We return to the Redwoods Treewalk after dinner. Driving towards the forest, only our headlights shine our path. It’s nearly pitch dark, that is, till we reach our destination.
During dinner, I had sent some pictures of our daytime tree walk to our friends. One observed: “How very Jurassic Park.”
Tall mamaku or black tree ferns stand guard over the forest floor, thick with punga and kiokio ferns; the dense weight of the evergreen forest; the foreboding sense of it all: it’s not hard to see why our friend expected a velociraptor to leap out from the brush.
Now it’s all fairy lights.
After dark, the redwoods forest is more Avatar than Jurassic Park. More spectacle than wonder.
Dust motes of lights swim this way and that across a sea of ferns. As we retrace our path across the suspension bridges, we are greeted by nests of glowing lanterns, like cages, like skeletons, like the feathers of extinct birds.
The tranquility is punctured by music. Our theme song for the evening is “Come On, Eileen” played live by an invisible band at a concert not far away, deeper in the forest.
Incongruous? Not so. It’s one of my favourite songs. It’s silly and frothy. It lifts us up from the heaviness of the redwoods.
The song nails us to this moment, forcing us to be present, to see the trees the lights the night the spectacular journey of our lives the resplendent joy in our hearts.