Sameness~Otherness/Gleichheit~Andersartigkeit/Yksitoikkoisuus~Erilaisuus - Redwood (Sequoia)

Edi Wipf
Jan 22, 2020
8 min read

Dedicated, in part, to PD & JP

Have you ever felt/gotten/found yourself so lost?

What did you discover there?

Emergence

I look down at my feet laid bare and slowly step towards waves in rough collision with the shoreline

First at my ankles, then my calves, to up past my knees, I start to feel a push and tug of the tide.

Though I can no longer see them, I am aware of how my toes traverse clouds of ever-shifting sand - in want and need of expansive, freeing movement, as well as a ground to root into and lift from; departing and arriving, dynamically again and anew, in every stride.

Fog lies heavy along the surface of the wild waters all about me - the morning light obscured by countless, tiny droplets wandering the breeze - and my breath is shaky as my body pulls in the cool air, eyes leaden and aching

What is internal then takes the motion of my external pace as I find a standstill

Within the quiet roar,

I softly touch fingertips to the sea,

as if to feel for a reach back

With a seeming tenderness of ancient familiarity, fog cloaks the woods that have gathered along the coast. The deep green peeks out here and there as the trees ascend towards the stars, a potential to be the tallest in the whole world.

For those who roam below canopies crafted from the interlocking, raised branches, what arises in eyes opened to awe?

These realms of the redwoods, I wonder if they too have wondered what the space of their own absence would be.

The coast redwood, known also as Sequoia sempervirens, is the lone living species in the genus Sequoia, and belongs to the cypress family (Cupressaceae).

As a sole tree is able to flourish through centuries into millenniums of human time, exploring lofty altitudes where it set its roots down - what light may it offer on the nature of being, becoming, and belonging, making a place and taking up space with grace?

Home Range:

The current native range of coast redwoods is an approximate 750 kilometers (470 miles) long and 8 to 75.6 kilometers (5 - 47 miles) wide stretch of land that travels along the Pacific Ocean, roughly traversing the territories of the Salinan, Esselen, Ohlone, Amah Mutsun, Rumsen, Awaswas, Ramaytush, Chochenyo, Tamyen, Coast Miwok, Pomo, Kashaya, Wappo, Yuki, Cahto, Chetco, Tolowa Dee-ni’, Yurok, Chilula, Whilkut, Wiyot, Mattole, Sinkyone, Nongatl, Wailaki, and Lassik peoples; also demarcated by Monterey County, California up to southwestern Oregon. Elevation varies here between 0 to 920 meters (3,000 ft) above sea level, and in this maritime Mediterranean climate, winters are cool and wet, with heavy rains reaching up to 2,500 millimeters (100 inches) annually, and summers generally dry. Coast redwoods thrive where the cool air and incoming moisture off the ocean is greater and regular. As they are sensitive to the ocean’s salt spray, a grassland intermediary often co-occurs at the forest edge facing the Pacific.

Hallmarks:

🜂 First arising approximately 65 million years ago, with fossil record evidence of ranges also in Europe and Asia up until 5 million years ago

🜂 From winged seeds as small as 3 millimeters (⅛ inch) long, grows up to ~ 116 meters (379 feet) tall and 9 meters (30 feet) wide, where heights of over 200 feet (60 m) are common; many are over 300 ft (90 m)

🜂 Root systems are (perhaps surprisingly!) very shallow, gracing depths up to 1.5 to 1.8 meters (5 to 6 feet), and spread up to 30 meters (100 feet) laterally; structural support is found by intertwining roots with those of other trees.

🜂 While the majority of seedlings perish in their first three years of life, those who do survive gain height quickly, scaling up to 20 meters (66 feet) by their 20th revolution around the sun.

🜂 Needing partial to full sun, with a preference for at least 4 hours of direct sunlight)

🜂 Thrives on well-drained soil that can be mildly alkaline or acidic

🜂 Characteristic of conifers (‘those that bear cones’), they are equipped with lance-shaped, evergreen leaves; these are alternately arranged in a spiral

🜂 Leaf shapes are patterned between two extremes: long (15 to 25 millimeters (⅝ to an inch)) and flat - common when shaded by the canopy above - and narrow (5 to 19 millimeters (¼ to ⅜ of an inch)) needles - arising when basking in full sun.

🜂 Trunks are covered with soft, fibrous bark that can be up to 30 centimeters (12 inches) thick, has minimal amounts of resin, protects against fires, and allows for additional water uptake

🜂 Creates a beautiful pink or reddish heartwood

🜂 Bark, wood, leaves, and roots contain astringent tannins and diverse terpenoid molecules

🜂 Once of 10 to 15 years of age, seed production can occur, though reproduces both vegetatively - via new buds that sprout up from root crowns - and sexually with pollen and seed cones

🜂 Wind transfers pollen to seed cones from late November to early March, and seeds develop over the course of 8 to 9 months, each cone harbouring about 90 to150 seeds

🜂 Seeds are dispersed by the wind (with those wings~) from ~ October to February

🜂 In rare instances, some trees cannot create chlorophyll in their cells and have been named albino redwoods; they survive by linking their root systems to other trees, and, in exchange, they may store away toxic metals at high concentrations within their own tissues

🜂 Also uncommon for most conifers, the genome of the coast redwood contains 6 paired sets of chromosomes; this phenomenon, also known as hexaploidy, can be compared to humans (diploid organisms) that have 2 sets of chromosomes - one set of 23 chromosomes received from each parent. (For those curious too, the coast redwood has 11 chromosomes in each set, for 66 chromosomes in total)

Interrelationships:

Coast redwoods are part of large, vibrant forest communities. They occur with several other tree species, including coast Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), and tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), as well as an assortment of fungi, mosses, ferns, and flowering plants such as salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), redwood sorrel (Oxalis oregana), and evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum). Old growth redwood forests also provide important habitat and hiding and thermal cover for mammals large (like elk and black-tailed deer) and small, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, including the federally threatened spotted owl and the state-endangered marbled murrelet.

