[Music]
150 years ago there were very few things in the world
that could compare to the size of the Giant Sequoia.
Now we have skyscrapers, we have statues,
like the Statue of Liberty, you know,
so our sense of what is truly immense
has changed over time.
But I think that even though we have this exaggerated sense
of what constitutes the large or the magnificent or the vast,
when you're in the presence of a Giant Sequoia,
I think that we adjust ourselves to its scale,
and once we make that adjustment,
you can easily be overwhelmed by it.
I mean, it's not just that there is one,
there's a forest of them,
you know, so it's pretty impressive.
It's rare for a Sequoia to be 300 feet tall,
they're usually not quite as tall as a football field
is long, but they can easily be 20-30 feet
in diameter at ground level.
As you get closer to these trees,
it's amazing how large and impressive they truly are.
These trees are thousands of years old,
whether they're closer to 1, or 2,
or 3,000 years of age,
it's hard to wrap your mind around the time
that these individual trees have been on the face of the earth.
We've got a lot of precipitation.
We've got deep glacial soils here.
We've got the western aspect,
which gives them a lot of warmth,
but squeezes the clouds as they come off the Pacific Ocean,
and it's just the prefect condition
for growing the biggest trees in the world.
There is people visiting this area from all over the world,
and they come to the Mariposa Grove
and they think all the trees are big.
But when you come to a sequoia forest
or a lot of areas throughout Yosemite National Park,
you can be dwarfed by Sugar Pine trees,
you can be dwarfed by Ponderosa Pine,
and really large other species,
other than just Giant Sequoia trees.
So this is certainly a big tree by anyone's measure,
not as big as the biggest Sugar Pines in the world,
but in any setting, a magnificent specimen,
but just dwarfed when you look over your shoulder
at the Giant Sequoias here.
So that magnificent Sugar Pine we were looking at,
viewing it from here in the shadow of this Giant Sequoia,
it looks puny by comparison.
In the 1860s, when early European Americans
were exploring these groves,
they had a hard time trying to explain to people back at camp
or back at the cabins how big these trees were.
The Grizzly Giant is in the neighborhood
of 27.5 feet in diameter,
it's about 96 feet in circumference, and these trees
are so large that tunnels were cut through them.
So you'll find a lot of old photographs
of early stagecoaches, horse-drawn stages,
whole troops of cavalry lined up on fallen trees,
just to try to showcase their mammoth size.
Now, it's kind of ironic that probably
the most photographed tree throughout all the time
that Yosemite has been a tourist attraction
has been the now fallen Wawona Tunnel Tree.
Wawona Tunnel Tree, the most photographed tree on the globe.
It was cut to accommodate the height of a stagecoach.
The tree that you can drive through,
there were a lot of photographs of that tree,
it became part of popular culture,
and some people probably even disbelieved,
is there really a tree that you can drive through,
is there a tree so big that you can put a road through it?
No, I don't believe that, you're going to have to show me that.
I think that had a lot to do with the fact
that the car itself became a ruler,
it became a means of measuring,
and something bigger than your car is pretty good size.
For many people, the highlight to their trip
to Yosemite National Park
would be driving through a living tree,
and this is what's become of that tree,
the hole was originally cut back in 1881,
and it stood fine in all its glory
until the winter of 1968-1969
when a severe snowstorm brought it down.
One of the things about Giant Sequoia
and their mortality is that usually
it's caused by a wind in the wintertime
and heavy burden of snow.
They can also be caused by human beings just felling them
for their own individual collective reasons.
Back in the 1860s, when groves were being explored
and discovered throughout a lot of California,
people had very different views of these big trees.
Some people looked up at these mammoth trees and were in awe.
Other people looked up at these big trees
and saw board feet and dollar signs.
That's part of the conflict and the dynamic
that has always existed in regard
to these trees in our culture, you know,
what are they good for,
are they good for the heart
or are they good for the pocketbook?
It amazes me that in the midst of our country's Civil War,
back in 1864,
when nobody honestly knew what the future of America
was destined to be, Congress discussed
whether or not the Yosemite Valley
and this grove of Giant Sequoia trees,
the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias,
should be protected for all time.
That idea of preserving a grove of big trees,
so they wouldn't be cut down by lumberjacks,
so they wouldn't be harmed by humans,
was the first idea of its kind
that later led to the larger expansion
of national parks in the western part of the United States.
The idea of national parks is wrapped up
in the roots of these big trees.
You can't talk about national parks
without talking about trees.
You can't talk about being a ranger without talking...
I mean, that's a Giant Sequoia, that's right here,
it's even then who we are as an agency.
When people protected these tress,
yes, they were protecting this unique ancient species,
but they were literally protecting this tree.
The fact that it's been standing here for hundreds of years,
now when people come and visit
this grove in another hundred years,
hopefully this same tree will be what they're standing by
and it will be even larger than what we see today.
Many people describe when they find themselves
in the Sequoia forest
that it's like entering a cathedral
people begin to automatically talk in hush tones,
and there's just something about
being in the presence of Giant Sequoias
that seems to be contagious for many people.
Maybe it's good to have something out there
that dwarfs us, that's alive,
that makes us realize that our concerns
and our problems are really petty, are very small,
and they're not really as big a problem as we think.
I think that's the value of national parks to some degree,
and the living extension of that are the Giant Sequoia,
that we can be in their shade
and feel that our problems are small.