Woods are dark but not very deep and not so lovely- My time at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California

 

Prologue

‘Whose woods are these I think I know 
…………………………………
The Woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And Miles to go before I sleep
And Miles to go before I sleep’

The last four are the end lines of the San Francisco born Robert Lee Frost, the much celebrated English poet’s 16 line sonnet titled ’Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’, published in 1923. This poem by Frost is probably the most read and most loved. Written in quatrain rhymed iambic tetrameter (a poem written with four iambs per line), it begins with the willful entry of the narrator and his exit at the end of the poem. When he stops his sleigh in the midst of snowy woods he is in awe of the splendid vista the wooded place has to offer even on a dark evening. He wants to stay there longer and adore what he sees. He soon realizes he has unkept promises to fulfill and ‘miles to go before I sleep,’ echoing the departure to or rather a new pursuit of practical duties. The poem fits into many shapes and perspectives, some pleasant, some murky, yet it doesn’t alter the fact that this poem resonates with everybody. Frost himself said of his most famous and probably the most perfect lyric once that ‘it is the kind he’d like to print on one page followed with forty pages of footnotes.’ (image)

Trip to Big Basin Redwoods State Park- Much waited 

Travel to one of the ‘already not-visited’ giant sequoia forests of the Californian coastline was in my agenda ever since I landed in the USA. As I had already walked along the lines and groves of the mighty redwood stand in the Henry Cowell State Park with my nephew during my 2015 visit, I craved going to the famous Sequoia National Park in California’s  Sierra-Nevada Mountains, some five hours drive away from Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz. My repeated search in the US NP website only thinned my hope, as the Park was yet to open to the visitors because of snowy conditions. The Foothills area of Sequoia National Park was projected to open only on April 14, and the access to giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) trees of Giant Forest in late May. My nephew suggested that we could visit the nearby Big Basin Redwoods Park in the Bear Creek area, barely 45 minutes drive from his residence if that is open to visitors. I was keenly searching the web for about seven days in a row to see the notification that the park will be open on the 31st March 2023. 

The above lyric of Robert L. Frost reverberated in my mind, when our SUV was entering the south-eastern edge of the Big Basin Red Wood State Park during the last week of March 2023. But rather on a somber note with the first line of his last para, completely repositioned for my blog title as above. And for valid reasons! As we approached the park from the Big Basin Highway that is crisscrossing it, we were greeted with rows and columns of mighty coastal redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) standing as the sentinels of a foregone era. Most of them fully smoked and charred from the trunk bottom to the canopy. A feeling of gloom enveloped me suddenly(image). 

I didn’t have the advantage of visualizing how this Park would have looked like before the big fire of 16th August 2020 (image). But the images of the park in web collections and the first hand input from my nephew who visited this forest on earlier occasions painted a wholly different version of the woods that perfectly matched Frost’s description-verbatim- than what I saw in my tour. 

Big Basin Redwoods Park- Peep into its History

Located about 22 miles (36 km) from Santa Cruz just to the northwest of the town of Boulder Creek, the Big Basin Park, California’s oldest state park is spreading over 18,000 acres (73 sq.km). It contains the entire Waddell’s creek watershed that was formed by the seismic uplift of its rim, and the erosion of its center by the many streams in its bowl-shaped depression. It forms part of the Northern California coastal forests eco region and is home to the largest continuous stand of ancient coast redwoods south of San Francisco. Rising from sea level, elevation of the park’s landscape goes to over 2000 feet. 

There are sporadic archaeological evidences to attribute to the inhabitation of these old growth forests by prehistoric people, the Californian Indians, for whom numerous resources such as basketry material, plant foods like acorns (fruit of oak) and bulbs as well as wild animal for hunters and perhaps traditional sacred places would have been available. Records speak about the Portola expedition’s encounter of the redwoods of southern Santa Cruz County in October 1769, which party camped at the mouth of Waddell Creek, the present-day Big Basin. Despite many in the group had fallen ill with scurvy, they gorged themselves on berries and quickly recovered. This was seen to be a miraculous recovery at that time, inspiring to assign the name 'Cañada de la Salud' or Canyon of Health to the valley.

