May 25th 2018

Last time I left off, I had been exploring a little of the Brookings area.

What I have come to figure out on this journey is I am happiest off the beaten track, immersing myself in nature with the least amount of other humans around.

I drop in deeply and revel in the full sound of silence in nature. That is, the abundant sounds of nature, absent of mindless human chatter and stomping around.

It is strange, but sometimes it feels like some of the magic, wild places have, diminishes when it is heavily visited by people. I find it really difficult to drop into the space necessary to connect with the trees when a lot of other people are around.

And yet, an immense amount of beauty still remains in heavily visited areas so there is a reason why some places see millions of visitors a year.

Despite Stout Grove being one of the most heavily touristed parts of Jedidiah Smith Redwoods, I paid it a visit.

Walking onto the trail, the space had a certain kind of emptiness in the field I hadn’t felt in the rest of the forest. I didn’t feel like I had walked through a bubble as I did on the other two trails. There was life and presence with the trees but the spaces between had a void, like the energy of the area had thinned out.

After spending a couple hours there, I think the appeal comes from the ease of access, with it being just a short drive down the Howland Hill dirt road to the parking lot.

It is a very short, mostly flat walking loop with a good amount of large trees to see. A lazy man’s Redwood viewing stop to tick off the list.

The super compacted loop trail made it almost feel paved at times. A lot of the necessary ground cover like ferns and moss were gone from all the countless footsteps of people excited to take a picture with a tree or to touch the bark.

The magic and wonder I felt in the rest of this forest was definitely diminished here but I still found some gems.

If you keep walking out past the loop and follow the trail leading along the river, there is a sweet creek that meets the river from the forest.

I named it Heart Rock Creek.

This rock was so big I could sit on it crossed legged.

It feels like nature is smiling and pulsing love when I find natural hearts randomly placed about.

Kind of like a tap on the shoulder, and a little whisper in the ear,

“Psst, hey, you are loved” with a little warm internal hug.

Do you find heart rocks and moss or lichen growing in heart shapes all over too?

A glimpse of Heart Rock Creek, Stout Grove, Jedidiah Smith Redwoods.

All in all, my Stout Grove visit felt fairly superficial as I wasn’t able to tune into the deep still place I go to connect but I was happy to have found the giant heart rock.

I got the intuitive message I was supposed to, at some point, visit The Tree of Depth at night. With large predatory animals around, like mountain lions, it isn’t the safest idea, so I was trying to figure out my plan of action.

After wrapping up a connection with one of the redwoods along the river, on the Stout Grove loop, I decided, a late evening sit with The Tree of Depth was the best I could do safely, and a good compromise.

So I hopped back in the van and left the completely full parking lot. At the end of the road, I turned right to go deeper into the forest while everyone else was turning left to leave the park….

It was about 5pm when I parked in the little pull off opposite the Mill Creek Trail and the light was drastically different. The sun was dipping below sight and the feel of forest was altered.

I double checked I had my headlamp and some extra water in my pack as well as my blanket to sit on.

As I walked at a little faster pace then usual, the bird song I had come to recognize and expect was eerily silent.

Occasionally in the distance, I heard a sudden and hasty flapping of wings as a bird startled from a high up branch.

Eerily Quiet Mill Creek Trail

At about 5:45, I made it to the Tree of Depth and sat down. I was hyper alert to every sound, branch snapping or rustle of leaves, wondering if I had made the right decision.

I was the only person on the trail and with no cars parked in the vicinity of the trail nor the likelihood of anyone coming, I was a little nervous.

Eventually I was able to settle in and feel the marked difference in the energy field. Somehow the space felt fuller and the volume of the forest sounds were turned up. It also felt like a different aspect of the forest was awake.

I connected in with The Tree of Depth and shared a brief exchange of energy. I didn’t hear words or have a clear understanding of what was shared at the time but I felt it was right I came.

Later, I realized that it was important to feel the energy of the forest at different times of day. The evening going into dark is a rich and potent energetic time. It feels like a veil is lifted that is there during the day.

I still had a bit of a spooked edge, feeling somehow I was being watched and decided it was time to go.

It had gotten to the time of the evening when there is enough light to see but everything is in dark shadow. The kind of vision where the scene is fuzzy, with movement in the air.

I hurriedly race-walked my way up the trail without my headlamp on, past The Mother Tree, out of the valley, and back over the ridge to get back to the van.

It was fairly dark by the time I got back to the van and started bumping down the road out of the park, but I could still see into the forest a ways. As I came around the bend, the very last light of the sun was showing at this lower part of the forest.

I took a big exhale as I was driving, relieved that I made it back to the van with no issues.

(This next section I have gone back and forth questioning if I should share this part of the journey. It was a really far out there experience. I worried sharing it might somewhat discredit the project or create a divide with readers that are less apt to be open to something like this… but ultimately, it was an important experience that happened and I don’t feel it is helpful to censor.)

When I mentioned the veils being thinner at twilight, I had been feeling the difference but hadn’t quite SEEN the difference until my heart flipped over inside my chest as I gasped.

As I was driving along, a strange movement caught my attention, out of the corner of my eye.

I looked over and “OHHHHHHHH!”

There was an elf-like man with a pointy red hat looking at me while running along through the trees in the same direction as I was going.

I kid you not, he couldn’t have looked more like the images you see in fairytales.

He had really long skinny pointy arms bent at the elbows with long fingers hanging down from his hands and long skinny legs with knobby knees.

He was running, or more accurately, loping with big, long, bouncy strides, through the trees, parallel to the road. He was probably two car lengths away in the forest.

I looked straight ahead and thought. “What the hell is going on? I must be loosing my mind.”

Looked back over briefly, then straight ahead at the road- He’s was still there running, then turned his head to look at me.

“Uhhh, what do I do? What do I do?”

Then looked again and he was gone.

A few minutes down the road, there is a covered wooden bridge. I got out of the park boundry, through the tiny neighborhood and pulled over before the bridge to try to make sense of what I just saw.

It was the first time I had seen with my eyes, a being clearly not of this world.

Not quite sure what to make of the encounter, I reached out to my intuitive friend, Rani, to see what she thought. She texted back and said, she felt like he was a protector of the forest and had just been checking out who I was.

Once the surprise had passed, I felt so honored I had been able to see him. A part of me had opened deeper after sitting with the Tree of Depth that evening. The opening allowed a glimpse into a world that co-exists with this one but usually remains hidden to our eyes.

The twilight hour is such a special time of day and offers the opportunity to see and feel nature magic much more than usual.

As I headed up to my campsite, it turns out he wasn’t going to be my only encounter of the evening though.

I slowly headed up the South Fork Rd still mulling over that last experience, and I came around a bend and hit my brakes.

A beautiful young buck with big antlers was there. He began trotting down the road and I slowly inched the van along giving him some distance. He stopped to look back at me, then went further up the road until he decided it was time to leap off back into the forest.

It felt like he was welcoming me to the area and showing the way.

Every night after, he was on the road further up, almost as if waiting for me to return to camp at night, no matter what time I drove up. Most nights he would be by the side of the road at the first bridge crossing over the river. He would see me, pause for a moment and then leap off on his adventure for the night.

He was such a comfort to me, for the month I spent in the area.

Next time, I will be exploring more of Umpqua Forest during Memorial Day Weekend and continue to figure it all out along the way….