Starry Eyes

“Majestic Grove,” Lennon says, stopping to look up at the enormous trunks. “Giant sequoias. World’s largest trees. Many of these beauties are a thousand years old. The redwoods on the coast can get taller, but these here in the Sierras are bigger.”

I’ve seen coastal redwoods around the observatory at home, but I’ve never seen an entire forest of giant trees. Some of them here are as big around as a car and they nearly block out the sky. And the canyon ferns we’ve been walking through have nothing on these. They create a pale green carpet on the forest floor, and their fronds are so large, it’s as if they’re in competition with the sequoias to see who can grow bigger.

“It looks prehistoric,” I murmur.

“Endor Forest scenes with the ewoks in Return of the Jedi were filmed in the Bay Area in a forest like this. So cool, right?”

“It’s stunning,” I say as we enter the ancient forest, craning my neck up at the gargantuan trunks. The ground is spongy, and it smells strange here, like an outdoor library—musty. A good kind of musty. And it’s quiet. Which is odd, because the canyon was filled with the sounds of singing birds and the echo of the river off the rocky canyon walls. The water is still flowing here, but it’s a softer babble, absorbed by the great trees.

I walk up to a sequoia and run my hand over soft, corrugated bark, marveling, and then stretch out my arms and try to hug it. “How many people would it take to reach all the way around?”

“Too many.” Lennon stands near me and stretches his arms around the tree, too. We don’t even make it a quarter of the way around together.

“I love this place,” I say, and mean it.

“It’s my favorite part of the park,” he says, eyes sparkling. “My cathedral.”

I understand why.

He points to our left. “There’s a bigger trail that runs along the northern edge of the sequoias, several miles from here. No one comes down this way. It’s secluded. From man and beast. The trees block out the sunlight, so there’s less food for animals. Fewer insects for birds, so it’s quieter.”

“No mosquitoes.”

“Fewer mosquitoes,” he corrects.

“I’ll take it. Any improvement is a good thing,” I say, looking around. “This is surreal. I wish we could stay here.”

“We can,” he says. “This is where we’re camping.”

“Tonight?”

“Right now. We’re stopping early.”

“Really?”

“Truly. Reason one being that I love it here. I know it might sound weird, because it’s so dark in here, but it’s sort of my happy place. And when I first found it, one of the things I thought was that I wished you could be here to share it with me.”

I look into his face and my heart melts.

“Now you can,” he says, softer.

Thunder booms in the distance.

Lennon points upward. “And that right there is the second reason. That storm is going to be fierce, and we need to find a place to make camp. Let’s get a little farther away from the canyon and find a good spot. Hurry.”

There’s not a trail here, so we have to pick our way around the trees and ferns as we follow the river and make our way deeper into the sequoias. The thunder’s getting louder, which scares me, but every time I find a clear spot big enough to accommodate our tents, Lennon glances up and shakes his head.

“Why?” I finally say in frustration after the third rejection. “It’s close to the river, but not too close. It’s flat, it’s—”

“There,” he says, pointing to another spot. It looks the same as this one, basically. Maybe a little more room. I’m tired of looking, so I follow him and am relieved to stop and dump my pack on the ground.

He’s looking up into the canopy. “Yes, this should be okay. We’ll build the tents close to these two trees. They’re half the height of the others around us.” He’s already unzipping his backpack, fishing out his tent as lightning flashes above the trees. He stills, listening.

Thunder booms in the distance.

“Fifteen seconds,” he says. “Five seconds per mile. That storm is three miles away.”

“Is that bad?”

“These trees will offer protection, but they’re also tall, and tall attracts lightning. That’s why I wanted to build under shorter ones”—he gestures between the two trees flanking our tents—“so that the taller surrounding trees would absorb any strikes. This isn’t like a storm at home. People get hit by lightning out here and die.”

“Everyone dies out here,” I complain. “It’s practically a tragedy.”

His lips tilt upward. “I know, right?”

“But—”

“Build tent, talk later,” he says, unsheathing his tent pieces.

I rush to get mine out, and by the time I do, he’s already got his tent erected. I start to lay out my floor next to his, as we’ve been doing, but he shakes his head. “Let’s build them door to door, facing each other.”

I don’t ask why, but just trust that he has a plan while he checks something on my tent and measures out space, showing me where to start. Wind is whipping through the forest pretty fast, and the sky is so dark, it’s almost as if night’s fallen beneath the tree canopy. I get the tent in place and fit all my poles together, but we have the extra step of securing rainflies on top. It seems to take forever, and I’m trying to rush to stake my tent down before it blows away. Lennon finishes his and helps me erect the small vestibule awning that extends over my front door. He’s measured accurately, so apart from a tiny crack, it covers the space between the two tents, a tiny covered passageway.

He hauls our packs into his tent, minus our sleeping gear. “I’ll get everything set up inside the big tent,” he tells me. “You fill up our water bottles. Mine’s almost empty, and we’ll need it for cooking. Don’t leave my line of sight, and hurry.”

Thunder rumbles. I grab the water bottles and Lennon’s water filter, which is faster than mine. There’s a tiny path to the river that snakes between a pair of giant ferns. The water is running swiftly here, and though I could probably cross the river in a dozen steps, it looks deep. I bend by the water, careful that I have decent footing, and begin pumping water through the filter.

As the first Nalgene bottle fills, thunder rumbles. I mentally count the seconds and watch the trees. One, two, three, four, five—

Lightning flashes.

Five seconds. That strike was a mile away?

“Hurry!” Lennon’s voice calls out from the campsite, making me jump.

“I can’t make the water filter any faster,” I mumble to myself. Finally, the first bottle fills. I cap it and get the filter into the second one, then start pumping.

I feel something on my head. Is that a raindrop? I slant my face upward. Definitely a raindrop. Two. Four. Twenty. It seems silly to be so concerned with collecting water when it’s about to fall all over us.

Thunder booms so loud, it’s deafening. But almost immediately, the sky lights up. And just like that, the rain comes down. Hard. I hear Lennon calling my name, but I’m trying to concentrate. “Shit, shit, shit!” I say, pumping faster.

But not fast enough.

The entire forest lights up with the loudest bang I’ve ever heard.