Redwood Loop

Do you have a place that you go to in your mind when you just kinda need to check out of life for a minute? I know I am not the only one who does this. My place is Mount Hermon. The more stressed I am, the more I find myself there in my mind. Sometimes I am on the hammock or maybe sitting on the front porch. When I was younger, I would almost always find myself in the canoe or up in the crows nest. Most often these days I find myself not really at the cabin at all but over at Henry Cowell Redwoods running around and around my favorite loop that we called "Big Trees" when I was a little kid. Now it isn't "Big Trees", they are my trees. I know every little bump and turn in that eight tenths of a mile loop. I know the smell, the sounds... I crave it when I am not anywhere near it.

Tuesday morning I found myself there. I slept in so it was hot along highway 9 into the park, but once under the redwoods it didn't matter what time it was. I told myself, "OK, you need to get back to this or that... so only one redwood loop and then back to the cabin." Yeah right. Once I started along my loop the pace quickened with no effort. It was too late in the morning for deer to startle and too early for tourists to dodge. A tree had fallen on one part of my loop which caught me off guard but other than that everything was the same. As if on cue at 9:00 something-ish, the bells and horn on the train at Roaring Camp woke up and let the world know that it was going to start its first trek up the hill full of little kiddos and their parents. Gosh, I love that sound. My one loop turned into probably three or maybe more before I trekked back out to highway 9 and around the "long way" to the cabin. Kevin was waiting and scolded me for being gone longer than I said I would be... will he ever learn?

I ran around my loop a couple more times while we were up there this last week, but there is nothing like the first long awaited run in the redwoods. Nothing like it on the entire planet. This is the place I go. This is where I have too many memories to write and plenty to keep me running around and around that loop or up and down that gnarly hill called Pipeline without thinking about time or speed or anything else. I told Kevin I was sorry I was late, but I really wasn't.