Quotes & Sayings About Redwoods

The crown of a supertall redwood has a towering, cloudy, irregular form, and the crowns of the tallest redwoods can sometimes look like the plume of exhaust from a rocket taking off. — Richard Preston

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

What can the redwoods tell us about ourselves? Well, I think they can tell us something about human time. The flickering, transitory quality of human time and the brevity of human life - the necessity to love. — Richard Preston

All forests have their own personality. I don't just mean the obvious differences, like how an English woodland is different from a Central American rain forest, or comparing tracts of West Coast redwoods to the saguaro forests of the American Southwest ... they each have their own gossip, their own sound, their own rustling whispers and smells. A voice speaks up when you enter their acres that can't be mistaken for one you'd hear anyplace else, a voice true to those particular tress, individual rather than of their species. — Charles De Lint

The redwoods are like organ pipes, playing silent chords. — Anne Lamott

Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majesty all unmarred. — Theodore Roosevelt

Nobody knows the ages of any of the living giant coast redwoods, because nobody has ever drilled into one of them in order to count its annual growth rings. Drilling into an old redwood would not reveal its age, anyway, because the oldest redwoods seem to be hollow; they don't have growth rings left in their centers to be counted. Botanists suspect that the oldest living redwoods may be somewhere between two thousand and three thousand years old-they seem to be roughly the age of the Parthenon. — Richard Preston

Reverend Easter waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter to God what we call ourselves, or even what we call Him. We're the only ones who care about that. But as an Episcopalian and not an evangelical," she said, with a knowing look at Hannah, "I'll answer your question with another question, or rather, with a bunch of them, which is how we tend to do things. How else do you explain the miracle of your beating heart, the compassion of strangers, the existence of Mozart and Rilke and Michelangelo? How do you account for redwoods and hummingbirds, for orchids and nebulas? How can such beauty possibly exist without God? And how can we see it and know it's beautiful and be moved by it, without God?" Hannah — Hillary Jordan

Let me put it this way. According to my girth, I should be a ninety-foot redwood. — Erma Bombeck

But there is one tree that for the footer of the mountain trails is voiceless; it speaks, no doubt, but it speaks only to the austere mountain heads, to the mindful wind and the watching stars. It speaks as men speak to one another and are not heard by the little ants crawling over their boots. This is the Big Tree, the Sequoia. — Mary Austin

I made her the queen of my double wide trailer with the polyester curtains and redwood deck. — Sammy Kershaw

Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. — John Muir

The prisoner's dilemma may seem to represent a rather specific and unusual scenario, but in fact it shows up all over the place in human and animal life. It turns out, for example, to underlie arms races in international relations, inaction on climate change, obstacles to trade, and even natural phenomena such as why trees grow so tall - giant redwoods could save terrific resources by only growing to, say, 50 feet (they usually grow to over 200), but in the competition for light, whoever grows that bit taller at the expense of the others will do better. In — Dominic Johnson

Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers. — George R R Martin

It's a sign of respect and connection to learn the name of someone else, a sign of disrespect to ignore it. And yet, the average American can name over a hundred corporate logos and ten plants. Is it a surprise that we have accepted a political system that grants personhood to corporations, and no status at all for wild rice and redwoods? Learning the names of plants and animals is a powerful act of support for them. When we learn their names and their gifts, it opens the door to reciprocity. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

The coast redwood is a so-called relict species. It is a tiny remnant of a life form that once spread in splendor and power across the face of nature. The redwood has settled down in California to live near the sea, the way many retired people do. — Richard Preston

Fog spilled from the heights of San Francisco like the liquid it almost was. On better days it spread across the bay and took over Oakland street by street, a thing you saw coming, a change you watched happening to you, a season on the move. Where it encountered redwoods, the most local of rains fell. Where it found open space, its weightless pale passage seemed both endless and like the end of all things. It was a temporary sadness, the more beautiful for being sad, the more precious for being temporary. It was the slow song in minor that the rock-and-roll sun then chased away. — Jonathan Franzen

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing ... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world. — Toni Morrison

The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads ... It includes ... the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children. — Robert Kennedy

[W]hat have we done with our forests? Chopped them, and burned them, and wasted them; and now almost the last of the great stands of timber are here on the Pacific slope. We are in the center of the best of them. Probably nowhere on earth does there exist a forest to compare in continuous grandeur and unqualified beauty with the Redwoods that are found along the Eel River and to the north. — Madison Grant

The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown in this season.
A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley.
It's warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns.
A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees.
Dark redwoods, transparent pale-leved birches.
In their delicate network, a sliver of the moon.
I describe this for I have learned to doubt philosophy
And the visible world is all that remains. — Czeslaw Milosz

Redwoods flourish in fog, but they don't like salt air. They tend to appear in valleys that are just out of sight of the sea. In their relationship with the sea, redwoods are like cats that long to be stroked but are shy to the touch. — Richard Preston

