Big Trees

In 2008, on my way from the Napa Valley to San Francisco, I stopped off for a few hours to visit Redwood National Park. My mom and dad had visited the Park a year or maybe two or three before I was in the area in '08 and my mom insisted I had to go. The trees were huge, she said. Or something like that. So I went.

I went. I saw. I walked a while. I wasn't impressed. I mean sure they appeared to be tall. But big? Ehhh...I don't know. Big is different than tall.

While I didn't know it at the time, in fact, the tallest three trees in the world are all California redwoods and they are all growing in Redwood National Park. At over 375 feet tall, they tower over the next tallest species of tree in the world (the Himalayan cypress) by a good 40 or 45 feet or so. But I swear they weren't big. It's difficult to tell how tall a tree is from the ground. I mean what's another 50 or 100 feet here and there. When you are standing next to something that high, you can't really tell the difference. Or so I'm supposing. I expected to see something that was really, really huge. I didn't get that at Redwood.

I thought about my experience at Redwood National Park for a while. Maybe years, even. And eventually I figured out the reason why I wasn't impressed with the big trees in that park was that I was expecting to find giant sequoias, not redwoods. I'd never seen a sequoia at this point in my life but that's for sure what I was thinking of. Like tunnels-through-a-single-tree big. But sequoias don't grow on the coast of California. There is no easy stop from Napa to San Fran to go see a giant sequoia. That type of experience takes a lot more work. Like headed to the Sierra Nevada Mountains type of work. Long drive. Middle of nowhere type stuff.

Turns out 2023 would be the year I'd go try and see what I thought would be a really, really huge tree.

General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park. I get it, without something for scale it's not big, right? Read on!

The first stop on our roundabout drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco this past June was Sequoia National Park. We didn't plan it that way. We planned to spend our first full day in California in Kings Canyon National Park immediately to the north of Sequoia. But some road closures from a massive amount of rain and snow over the winter forced us to adjust a bit and Sequoia ended up being the focus of our first day out west. To see everything we had on our list we actually had to spend part of a second day at Sequoia, but that's not really relevant to our quest to see some giant trees.

To get to Sequoia last month, we had to drive down through Kings Canyon (so technically we did enter Kings Canyon first...), which from our base in Visalia was about a two hour drive just to get to the Park entrance. As we drove, we wondered: would we really be shocked by the size of these trees? Would we even notice that they were bigger than the average redwood, which seemed to be all around us as we drove? Was this worth the shock and awe factor we expected? Or would this just be another tree disappointment just like I had in 2008?

We had some driving time to wonder all this because sequoias don't grow just anywhere. They have a very, very specific environment they thrive in and they only grow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains under the right conditions. It actually makes them relatively rare as trees go. They can't just plant their roots in any sort of soil under any sort of circumstances. And driving for 90 minutes or so on our Sequoia / Kings Canyon day didn't take us through any of those places. We'd be waiting and waiting and watching while we inched closer to the right place.

When we finally saw our first sequoia on that drive, it was not like seeing another redwood. These were some seriously massive really obviously noticeable trees we were driving past. I can hug most redwoods and have my hands touch on the back side of the trunk. There's no way that I could do that with what I saw the first time I laid eyes on a sequoia. I mean, these are some seriously massive trees. It is obvious that they are much, much thicker and more massive than most trees I have ever been near to. Maybe I've seen some baobabs with larger trunks but the height of these gargantuan-trunked trees was just astonishing. I hate to put any tree ahead of my beloved baobabs but these sequoias might just do that. Just WOW!!!

The best part was, what we saw on that drive didn't really turn out to be that big. Not compared to what we saw later.

A relatively thin sequoia. Near Tunnel Log, Sequoia National Park.

Now, to be perfectly transparent here, the California redwood and the giant sequoia are both, in fact, sequoias. The California redwood's scientific name is sequoia sempervirens and the giant sequioia's scientific name is sequoiadendron giganteum. But for the purposes of this discussion and for the rest of this post, when I write sequoia, I mean sequoiadendron giganteum. Redwood = tall and thin. Sequoia = a little less tall but really, really massive. Like super massive. Have I used massive enough in this post yet?

