Yesterday, as I walked among giant redwood trees, I was surprised to learn that despite their ability to grow to hundreds of feet tall, redwoods have a shallow root system — no more than 12 feet deep.
Instead of digging way down into the earth to anchor themselves and stand alone, redwood roots extend out to 150 feet from their bases and interlock with the roots of neighboring trees. The web of intertwined roots provides strength and stability to the entire forest.
Fog provides moisture that drips off redwood branches and collects on the forest floor. Needles, moss, lichens, and other forest life collect the water and transport it to the root system which supports the entire majestic forest.
Mother Nature really knows how to do life.
Everywhere we look, nature provides metaphors — sometimes straight up roadmaps like this — to show humans how to live together and function in healthy, supportive, loving ways.
What lessons has Mother Nature taught you?
idk where you were specifically, but North of Eureka the redwood parks straddle a fault in uplifted marine rocks and Prairie Creek is basically sitting on a massive gravel/moraine deposit which followed that fault to the sea. Not too far from us, there's an exposed layer of fossilized tropical plants less than a mile from and exposed layer that was a bomb spewing caldera. Nature in the West has taught me that we are obsessed with NOW in the midst of graspable evidence for an astounding saga of life on the blue marble. In the evening, the mountains frame the absolute truth that this is a brief period of blazing light in a universe inexorably destined to blink out.