Whispers of the Redwoods

Winter - Week 5 2025 - On Returning, Infinite Moments and Quiet Giants

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures — and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

Plink, plink, plink. I wake to a familiar sound from my childhood… raindrops playfully tapping on a skylark. It woke my heart early, and consciously or unconsciously, I’m a little girl again back in England. It wraps me like a warm blanket and stirs memories made more than forty years ago. Funny how a sound in the dark will remind you of things you didn't know you’d forgotten.

This weekend has been one of remembering. Returning to Northern California for the first time since leaving five years ago. I had been looking forward to retracing our favorite hiking paths and tasting the ocean air on my lips again, but as we descended into SFO my heart felt squeezed tight. Not sad, not happy, only a heaviness of a dozen years of memories all wanting to be heard at the same time.

I watched as we flew over once familiar mountain terrain, so different to Colorado, and saw the sun rippling on salt fields. Then the wide ocean, and a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d made my home here once, leaving Europe behind, travelling like the settlers centuries before to make a new life. It all seems like so long ago now. A marvel of the human condition to make a life where we stand.

In my half slumber and the half light the drops are gathering heavier now. They make a unified hum. White noise drumming on the rooftop. I haven't heard rain in so long. In the high desert of the Eastern Plains rain is rare. So rare.. that we rejoice like drought is over when the slightest liquid gold falls from the heavens. But drought here is never done.

It’s funny to me now to miss the rain that falls so abundantly from the English sky, much to everyone’s chagrin. I can see that rain was part of me for more than half my life, but it no longer flows so easily.

For a moment I wonder if the desert, therefore, is also part of my malaise. Here, as in England, there is water all around. I hadn't noticed how much until now, and how little I see, and feel and taste back home. Perhaps, I’ve become accustomed to the thirst? Perhaps like a dehydrated hiker who disoriented, loses their path, and eventually sits down a while, only to perish on the mountain. Oh dramatic thoughts be still! I should drink more water!

As the light in the room lengthens, I delight in seeing the redwoods all around us. Their giant stems a silent choir protecting our dreams as we slept. We arrived here late last night. A delayed flight, yet more traffic, then navigating a seldom driven lane in total darkness to the cabin placed at the edge of time.

We could see their great towering structures, illuminated in the headlights as we banked and pitched the Skaggs Springs Road in silence. Only the sighting of a startled grey fox made us coo aloud with joy. Now these elders slowly and deliberately reveal themselves. Their quiet power and majesty like a requiem for the soul.

It’s humbling to be in their presence, like touching the beginning of the world. My eyes fix to the window at the ancient forest radiating awe and reverence. My inhale is long as I breathe in their peace. I am aware of my fragility in their company. They have lived before me and will go on when I no longer can. I stand not far from infinity.

“No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” — John Steinbeck

A hike on the cliff tops, a walk on the beach where we once let our dogs run free was our wish, but it isn't that kind of day. So instead we drive the coastal highway to Jenner by the Sea and drink turmeric lattes and breakfast on vegan sandwiches. Watching the torrential rain bounce up high off the ground.

We lament it’s a shame we can’t be outside, our default no matter where we are. The gift though, is seeing ever more of the wild in this wild place. The ocean crashes violently against the rocks in a scape that could be Scotland or Ireland, as well as the Sonoma coast. A myriad of different ferns, white calla lilies growing profusely, bright green moss creeping, and hanging lichen dripping like freshly washed hair. Everything grows in abundance here. Blessed by the rain, made stronger by the wind.

Later we return to the cabin where the deer are grazing, and the redwoods now mix with the sea mist hanging down in ribbons. The smell of the salty air and evergreens fills my lungs like a healing balsam. We are in a timeless place. Magical, mystical, untouched.

It’s then that I see the echo of a once great giant standing quietly still. An invisible trunk now wrapped in a bright green fur of moss. No longer towering to the sky. No longer swaying in the wind. No longer home to the squirrel and the owl, and yet still home. Hushed now. A different life, but still alive.

Oh what trees can teach us if we would only listen. They call us forth and at the same time call us back to the beginning. They make us stand still for a while and simply be. My heart has been calm here, my mind blissfully at ease. I’m grateful to have shared this sacred place, for this pause. And will take home with me the redwoods ancient embrace that everything will be OK.