The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk,
and then dead timber.  The tree is a slow, enduring force straining
to win the sky.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’ve had four months now to mull over the experience of driving through a redwood forest in the early morning, in complete solitude and silence. And even now, there really are no words to describe it.

Now, I seem to have plenty of words to describe the phenomenon of drive-through trees, which, in my humble opinion, are a perfectly concise illustration of exactly everything that is wrong with America.

Thankfully, though, a redwood forest by its very nature makes it easy to ignore such things. Because my brain certainly wasn’t going to get a handle on what my eyes were seeing—nor was my camera.

And neither, it turns out, was my paintbrush. I needed a sketchbook that was six inches wide by about twenty feet tall.

And then I realized that I needed a sense of scale, a point of reference. Enter the only other car I saw that morning, and my wide-angle lens.

Eh. That’s still not it. The only thing to do is to go there in person, crane your neck, and gaze upward in wonder.