Heart of the forest…

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

Today we’ll take a break from a typical devotional and look at a photo story.  The photo pictured above was such an unexpected opportunity.  It’s quirky and odd so it won’t be one that I sell, but it’s one that is just both unusual and special to me.

The coastal redwoods are one of my favorite places anywhere. My parents took me there as a child. Years later, while working there as park rangers, my husband and I met and married in the redwoods.  Later, though we had moved away, our family would go there to enjoy family camp trips and vacations. In the last decade, I’ve visited most every year or two.

 On this autumn trip, a friend and I went to spend a few days in the redwoods.  She had never been to the area before and loved everything about the area, from the forest to the coast to the seafood in town. One evening, I noticed that she was writing in a notebook and I asked her what she was writing about.  She told me that it was her notes from the trip, including lots of information about plant and animal life that I had shared with her; she didn’t want to forget anything!  She was SO enthusiastic that it made me feel privileged and rather humbled to be the one who introduced her to the redwoods.

On one of our hikes there, I caught this photo as the late afternoon sun lit up the heart of an old redwood which was partly hallowed out by a long past fire. It felt like looking at the heart of the redwood forest, simply glowing with the warmth of end of the day sunshine and countless memories, both mine and thousands of years of other’s memories too.