By Louie Ferrera
Last Monday was an absolutely stellar fall day so I decided to take a hike at Annadel State Park in Santa Rosa. Annadel is one of the crown jewels of Sonoma County parks. It has diverse ecosystems, many hiking and biking trails, a large lake, creeks and abundant bird life. I’d been out there for a couple of hours when the trail I was on began to snake through a heavily forested section. The trees were predominantly madrone and bay laurel, except for one lone oak. Not all oaks around here are deciduous but this one, a black oak, is. It’s long pointed leaves were in various stages of fall colors, but it wasn’t the leaves that stopped me in my tracks.
About four feet off the ground, the main trunk of this tree branched out into a perfect “V”. I noticed that the underside of the left fork and the left side of the main trunk were covered in a thick carpet of emerald green moss. The moss was stunningly backlit by the few shafts of late afternoon sun that managed to find their way through the dense canopy. The angle and position of the sun at that moment created the perfect conditions for what essentially was an Impressionist painting come to life. It was almost as if Edward Hopper or Van Gogh himself preceded me down the trail. The early Impressionists were just that, masters of painting light. So it was with Ansel Adams. He once famously said that he didn’t really photograph things, he photographed light. The star of Ansel’s masterpiece Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico isn’t so much the ripe full moon that looms over this tiny town, but rather the light that the moon gives off. But back to the tree.
The Impressionist glow given off by this backlit, moss covered tree had me mesmerized. The effect of this phenomenon was absolutely hypnotic. Time seemed to be standing still. I had near tunnel vision and found myself in a meditative state of bliss while taking in this scene. The colors of the leaves, the glowing moss, the absolute stillness of the forest that surrounded me all combined to create a truly profound and very Zen moment. My hearing isn’t what it used to be but I could actually hear the sound that a single oak leaf made as it landed in the dry leaves that carpet the understory. It was that quiet and I was that tuned in. A rarely seen red breasted sapsucker and a pair of ruby crowned kinglets flitted about the trees. They were my only companions. I’m not sure how long I stood there but after a while the sun dipped just a bit lower and the glow quickly faded. I took that as my cue to continue on down the trail.
If a tree glows in the forest and no one is there to see it, does it still glow?
Namaste.