Few notable Santa Cruzans, joined by some Santa Clara county activists began a movement at Stanford University in the late 19th century to preserve the Big Basin redwood forest that led to the formation of Sempervirens Club. Their effort resulted in a ground-breaking legislation that was signed into law in 1901 March followed by the official land transfer in the next year. Thus was born the first Redwood State Park of California in 1902 that initially comprised of 3,800 acres (15 sq.km), most of it old growth forest. The extent has been increased over the years to the present 18,000 acres (73 sq.km). The park’s historical past earned its designation as a California Historical Landmark. 

Visitation to Big Basin grew steadily in the following decades, as park amenities were developed. Development of the main administration building and many other buildings, an amphitheater, camp grounds and miles of trails that were used till 2020 owed them to the tireless work by the men of the company of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that was assigned to Big Basin during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The nearby Rancho Del Oso Nature and History Center interprets the cultural and natural history of the area.

The Redwood Parks – Then A veritable Nature’s treasure and a hiker’s paradise

With such a fascinating natural and cultural history to boast, the park, it was told to me, has many babbling brooks and waterfalls, a wide variety of environments from lush canyon bottoms to sparse chaparral-covered slopes. Many spots in the park also offer spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean. As I was visiting the park about three years after the massive June 2020 fire in the Big Basin and my foot march within the park has been constrained by the continuing closure of many of the park’s trails, much of the description on the flora and fauna is from the park information center and the web sources. 

Vegetation consists of the old-growth coastal redwood in about 10,800 acre, accounting for about 60 per cent of the park area and second-growth redwood forest, with mixed conifer, oaks, chaparral, and riparian habitats. Although redwoods dominate the landscape, many other plant species coexist. The coast Douglas-fir, tan oak and Pacific madrone, Pacific wax myrtle trees are common sight in the park. Competing for sunshine are also many shrubs such as red huckleberries, western azalea, and many varieties of ferns. Spring and summer bring the bloom of wildflowers: redwood sorrel, salal, redwood violets, trillium, star lily and mountain iris. Hundreds of variety of fungi in a startling array of shapes, sizes and colors throw up on the floors and the tree trunks after the rains of fall and during winter. The forest grows thinner as one climbs to higher elevations with redwoods, replaced by more drought-tolerant species. The higher, drier ridges and slopes of Big Basin are typically full of chaparral vegetation with species such as knobcone pines, chinquapin and buckeye, creating the canopy and dense ceanothus, manzanita, chamise and chaparral pea growing low. Adding a splash of color are wildflowers such as Indian paintbrush, monkey flower, bush poppies and yerba santa.

Sighting wild animals in the park has always been a visitor’s dream. Commonest among the mammals are black-tailed deer, western grey squirrels, chipmunks and raccoons, while foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and opossums too are present. Cougars are rarely seen and the Grizzly bears had long become extinct in California, the last human death due to grizzly attack reported in the Big Basin in 1875. Avian diversity is spectacular throughout the park with widespread sighting of Steller's jays and acorn woodpeckers and the dark-eyed junco . The brown creeper, Anna's hummingbird, northern flicker, olive-sided flycatcher and sharp-shinned hawk are less obvious. The marbled murrelet, the robin-sized sea birds are found nesting high in the oldest coast Douglas firs and redwoods to feed their young and the first one sighted close to the park head quarters. 

Many reptiles are also present. Even as the Pacific rattlesnake, the park’s only dangerous reptile is found almost exclusively in the high, dry chaparral, the ubiquitous Coast Range subspecies of the western fence lizard is hard to see due to their shy behavior. The damp, shady woodland floor is home to a variety of amphibians. Commonly seen species includes the California newt, Pacific tree frog, and arboreal salamander. Less commonly seen is the threatened California red-legged frog. The banana slugs are particularly intriguing that can reach six inches long. The butterfly, California sisters flutter high in the tree canopies.

The park has been laid with over 81 miles (130 km) of trails. Some of these trails link Big Basin to Castle Rock State Park, and the eastern reaches of the Santa Cruz range. The Skyline-to-the-Sea trail winds its way through the park along Waddell Creek to Waddell Beach and the adjacent Theodore J. Hoover Natural Preserve, a freshwater marsh. Big Basin Redwoods State Park, prior to the 2020 fire had many options for camping, including 36 cabins, 146 developed campsites, and five trail camps. Each campground at Big Basin Redwoods State Park is open on a different schedule during the year, with some open year round while the rest are seasonal (image).

