Fallen Monarchs

As its name implies, Sequoia National Park is known for the giant Sequoia trees that grow within its borders. Visiting the area is spectacular even if it can be a little confusing to know exactly where you are. The spectacular trees of the General Grant Grove, for example, are actually located in the adjacent Kings Canyon National Park that is itself surrounded by the northern section of Sequoia National Forest, a portion of which is designated as the Giant Sequoia National Monument.

None of that matters when you stand at the base of a 267-foot tall tree whose trunk has a circumference of over a hundred feet. When my family visited over the Thanksgiving break, we realized the scale of trees like the "General Grant" was difficult to comprehend. It was actually a nearby fallen tree - the so-called "Fallen Monarch" - that incongruously provided the most meaningful experience of these giant living things.

The greatest natural threat to giant sequoias are, ironically, their giant physical size. Their height attracts lightning strikes while their mass - combined with a relatively shallow root system - leave them susceptible to toppling in high winds. The latter appears to have happened to the Fallen Monarch several hundred years ago after its interior had been hollowed-out by fire. The same resistance to rot and insects that protect sequoias when they are alive and standing vertical protect them when they are dead and lying horizontal. And so this particular fallen tree was able to provide temporary shelter to early settlers to the area in the 1860s. It later served as a hotel and saloon and, later still, as a stable for the U.S. Army Cavalry when it was sent to protect the area after it was designated as a National Park in 1890.

Those visiting today experience the Fallen Monarch as a cutoff on the the General Grant Tree Trail loop. We entered from the west, invited inside by funnel of exploding roots. It was like walking through an abstracted Georgia O'Keeffe flower painting rendered in three dimensions. Parts of the tree remained familiar even if their scale was foreign. This was not a space of rational Euclidean geometry: of flat planes and right angles and straight lines. Rather it was a dreamland of rich and textured geometries where floors curved into walls which themselves arced to become ceilings. Unexpected openings allowed in light (and snow) giving the interior a mysterious, church-like feel. It was somewhat walking through a cave, but this was no subterranean cavern. One side of the fallen tree opened to the south revealing a framed view of the surrounding grove of living trees. It was as if the space had been thoughtfully designed for the enjoyment of man rather than merely being shaped by the uncaring forces of nature. 

The Fallen Monarch may have initially been occupied because it provided convenient shelter, but I'd like to think it transported those who occupied it to someplace beyond their immediate circumstance. I'd like to think it provided a balm to the harshness of their current lives and imagine a world that could be. I'd like to think it inspired them to preserve the beauty that existed before them even as they toiled to build a new world for themselves and those who would come after them.

It might seem counter-intuitive to be inspired by a dead thing, but that is what walking through the Fallen Monarch did for us. As we descend further into an era where the ecological and political climate has sometimes changed beyond recognition, its important to be on the lookout for other other Fallen Monarchs that an similarly serve as an artifact of what was as well as a glimmer of what could be.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

-John Muir