So about that environment. The sweet spot for a sequoia is between 5,000 and 7,500 feet above sea level. Any lower and it's too dry for the trees to live. Any higher and it's too cold for the trees to live. There are a number of spots primarily in Sequoia National Park, but also in Kings Canyon National Park, which are ideal for the growth of sequoias. The Park calls this zone the Sequoia Belt and some of these trees have been here before the arrival of white men in the forests where these behemoths grow. I know what you are probably thinking...that means that some of these trees are more than 500 years old. Yep, that's right. In fact, that's pretty young. Some of these trees are estimated to be more than 3,000 years old. Seriously. If I have my choice of what to come back to this planet as when I get reincarnated, I might just choose a sequoia.

Although hold onto that thought just a bit. There's a huge asterisk on that statement for me. We'll get there.

Felled sequoia and fire damaged bark. Sequoia National Park.

Our day in Sequoia National Park started at Crescent Meadow deep inside the Park. When we visited, it was as far into the Park as we could get. We figured why not start at the most remote spot earliest in the morning and work our way backwards, particularly with the easiest route to that spot from Visalia washed out with the winter flooding. Sure, a 5:30 a.m. departure time isn't what I want to be doing every morning, but it was our second day out west and we were still on east coast time. Let's hit the road at dawn.

There are a lot of sequoias to be found along the roadside to Crescent Meadow. There are also a good number of pretty large-ish specimens right along the path of the Crescent Meadow loop trail, which we had targeted as our first of a few hikes that day. As a first encounter type of experience, this area of the Park was a great introduction, as was seeing Tunnel Log, the downed tree which was converted in the 1930s to a tunnel which you can drive through still today and which is pretty close to Crescent Meadow. There are some lone impressive looking sequoias near Tunnel Log that are worth gazing at in awe of their mass. 

We had only just begun to scratch the surface.

We didn't go to Crescent Meadows to see sequoias. Not really. Seeing trees there was just a bonus. But we did get two of our signature looks at these giants on the way back. There is a group of trees just past Tunnel Log (just past on the way out, that is) called the Parker Group, a group of eight sequoias clustered together and named for the family of Captain James Parker, who served as superintendent of the Park in the 1890s. Because of their proximity to each other, they give a different perspective on how big these trees are. Sure it's cool to stand next to one of these trees in isolation and feel small. Try it standing among eight. You are dwarfed by the living masses all around you. It puts you in your place a bit, and that's exactly what I wanted to experience here. The first picture of this post is just that view.

The Parker Group is also an excellent spot to take some souvenir pics. Just saying...

The other wow(!) moment we had coming back from Crescent Meadows was a stop we made at a downed tree that had fallen over and and in the act of doing so had ripped its roots right out of the soil. We'd stand next to some bigger trees later in the day but we had to pull over and check out these roots. I'm guessing these things were at least 15 tall. On a small-ish sequoia, if there is such a thing. Look, I know I keep saying this and will continue to keep saying this...but the size of these trees is incredible. I should have parked the car next to it before taking the picture above.

Medium-sized sequoia with scale figure (top) and sequoia eating a rock (bottom). Sequoia National Park.

Our intentional quest to see some really, really large and enormous trees started at the Giant Forest Museum. The Giant Forest (so named by naturalist John Muir) is the largest stand of sequoias in the world with an exceptionally large number of giant trees in its midst. Maybe that is obvious from the name. If you want to see lots and lots of sequoias, head to the Giant Forest. Maybe that's obvious too. 

These trees are literally everywhere you look around the museum and along the nearby Big Trees Trail. We found the stop in the Museum to be quick and informative while also being a good departure point for our second hike of the day along Big Trees. Both are worth doing. In the Museum we learned about the sequoia's unique environment for sustained growth along with the distribution of the various groves in the Parks and the fire resistant properties of the trees' astonishing trunks. Indeed, there are many, many trees in the Parks where you can see evidence of the scars of forest fires but the sequoias are uniquely adapted to resist such events with a moisture-retaining, sponge-like bark. Hey, if you are going to live for over 3,000 years, you better have a trick or two up your sleeve.

