Camping Among the Redwoods

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22256, 2 November 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

Camping Among the Redwoods

A CAMPING holiday in the Calir\ fornian redwood forests is an **- experience that would thrill any

out-door loving Now Zealander with delight. The Californian climate is so beautiful, so full of steady sunshine and unvarying good weather, that your holiday may bo arranged for any period in spring, summer or autumn with little fear of interruption. We spent a month in spring in the redwood forests of Santa Cruz, camping in log cabins, basking in the sunshine all day and every day, bathing in the creeks and picnicking beneath the giant trees. The forest is not full of undergrowth like that of the New Zealand bush, but is carpeted with ferns and beautiful wild flowers, golden violets, mauve and yellow violas, harebells, tiny fringed iris, and tiger-lilies. The mountains themselves are covered with the misty blue of wild lilac and sweetscented azalea, and every forest clearing is set with clumps of huckleberry, twining wild raspberry and currant bushes.

The animal life is interesting, but not quite so pleasant, for the redwood forests are the haunt of the rattlesnake, and wild mountain cat, or coyote, who often made night hideous with their snarling fights. But the little silver-grey squirrels, the quaint woodpeckers tap'-tapping on the trunks of the trees, the blue jay with his flashing sapphire wings, and the tiny waterlizards basking on the hot stones in the crook —all these combined to mnke our camping holiday one of rare delight. But it was the vast groves of the redwoods themselves that provided the most wonderful memory, the walks through those temples of sunlight and shadow where the sunbeams came slanting down in long, steady sheaves of gold through the leafy canopy hundreds of feet above. For sheer beauty and grace, no trees in the world can compare with the redwoods. Nearly one hundred years ago, so the story goes, a hunter, chasing a bear, suddenly came across a grove of those mammoth trees, and, overwhelmed with amazement, hastened back to camp to tell of his astounding discovery, and so the world came to know of them, and they were named Sequoia, by the scientists, after a great Indian chief, Sequoyah. It is easy to imagine the incident occurring exactly as told. The first impression on ontering a grove of redwoods for the first time, is one of overpowering amazement, amounting almost to incredulity, so vast, so immensely tall are theso marvellous trees. Specimens have been found which tower aloft for 340 ft., almost tho height of tho cross above the domo of St. Paul's Cathedral.

In the past, great numbers of redwoods have been destroyed by fire, through wanton carelessness, and many have been cut. down as timber. A "Save the Redwoods" campaign has done much to secure the wonderful forests from further damage, however, and by a beautiful inspiration, one of the

groves was purchased and dedicated by an American patriot to the memory ol' a soldier who fell in the Great War. How proudly Now Zealand might follow this noble example of practical patriotism, in remembrance of the dead and as a Bymbol of enduring greatness to future generations!