Redwoods have an enormous surface area that extends upward into space because they have a propensity to do something called reiteration. A redwood is a fractal. And as they put out limbs, the limbs burst into small trees, copies of the redwood. — Richard Preston

They were always nice to Jess when he went over, but then they would suddenly begin talking about French politics or string quartets (which he at first thought was a square box made out of string), or how to save the timber wolves or redwoods or singing whales, and he was scared to open his mouth and show once and for all how dumb he was. — Katherine Paterson

Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. "Oograah" means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it. — Terry Pratchett

Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas. — Aldo Leopold

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. 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

Redwood time moves at a more stately pace than human time. To us, when we look at a redwood tree, it seems to be motionless and still, and yet redwoods are constantly in motion, moving upward into space, articulating themselves and filling redwood space over redwood time, over thousands of years. — Richard Preston

Though the redwoods in Muir Woods are hauntingly beautiful trees, they are relatively small and not very tall, at least for redwoods. — Richard Preston

People here had redwood trees in their backyards. You were never far from the infinite. — Amy Stewart

A grove of giant redwood or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. — Theodore Roosevelt

And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people! — John Grisham

If you want to save the snow leopard, or the giant Redwoods, or the Okavango delta, or the Amazon, or the atmosphere, or the Earth, or those you love, or yourself, or the human race, this is the only path that can achieve that-so the truth is the sooner you support and adopt this path of transformation through understanding the better. The choice is self-destruction or self-discovery. — Jeremy Griffith

There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred. — Theodore Roosevelt

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

He is likely to remain the one historian of the Sierra; he imported into his view the imagination of the poet and the reverence of the worshipper ... William Kent, during Muir's life, paid him a rare tribute in giving to the nation a park of redwoods with the understanding that it should be named Muir Woods. But the nation owes him more. His work was not sectional but for the whole people, for he was the real father of the forest reservations of America. — Robert Underwood Johnson

They spent a summer talking beneath the redwoods. There was a curiosity to the way they knew. She would take his hips in her hands and turn him to the left, so the sun would not be in his eyes. He would take her hips in his hands and turn her to the right, so the sun would not be in her eyes.. It is a dance. A very careful way they care. — Mikl Paul

Losing myself interests me. The fertile topsoil interests me, sprawling beneath a light dusting of snow, and the snow that crams the trunks and branches of the pines and elms and redwoods, having frozen up their roots, subdues me to consider life and death. What lurks beneath the ground? Surely dead seeds and frozen worms reside deep below that earth, and surely all those presentiments of life lying dormant, dead or dying, scattered and mute, like memories. — S.K. Kalsi

The redwoods you can see in Muir Woods are nothing like the redwood titans that stand in the rainforest valleys of the North Coast, closer to Oregon. These are the dreadnoughts of trees, the blue whales of the plant kingdom. — Richard Preston

I saw them; there is nothing beautiful about them, just that they are a little higher than the others. Referring to one of the oldest and loveliest groves of redwoods, showing insensitivity to their magnificence. — Ronald Reagan

If redwoods are the backbone of California, oaks are of England. — Tracy Chevalier

Power is living while others inevitably perish. Power is cool indifference to their suffering. Power is taking nourishment from the deaths of others, just as the mighty redwoods draw sustenance from the perpetual decomposition of what once lived, but lived only briefly, around them. This is also part of the philosophy of Edgler Foreman Vess. — Dean Koontz

Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance. — Janine Benyus

A football player is often bigger than a basketball player - more massive, that is. The basketball player is taller and more slender. So it is with redwoods. The tallest redwoods are often slender, and so they aren't the largest ones. — Richard Preston

The K-T impact had no evident long-lasting effect on the redwoods. It's possible that, after the impact, the redwoods sprouted up from the remains of their root systems, rising up in fairy rings in a ruined world ... — Richard Preston

What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas? — Steven Pinker

The burly woodsman who attaks the diminutive pine of the east must experience remorse, as would a strong man who made war upon a boy, but [the Redwood] is something to compel his respect; he must feel that in grappling with these monsters he is doing the work of a Hercules. — Jared Farmer

I think, too, that we've got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees-you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?
Opposing expansion of Redwood National Park. — Ronald Reagan

A giant capable of circumcising redwoods with his teeth ... — Warren Ellis

Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful. — Chad Smith

But from the start I had withheld from him any information about the giant redwoods. It seemed to me that a Long Island poodle who had made his devoirs to Sequoia sempervirens or Sequoia gigantea might be set apart from other dogs
might even be like that Galahad who saw the Grail. The concept is staggering. — John Steinbeck

John Redwood is a young man but, let's face it, so was Margaret Thatcher in 1975. — Edward Leigh

Mysteriously, almost unaccountably, my family had ended up in the trees, sort of like the Swiss Family Robinson. — Richard Preston

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands. — Linda Hogan