Casa Jonsson

Although I spent summers there as a kid, we’re enjoying doing the tourist thing during vacation this week in Santa Cruz, California. We took a trip into the redwoods and stood in the middle of a circle of redwood trees, each of them over a thousand years old.

There’s a grove of redwoods near town in the Santa Cruz mountains. A steam train carried us up and stopped on top. A circle—50 feet across—of 16 redwoods is a stone’s throw from the train track. It made me think of an assembly of sages. A tree at the center is no longer standing; it died a few years ago and only a stump remains. When park rangers counted its rings it proved to be about 1,400 years old.

They also discovered that the roots of the center tree are connected to the roots of the 16 trees that surround it. The entire immense structure is actually one tree.

These trees are by no means the oldest in that stand of redwoods. A cross-section of another fairly large tree is on display at the entrance to the park. The tree’s rings are labeled such that you can identify individual rings with milestones of western history. It is as though history itself is laid out in front of you like a photograph of a rippling pond, with early events at the center triggering later events near the edge. There are labels for events as recent as the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Doubting Thomases can put their fingers on the ring formed in the year of Christ’s birth.

Especially on this day when we celebrate our young nation’s history, it’s humbling to look up into the distant branches of these ancient trees and think of the human civilizations that have risen and fallen in their lifetimes. That the creator of redwood trees and human beings should bid me, through his Son, call him ‘Father’ and be concerned with every detail of my puny life is overwhelming. It is easy to identify with the prayer of David in 1Ch 17:16–27.

“For he knows our frame;/he remembers that we are dust.” (Ps 103:14)