It was also at the Giant Forest Museum that I had a damper but on my reincarnation plan. There's a wheel inside the museum that you can spin with about 50 or 60 outcomes for a sequoia seed with spaces for things like eaten by a squirrel or landed in the wrong place to take root or whatever. There's only one space where the seed actually makes it to a tree. The odds for survival of a seed are very long. It's a bit daunting, but I guess that's why trees have a lot of seeds. I'm still going with a sequoia as my reincarnation plan but I want to be one of the seeds that survives.

Standing outside the Museum is a sequoia called the Sentinel Tree. It was the first really massive tree that we would encounter in the Park. Those trees on the Crescent Meadow loop trail that seemed solid and big seemed actually quite small when compared to the Sentinel Tree. We could tell that it was important in some way because it was fenced off. It was the first tree we came across that we couldn't walk up to and touch. It wouldn't be the last.

Looking up at Sentinel Tree. Massive, right?

So I realize I'm about halfway or more through this post without really discussing how big these trees are. Maybe we should cover that before we move on.

We have spent the better part of ten years seeking out the largest living things on our planet. We've seen grizzlies and moose in Alaska, which are really some pretty big animals. We've done those two one better by spending time with bison (the largest mammal in present day North America) in Yellowstone National Park and the states of North and South Dakota. Looking abroad, we've made three trips to sub-Saharan Africa to see hippos, giraffes, rhinos and elephants, the latter of which is the largest land mammal on the planet. To top that, we've taken to the oceans to find humpback whales off the coast of Alaska and in the San Francisco Bay and beaten that by a close encounter with a blue whale, the largest mammal to ever inhabit the Earth, last September off the coast of Los Angeles. 

But none of those things is the largest living thing on our planet. And spoiler alert: the largest living thing ever is the giant sequoia. Mammals aren't even close. A medium sized one of these trees dwarfs a blue whale. They are three times or more the length of the largest blue whale and can best that cetacean's mass by a factor of six. And a blue whale outweighs and elephant by about a factor of 40. That's how big these trees are. Feeling small yet? Go stand next to one. It will alter your perspective, I swear.

Double sequoia, Big Trees Trail, Sequoia National Park.

We by no means covered all of the sequoia-related hikes that both Sequoia and Kings Canyon have to offer but the Big Trees Trail, combined with the Sentinel Tree, was a pretty perfect snapshot of what things are like in the Giant Forest. There are many, many good-sized sequoias arranged around the perimeter of a marshy meadow (where you might see bears looking for food...just saying) which is sort of a hallmark environment for at least Sequoia National Park. There are also some giants that you can walk right up to and a sequoia about halfway round the right side of the trail that appears to be growing around a giant boulder. That and Sentinel Tree, which is just a huge monster, give a pretty good picture of how big these trees can get individually and in groups.

So after Big Trees Trail, we just had two last stops: the two generals.

There is an awe factor to being around these trees and personally, I think we sequenced our way through the Parks perfectly. We started by driving past a lot of redwoods until we came to our first sequoia which was clearly just much, much more giant. We then added a walk past some good-sized specimens near Crescent Meadow and in the Parker Group before hitting a really massive tree (Sentinel Tree) and an amazing grouping of tons and tons of trees on Big Trees Trail. Our experience built. We went from big solo to bigger solo to group to gigantic solo and tons and tons of really bigs. 

The generals would take that progression to the next level. And after the generals there would be nowhere to go. We'd be at the biggest. Ever.

General Grant Tree, Kings Canyon National Park.

The General Grant Tree is the star sequoia attraction at Kings Canyon National Park. According to a sign in Sequoia National Park, it is the widest sequoia in the world at 40 feet. Now I'm not sure how they are measuring width but there is no way General Grant is 40 feet wide, unless they are measuring circumference. Look, it's really, really big. There's no question. And I believe it was way bigger than any other tree we saw except for one other in the two parks. It might be 40 feet around at its base but I'm not sure. Maybe I'm wrong. 