My time at the Park

Fire is a natural part of the redwood forest ecosystem and the forests throughout Big Basin had burnt many times over the past millennia. However, an exasperating chapter in Big Basin's history was written between 16th and 22th August 2020, when the CZU Lightning Complex Fire swept through 97 per cent of the park's property. The fire impacted substantially the core of the park, almost completely destroying the park’s historic structures including the headquarters building and extensively damaging the campgrounds. The abbreviation CZU refers to the Cal Fire designation for its San Mateo–Santa Cruz Unit, the administrative division for San Mateo, Santa Cruz and San Francisco counties. It led to the evacuation of over 60,000 people in the vicinity and death of one person  by the 18th August and fire was reportedly controlled and fully extinguished with no risk of reignition by 22nd August.

The fires started on the morning of August 16, 2020 as a result of a thunderstorm that produced close to 11,000 bolts of lightning and started hundreds of fires throughout California, and the significant ones called the Warnella Fire, near Davenport and the Waddell Fire, near Waddell Creek that would become the northern edge of the CZU Complex fire. The Cal Fire burnt the park ‘dirty’ as the fire managers’ call, which burnt extremely hot in places damaging upto the crowns, destroyed the ground vegetation alone in some areas and barely touched other places. The sweeping August fires and the subsequent minor ones in September 2020 have devastated more than 86,000 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains in all that radically changed the landscape (image). A backcountry tour of the park that commenced in April 2021, once the roads were declared to be safe from downed power lines, hazard trees, and collapsed culverts and bridges recorded the burnt wreckage of 1,490 structures including 911 houses and 15,000 charred trees, mainly Douglas fir and tan oak, which had fallen or in danger of falling onto the hiking trails. Park authorities described the level of destruction as ‘catastrophic’. 

We landed at the Park by 10 AM and had our time till early afternoon, as we intended to visit the nearby Castle Rock State Park later in the day. Chance of trekking through some of the finest and scenic trail routes in Big Basin has still been curtailed by the management so as to extend the much needed recuperation for the troubled redwoods. After the fires, the park remained closed to the public due to visitors’ safety concerns until July 2022 when parts of it were reopened. For a repeat visitor who came to the park after two years of the fire, it was heartrending to see the beleaguered forest canopy. We gathered from the interpretation officer in the visitor center that only a couple of trails such as the redwood loop trail and a stretch of North Escape road are open for day use visitation. Park interpreter said that it is expected that most of the redwoods that haven’t fallen during the fire will survive as regrowth was evident, months following the fire. 

The park’s biggest attractions - literally - are its ancient coastal redwood trees. Few of these giants are 50 feet around and taller than the 289 feet high New York’s Statue of Liberty. Some at over 2,000 years old may predate the Roman Empire. Officially, the oldest living coast redwood is at least 2,200 years old, but foresters believe some coast redwoods may be much older. As we tread through the loop trail from the visitor center, we were looking in despair the dismembered canopies and broken limbs of lofty redwood trees and their charred trunks. The redwood trees gave us a ray of hope as we noticed amidst the scorched landscape that most of the old-growth redwood trees survived and are steadily recovering from the fire shock. Abundant clumps of shoots ‘fuzzed out’ around the tree base from basal burl tissues that act as seed bank (image). Spring budding appeared to have infused new life to the trees with epicormic sprouting all through the intact trunks. We observed profuse sprouting of foliage from the burnt branches in the mid to upper part of the otherwise mutilated canopy (image). The bark of old growth trees is usually upto 12” thick that give fire resistance to redwood. As long as the cambium layer survives and the roots still stabilized, the tree will likely recover very well even after a major fire. Fallen trees too become ‘nurse trees’ that foster new growth.

Our walk on the loop took us through the amphitheater with wooden park benches carved out of redwood logs afresh, close to which a fallen redwood tree with the exposed root system of humongous size was lying on ground with its massive trunk (image). It too didn’t escape the wrath of the fire. Further down, the trail was going along the Opal creek with the gently flowing water from the recent rains. On the other side of the creek opposite the loop trail and the north escape road, we could see numerous burnt Douglas fir and tan oak trees-standing or uprooted. These co-occurring species don’t survive forest fires, it was ascertained.

