Ageless

California has really remarkable trees. We have the tallest, the largest, and the oldest. And they’re all conifers. Why does California have such an abundance of conifers? I don’t know. But I’m asking someone about it this week. If you want to weigh in, have at it.

I spent a few days at Sequoia/King’s Canyon National Park earlier this season, and shamefully, pointlessly have failed to mention that fact in any way.

Not my rental RV. But look, Yosemite in Sequoia. Hilarious, right?

Late spring/early summer is a cool time to visit this place because as you head up hill, you go from summer near the valley floor up through spring and back into late winter.

I’m going through the audio from this trip now. One thing that USGS ecologist Nate Stephenson said that’s really stuck with me is that sequoias don’t age the way humans age (I think plant cells don’t age the way animal cells age; again, I’m open to your input on that one). So they don’t die of old age. And once they’re adults they’re pretty much pest- and fire-resistant. The catch is that they don’t reproduce very often, which is why there aren’t more of them. If climate conditions change, they may stop reproducing completely. The remaining sequoia groves would become old age homes. Sure the trees would stick around for dozens, even hundreds more centuries, but they wouldn’t replace themselves. They’d just slowly (really slowly) die off.