. The silence was truly deafening.

I did hug one of these giant beings one day. It was a moment of true melding of thought and vibrations. Don't ever doubt that these wondrous living monuments of our planets gifts have no soul. They do. I have felt and absorbed the presence of these giants and it is a lasting part of me. Today I watched a video of the Park in the center of this faraway place called Eureka, and tears came. Wishing that once again I was drifting through the magic of a place called Sequoia Park.

The walking through memories today will be my post. Sometimes, a walk such as this brings into sharp focus, our lives of where we have been, and the now of who and what we are ...so back to Oceanside, on the deck, watching the little hummer nest, and knowing that somewhere up in Northern California, there is a place where time stands still and that the ages are encapsulated there, residing in a tree named Sequoia...