Redwoods Quotes

“People here had redwood trees in their backyards. You were never far from the infinite.”
― Amy Stewart, The Last Bookstore in America

“But there is one tree that for the footer of the mountain trails is voiceless; it speaks, no doubt, but it speaks only to the austere mountain heads, to the mindful wind and the watching stars. It speaks as men speak to one another and are not heard by the little ants crawling over their boots. This is the Big Tree, the Sequoia.”
― Mary Austin, California, the Land of the Sun

“If you want to save the snow leopard, or the giant Redwoods, or the Okavango delta, or the Amazon, or the atmosphere, or the Earth, or those you love, or yourself, or the human race, this is the only path that can achieve that–so the truth is the sooner you support and adopt this path of transformation through understanding the better. The choice is self-destruction or self-discovery.”
― Jeremy Griffith

“The K-T impact had no evident long-lasting effect on the redwoods. It's possible that, after the impact, the redwoods sprouted up from the remains of their root systems, rising up in fairy rings in a ruined world ...”
― Richard Preston

“Mysteriously, almost unaccountably, my family had ended up in the trees, sort of like the Swiss Family Robinson.”
― Richard Preston

“The coast redwood is a so-called relict species. It is a tiny remnant of a life form that once spread in splendor and power across the face of nature. The redwood has settled down in California to live near the sea, the way many retired people do.”
― Richard Preston

“The burly woodsman who attaks the diminutive pine of the east must experience remorse, as would a strong man who made war upon a boy, but [the Redwood] is something to compel his respect; he must feel that in grappling with these monsters he is doing the work of a Hercules.”
― Jared Farmer, Trees in Paradise: A California History

“the redwoods are like no other trees...find a secluded grove and tilt your head back 90 degrees, and look up into the green canopies far above you, your spirits are bound to rise for you are surrounded by such giants of beauty, beautiful spirits themselves reaching for the sky”
― Bodhi Smith, Bodhi Smith Impressionist Photography

“The oldest coastal redwood to have its rings counted was 2,200 years old. A bit of its stump, which was growing when Hannibal took his elephants over the Alps, is preserved in Richardson Grove. But trees just as old - already ancient when philosophers in Greece and Rome dubbed them hulae and materia, or the matter of life - still fill Himboldt’s forests. Indeed, Redwood trees left I disturbed are virtually immortal: when fire touches a redwood trunk, its bark uses the chemical compound tannin to shield the tree from the flames. Some redwood bark, fluted in long, deep crevices that splinter and meander off, has been measured at two feet thick. Redwoods owe their longevity to their ability to sprout new trees from the trunks and roots of older specimens- making them not so different, really, from human children and parents.”
― Lyndsie Bourgon, Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods

“Scientists have stumbled on the remains of ancient woods in this way, locating root systems that continue to support the forest long after the body of the tree has disappeared. In this sense the tree’s influence extends beyond the scope of its body; it remains an ancestor. The trees that once towered here on Yurok land continue to inform the actions and reactions of trees in front of us today.”
― Lyndsie Bourgon, Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods