Snow & Sequoias
15 IMAGES PHOTO SET
I came for the trees and stayed for the silence. Sequoia National Park in snow does not feel like a park at all. It feels like walking into a room that was already old when the rest of the world was still learning how to stand. The ground is white and soft, the trunks are the color of rust and fire, and every sound dies a few steps away from you. I stopped under one of them and just looked up until my neck hurt. The bark is thick, fibrous, almost soft-looking from a distance, and the base opens into a hollow black enough to hide a person. I stepped inside. The opening framed me like a doorway, and for a second I understood the scale: I was a small blue mark at the foot of something that has been burning, healing, and growing for longer than any story I know. Outside again, the light was hard and clean. My jacket is a cropped sky-blue leather piece with a white shearling collar and cuffs, belted at the waist over a plain white top, light wide-leg jeans, black gloves, and boots that finally earned their keep. Against the snow and the red bark it looked almost loud, which I liked. I sat down in a drift and let my arms sink into the cold. The shadow beside me was sharper than I expected. Later I walked to a snow-loaded wooden bridge, the planks white on top and dark underneath, and took a closer frame with the trees still behind me. Nothing about the day asked me to perform. The giants do not care what you are wearing. They only ask that you stand still long enough to notice how small, and how lucky, you are.
Comments