Trip Log June 12: Legacy

After four days with you, my mind is quiet enough to feel your presence. The peace, the serenity, the timeless joyful stillness.

By providing for the life of your offspring for 10,000 generations, you’ve perfected the art of legacy.

Not so with us. We’re a younger species. In this generation we’re blindly destroying the web of life that we and our offspring, and yours, need to live.

But all is not lost. You remember — exactly 100 years ago while aggressive lumber-baron armies were cutting you down, sawing you up, selling your pieces to make a few men rich — that famous picnic right here in this forest. The one with Rockefeller. How a small group of humans who travelled here to observe were horrified by what they saw. How they decided to pool their wealth for something even more precious: to buy you back your forest. How the people of California then created a huge park to protect you. And how today you are bursting with life, the largest old-growth redwood forest in the world.

In spite of it all, we humans are still capable of that.

Imagine: what if we could reunite our communities to live as one community. Our restless newcomer driving ingenious impatient motion, infused with the experience and wisdom of your stillness, of your countless millennia of legacy.

Imagine the next generations.