This weekend, I spent both Saturday and Sunday walking through Muir Woods, a primordial National Forest of Coastal Redwoods, Douglas Firs, maples, oaks, nutmeg, ferns and Banana Slugs that neatly divides the Mt. Tamalpias and Golden Gate recreation areas of Marin County. It is home to some of the tallest trees in the world, and was miraculously spared the whirlwind of 19th and 20th century logging that reduced most of the surrounding hillsides to grass-covered ridges and knolls.
The forest is quite small, depressingly so, and is easily traversed in a couple hours or less. But what it lacks in area it more than makes up for in sheer, unadulterated majesty. Following a valley cut by the Bootjack watershed, the forest is a cathedral of natural spires, pristine streams, moss-covered flying buttresses of fallen trees and a dense undergrowth of large clover and fawn-hiding ferns. (more…)