Now before you go thinking I've gotten overly cynical in my old age (I am, after all, 55 now...) and am just dis-believing the signs in national parks placed by our federal government employees, there were discrepancies between the signs in the two parks. But suffice it to say that this is a big tree. I mean think about a tree that is 40 feet around at its base. This is just a gigantic living thing. It is humbling to be near to something this big. It just...I mean...it's bigger than words can describe. It's what I expected to see in Redwood National Park all those years ago but also way, way bigger than I could have possibly imagined.

But it's not the biggest. The honor of the biggest sequoia (and therefore largest living thing ever anywhere) goes to the General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park.

General Sherman. Sequoia National Park.

So, yeah, I know, it's not a great picture. The tree is in shadow. But look, there's only so far away you can get from something this large and take a picture of it and that distance required to get the whole thing in just wasn't available on the sunny side of the tree. In fact, it wasn't available on the shady side of the tree either and I have to believe I got 100 or so feet away or more. It's that big. The top of the tree wouldn't fit in the picture. The size of this thing staggers the imagination.

General Sherman takes a bit of a walk to get to. It's in a fairly dense grove of sequoias down a pretty steep hill from the trailhead parking lot. That means it's easy to get down and a bit of an effort to get back up. It was actually a pretty tough hike. Definitely more physically stressful (but maybe not emotionally stressful...we'll get to that in another post) than any other hike we did in any of the three national parks we visited in California.

Our walk down was a bit of a repeat of our morning drive. Would we really think this tree was that much bigger than the others? Would we even be able to recognize it as significantly larger than other sequoias when it came into view? We thought these exact same things about sequoias vs. redwoods a few hours earlier.

Big Trees Trail, Sequoia National Park.

The answer to our question, of course, was yes. There is a viewing spot towards the bottom of the trail and the General Sherman Tree is clearly the biggest thing in the forest. It's not even close. There's no competition. I know it's supposed to work that way. I mean this is the largest living thing on the entire planet but seeing it from that viewpoint was still shocking. It's just way bigger than I could have imagined.  This tree weighs 1,385 tons. That's 2.77 MILLION pounds. That kind of size is just not even relatable. Being in this tree's presence is just so humbling. I guess we sometimes think there is no limit to what humans can do on this world of ours but we can't do what these trees do. We can't get that big and keep living for thousands of years. It's just so impressive.

I can't even imagine what this tree has seen over the centuries it has been growing. It's older than our calendar. It has scars on its trunk from fires that occurred more than 150 years ago. Just think about what the history of man was like when this thing first sprouted. It's been alive since about 200 years before the time of Christ. I mean, really?

There is a sign near the General Sherman tree that says us standing next to that tree is like a mouse looking up at a six-foot tall human. One of the reasons we travel is to get a different perspective on our world and I have to say that having a mouse's perspective on the day we were in Sequoia National Park was worth every minute and hour of all the time we spent in planes and cars to get there. This experience, and by that I mean just standing next to one (OK so maybe not just one) of these trees was just awesome. Of the three parks we visited on this trip, Sequoia was the one that blew us away and the trees were a huge (no pun intended...) part of that experience.

Redwood National Park in 2008? Yeah, this is what I expected to see. I'm glad it paid off in Sequoia. There's nowhere to go but down now.

More trunk pics: The sunny side of General Sherman (top) and the grove near the parking lot for General Grant.

Great Walks

I like the idea of hiking. Wide open prairies that lead to petrified forests where what used to be trees are now solid rock. Winding mountain paths in the woods to find crystal clear waterfalls. Discovering ancient petroglyphs after a mile or more journey over ancient lava. Canyon trails that lead to emerald green pools in the cool early morning. Wild looking rock formations shaped by wind and water in a volcanic canyon. They all sound great, right? Romantic, peaceful, wistful, a return to simpler times. And since I started this blog, I've made every one of these hikes right here at home in the U.S. of A. and always in one of my trusty pairs of Timberland boots.