The visitors to the park are blessed with some of the Santa Cruz Mountains’ most stunning and impressive redwood giants along the Redwood Loop Trail, which showcases two of the iconic trees- Mother and Father of the forest trees. We marveled at these breathtaking specimens of the world’s tallest trees in this short, easy hike. The Mother of the Forest, the Big Basin’s tallest tree recorded a historic height of 329 feet, with its current height at 293 feet when the top broke off a storm (image). The Father of the Forest is the park’s widest tree, measuring close to 17 feet in diameter. Although scarred from fire, they survived! 

Reimagining Big Basin

As a forest veteran, I could see that other than the colossal loss of an assortment of trees and ground vegetation, aftermath of the 2020 fires could throw many associated ecological challenges - for years. The area is much deprived of its wild fauna cohorts, could face serious landslide threats with the onset of rains, possible influx of invasive species, stream system dysfunctions due to deposition of increased debris and sediment on the stream beds. Reportedly for the recovering Big Basin ecosystem, wildlife has been arriving back to most areas though the return is slow, as food and shelter have diminished. Possibility of invasion of the area with alien shrubs such as French Broom and Yellow Star Thistle is looming large.

In the immediate post-fire months, park management appealed to the people to heed to safety orders and stay away from the closed park so that the crews could do the immediate recovery works, unencumbered. As a first step towards landscape-scale restoration, park authorities got the fallen and hazard trees removed and had begun rebuilding plan in right earnest. Considering the mammoth efforts called for before opening up the park to public, authorities have been replacing gates, locks, signs, wildlife cameras, and culverts. They are evaluating the need for reforestation or reseeding of native plants, but it is more likely that they will focus their efforts on clearing out debris from the park floors and stream beds and invasive species, while allowing the forest to regrow on its own. 

As recovery from the huge damage to the park’s ecology and infrastructure will require immediate resources, including equipment and personnel, California State Parks declared a collaborative, shared vision – Reimagining Big Basin- in July 2022 to guide the reestablishment of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The mission statement for the project reads ‘ To guide for the health, inspiration and education of the people of California by helping to preserve the state’s extraordinary biological diversity, protecting its most valued natural and cultural resources and creating opportunities for high-quality outdoor recreation’. Through ingenious outreach efforts such as online survey, memory mapping, social media hash tag wall, virtual events, visioning workshop etc., the guiding principles were developed and refined with the help of the Big Basin Visioning Advisory Committee comprising of representatives from about ten diverse stakeholder groups. The action items include: create recreational opportunities, manage forests and natural resources for resiliency, establish park operational capacity, and connect with communities and partners. 

The planning project timeline includes general expected time frames for the facilities management plan, interim park access, trails and fire roads, and forest management activities that commenced in 2022 and are likely to continue beyond 2026. Other than the State funds, several organizations connected with the reimagining process are raising funds to supplement Government efforts. 

Epilogue

Most of the redwoods that the visitors come across today are about 50 to150 years old, equivalent to the age of about 2 – 6x in human years. Coast redwoods can grow 100 feet in their first 50 years, so they quickly look like grown-ups. When you walk or ride through the Santa Cruz Mountains, remember you are in a nursery of young redwoods that, if protected, can live for 2,000 years and can help rebuild a healthy redwood forest for people, wildlife, and future generations. 

Given the long time and sustained actions, required for restoring the normal ecological processes of the big basin forests in the backdrop of the devastating fires, I was convinced that the project milestones are going to be longer than sooner to reach the finish post. As we leave the Big Basin redwoods park, I gained a conviction that here is a well intentioned vision plan and time line that would bring back the Big Basin redwoods to its original glory. Then I will be lot more satisfied that the Robert Frost's words ‘Woods are lovely, deep and dark’ will come to fruition in the Big Basin Redwoods Park. Providence permitting, I might have another occasion to visit this wonderful Nature’s handiwork in the coastal corner of North America some years later.

Image courtesy: Ramesh Theivendran, Sekar and wikipedia