Though not able to run and hide like we can, coast redwoods are partially protected against insect and fungal attack (branch canker (Coryneum spp.) and heart rots (Poria sequoiae, P. albipellucida) being of high concern) with the chemical arsenal of tannins and terpenoids they can produce. Creatures such as banana slugs, nematodes, and woodrats also predate trees.

Fog drip provides up to ~ 30% of the trees total water usage in a year, and when lacking optimal amounts of water, the growth of these wonders can go from ~ .6 to .9 meters (2 to 3 feet) annually to 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) per year.

Humans are well-known to fell trees, and redwoods are a highly valued timber species, due to their durability, light weight, fire resistance, and beauty. Redwood has been used in the construction of canoes, musical instruments, home structures, dining tools, furniture, decking, and more. Bark, leaves, and sap have also been in the making of medicines.

Legacies:

The genus Sequoia was named by the Austrian botanist Stephan Endlicher and is thought to acknowledge Sequoyah, a person of the Cherokee nation who created a syllabary of 86 characters in 1821 that made reading and writing in Cherokee possible; it was rapidly and widely adopted within a few years, and today an approximate 2,500 people worldwide are fluent.

The Latin species name pieces together semper, “always,” and virēns, “flourishing, green.” These staggering beauties that can withstand the ages, fires, and flooding have inspired countless people, some of whose writings you can explore here; alternatively, or in addition to, please comment below or write to share your own impressions.

With how they stand out, two redwoods in Berkeley Hills on Ohlone territory - named the Blossom Rock Navigation Trees - were once used by ships entering and leaving San Francisco Bay as a reference to avoid hitting Blossom Rock.

In 1937, they were chosen and celebrated as the official state tree of California.

The oldest coast redwood that we know of is ~2,200 years old, and the current tallest - of both the species and all living organisms - is the Hyperion, measuring 115.61 meters (279.3 feet). Some of the very largest and tallest redwoods live in Redwood National Park, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Montgomery Woods State Natural Reserve, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

Challenges:

Coast redwoods are an endangered species, categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List as being ‘very likely to become extinct in the near future.’ At the turn of the 20th century, the felling of redwoods was at an alarmingly high rate; while action was taken to protect forests with the formation of national and state parks, habitat is significantly smaller, more fragmented, and stressed due to factors that include temperature increases, less coastal fog, increased frequency and intensity of fires, increased competition with other plants, reductions in snowpack, and the poaching of burls (the new buds of trees).

Continued research, management efforts, and policy are needed to help care for populations and understand how changing climate and environment puts these populations at risk.

Musings:

In beholding, and being held in, the vastness that redwoods open and thread through life, I get a little lost in the many doorways and crossroads they speak of, render, and feel as if they have, are, and will accompany me through, amidst these journeys we find ourselves on.

I think of how my life is all the different, in profusely beautiful ways, from us meeting,

with such intricate weavings of circumstances and efforts that allow for such a moment to even be given the chance to arise; and then, the miracle - it wholly feels like - of it arising, coming to be -

like starlight that has met our eye in the immenseness.

I think of how sameness can serve as an access point - maybe, sometimes, the call itself - for us to find a meeting place. And, in the same turn/on the other side of this coin, I think of how it’s otherness that presents us with something so invaluable to witness and grow with and from, to love with and from, to celebrate with and from.

We are given both, each and every one of us, this sameness and otherness, to explore and share in.

And, because of our individual meeting, more than why, I wonder now how* does it matter.

Maybe describe otherness as:

-The space for wonder - and, when embraced, freedom - to alight and blossom in and from

-A calling and welcoming in of curiosity to fuel exploration and adventure

-That which provides for the gifts arising from discovery

-The opportunity in which an aspect of beauty’s myriad, mysterious dimensions can find embodiment for greater resolution

-A power stemming from that which what we have been uniquely given, how that which we have been given uniquely shapes us, and how we can uniquely shape the world with and from all of that, in what we build and create with and in our lives

-A realization that things do not have to be as they have been, in all the ways they no longer, or never truly did, serve us

-Art, a process and action

To return/newly arrive at sameness again:

It is sameness that allows for one to also travel from who we are now, to who we could and want to be; from that which we have now to that which we want and need.

You show* me, time and time again, how - if we do so choose to meet - that which we dynamically share together - both our sameness and otherness - can provide a place of comfort, safety, trust to build, as well as an open sky and true wilderness to venture out into, to pursue potentialities and breakthroughs; opening from senses of limitation to enter into so much possibility, life authentic/revived/given and shared.

Where all will we go?

The question I find is all I need to greet this next step

now

discovering my footing, listening; songs once lost or unknown emerging, sparking constellations from within to without

*Thank you for this gift.

Do redwoods - and/or other inhabitants or features of this world - inspire you into explorations of the unknown, of your possibilities?

How so?

(Are you one to also hold onto the familiar so tightly?)

How does otherness and sameness - and the tension inherent between them - shape your thoughts and actions?

What are the ways you enjoy most to share in and celebrate your otherness? Your sameness?

🜂🜁🜃🜄

References & Other Resources to Learn More: