Big Trees, Part 2

The memory of our Sunday visit to Big Trees is like a balm upon all the stresses that rush in during the week.  The first lines of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline" came to me even as I walked those quiet paths:

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

Did anyone else have to memorize these stanzas as a child?  I had little understanding of these lines (or the rest of the poem, for that matter) at the time, but was incredibly grateful (and surprised) when they rolled out into my consciousness as I walked under these great trees and drank in the scents of the forest.  So...here is the forest primeval...

Western Dogwood



Raven on Ponderosa Pine











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This forest primeval is less than an hour from our house.  I can hardly wait to go back.