BY JAMES JOHNSTON
A mature redwood along
the Boy Scout Trail
Big Lifters
I
f one of the tallest redwoods in
Redwoods National Park were growing
in downtown Eugene, it would be more
than twice as tall as the tallest building here.
For you (rich) football fans, consider: If
you’re looking down on the field in one of
the new luxury sky boxes at the very top of
Autzen Stadium, you are 170 feet off the
ground, which is not even halfway up the
tallest redwood.
The real attraction of the redwood forest
isn’t the gaudy height of the trees, it’s the
dizzyingly rich variety and texture of vege-
tation in the cool, mist-drenched understo-
ry. Think ferns as tall as a person, moss
thick enough to swallow your arm, and, of
course, giant tree trunks disappearing into a
high-arched ceiling of leaves and branches.
The unique experience that is a redwood
forest is less than a four-hour drive from
Eugene. To get there, drive south on I-5 to
Grants Pass. Turn east on Hwy. 199
(Redwood Highway) and drive for about 75
miles to Jedediah Smith State Park, the
northernmost unit of the Redwood National
and State Parks, jointly managed by the
Park Service and the state of California.
Maps of all the parks are available at the
visitor center in Hiouchi, also the jumping
off point for the aptly named Stout Trail.
This 10,000-acre park, protected from
logging in 1929, is bisected by the Smith
River, the last major free-flowing river in
California. Most of the rest of the park’s
trails are accessed via the Howland Road, a
narrow, pothole filled dirt track that winds
between enormous tree trunks. The Boy
Scout Trail and the Mill Creek Trail are
highly recommended — it’s in this area that
the Endor scenes for Return of the Jedi
were filmed.
Understanding a little of the fascinating
ecology of the redwood ecosystem can only
enhance your experience. The trees them-
selves are marvels of evolutionary engi-
neering. Despite years of study, scientists
are unable to explain how the trees trans-
port such massive quantities of water from
the soil through wood into the absurd
heights of the forest canopy (an average
sized redwood may have 17 tons of water
moving through its bark at any given time).
On the rare occasions when biologists ven-
ture up into the canopy, they almost always
discover new species. Most recently an as-
yet-unnamed new species of pink earth-
worm was discovered in soil that had accu-
mulated in the nooks and crannies of giant
branches more than 200 feet off the ground.
You can almost picture the tomb-like
silence of the forest shattered by a bron-
tosaurus crashing through the underbrush.
In fact, the redwood ecosystem evolved
during the Jurassic period, and dinosaurs
JAMES JOHNSTON
Redwoods raise massive volumes of water
did make their homes in the same kind of
forest you’ll be walking through. The red-
wood forest was once widespread over
much of North America but exists in
today’s more arid climate only in a thin
strip of coastal forest where cool moist air
from the ocean keeps trees damp during
summer droughts.
Redwoods get as big as they do because
they possess extraordinary resistance to
insects and fire, both of which can dramat-
ically limit the life expectancy of other tree
species. This resistance is due in large part
to the high tannin content of the wood.
Ironically, the same prop-
erties that make the wood
resistant to insects makes it
ideal for outdoor building
applications, and as a
result, less than 4 percent
of the historic old-growth
redwood forest exists. The
rest has been converted to
beams, fences and deck-
ing.
Although the redwood
forest of northern California
has existed in its current
range for more than 20 mil-
lion years, and although
many individual trees
exceed 2,000 years of age,
some scientists worry that
global warming may spell
the end of the redwood for-
est by burning off the
coastal fog belt that the red-
woods need to thrive or by altering the repro-
duction and behavior of pests.
Other experts look to redwood forests
not as victims of global warming but poten-
tial saviors. The giant trees store mind-bog-
gling amounts of carbon, the gas most
responsible for warming. Restoring cutover
redwood forests will suck literally millions
of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.
Preliminary calculations put the value of
one redwood tree for carbon sequestration
at about $10,000.
Maybe it’s time to plant a few in the
Autzen Stadium parking lot.
ew
JUNE 28, 2007 39