Walking with giants

摘要

I'll never forget the first time I stood in the cool, sun-shafted shade of the aptly-named Cathedral Grove in the Muir Woods National Monument, 12 miles north of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge, and wondered at the soaring majesty of the 250-foot-high coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). These stately veterans - the tallest living things on earth - are the sole survivors of the type of trees which covered much of the northern hemisphere around 140 million years ago. But as the climate changed and Man's greed gradually took advantage of these gargantuan living timber yards, they have been limited to a thin and discontinuous 500-mile strip along the Pacific coast of North America, between southern Oregan and Monterey, California.