Finding the First Giant Redwoods
In 1987, Steve Sillett traveled down the Oregon coast with his brother Scott and their friend Marwood Harris to see the ancient redwoods of Northern California. Steve was only nineteen, but he already carried an intense fascination with forests, birds, and the hidden systems of nature. When the group entered Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, the forest felt less like scenery and more like another world, dim, damp, and immense.
Coast redwoods grow in a narrow band along the Pacific coast, where fog and rain help sustain them. They are the tallest living things on Earth, and the oldest can survive for more than two thousand years. Their bark resists rot and fire, and even when damaged they can keep growing, sprouting new trunks and branches that turn a single tree into a layered structure of living wood.
That first encounter quickly became reckless. Deep in the forest, Steve and Marwood decided to climb a huge redwood without ropes, using a smaller neighboring tree to reach the larger trunk. Steve was terrified of heights, and at seventy feet he was already high enough that any fall would almost certainly kill him. Scott, watching from below, was horrified and furious, convinced he was about to lose his brother.
Steve made the leap anyway. He caught the giant tree, pulled himself onto it, and kept climbing. Marwood followed and was immediately stung by yellow jackets, but the two of them pressed on through pain, fear, and exhaustion until they reached a level of the tree no one around them had ever seen.
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