Have to take the Timbas on vacation with me.

So what's the problem? Why do I just like the "idea" of hiking and not the hiking itself? Well, I do really like the hiking too. If I didn't do you think I would have done everything I listed in the first paragraph above? It makes me feel like slowing down is a good thing and I love the scenery and the clean air (especially with a little old man's beard around to make me feel really good about what's entering my lungs). I just don't want to meet any of the wildlife that I love watching and photographing from afar. And for sure that inhibits my enjoyment of hiking a little bit. No way do I want to meet a bear or mountain lion in the woods or a bison or wolf out on the range or an African oryx in the middle of the New Mexican desert (seriously; apparently those things are kamikazes).

Done laughing yet? I know, I know, I'm a chicken. Or worse. Go ahead. Take your best shot. I don't care.

View from the beach on Ulva Island during a half day's tramp. Mussels on the rocks at the bottom.

So why am I writing about all this when I just got back from New Zealand? Well because New Zealand doesn't have any native mammals so that country is like the perfect place for me to go hiking. Only they don't call it hiking in New Zealand; they call it tramping. Is a tramp a predator-free hike? I have absolutely no idea although I don't really think so. I just knew I was pretty excited to do some tramping in New Zealand.

New Zealanders (using this term so I don't confuse you by using the term kiwis) apparently love tramping. They love it so much that they have created a series of Great Walks which range in distance from 32 kilometers long to 145 kilometers long and are outfitted with reservable huts for sleeping in. Just bring your own sleeping bag and food. There's no place to buy snacks along the way. 

If 32 or 145 kilometers seems like a long way to tramp, or walk, you'd be correct. The New Zealand Department of Conservation recommends between two and five days to get any one of these Great Walks done. Want to do all ten? Well, that's going to take a whole lot of time.

So this post is about us conquering one of the Great Walks while on the other side of the world, right? Nope. No way. Not even close. No way were we going to do that on this trip. But we did do plenty of tramping. Around Auckland and Stewart Island and Fiordland National Park and Wellington and Ulva Island and even past a few hobbit holes in Hobbiton in some place called Middle Earth. We always seem to do a lot of walking when we are away from home; personally I think it's the best way to see wherever you are. All told, I averaged (according to the pedometer built into my iPhone) an average of 4.7 miles per day. That's a little more than 7.5 kilometers per day, which would be good enough to get a 32 km Great Walk like Rakiura Track on Stewart Island or Routeburn Track across the Southern Alps in about three days if you ignore the fact that we weren't carrying a backpack full of stuff with us.

While this post may not be about New Zealand's Great Walks, it is about some of the places we did walk purposefully and deliberately to slow down, take in the scenery and breathe in the clean air. And yes, we did see some old man's beard along the way. Let's start right where our trip started in Auckland.

One Tree Hill
If you own U2's The Joshua Tree, you might have heard of One Tree Hill. You also might know the story. In case you don't, or (like me) your U2 collection skips from War to Achtung Baby, read on.

One Tree Hill is a (not necessarily extinct) volcanic cone not far from the middle of the city of Auckland. Much of New Zealand, like many of the other island nations in the Pacific, owes its existence above the ocean to volcanic action, and despite the danger of eruption which eventually seems inevitable to come to pass, both Māori and European setters were determined to build their homes in what would end up as Auckland. Something about the harbors, if I'm guessing.

The Māori called the hill Maungakiekie which means "mountain of the kiekie vine" and it happened to be the site of the one of the most important and impenetrable pā, or forts, which sheltered and protected a population estimated to be approximately 5,000 people. That is before the Europeans arrived and inevitably and permanently altered Māori history for the worse. Something about the muskets, if I'm remembering right.

There is no tree on Maungakiekie today but there was one when the place got it's current name. Let's see if we can recap the tree / hill status quickly. The Māori in their pā were defeated by the Europeans (again...something about the muskets) leaving a single tree which was sacred to the Māori (this is when the name came in). In 1852, that tree was cut down by a European settler angering the Maori. To make amends (don't laugh) John Logan Campbell planted a series of pines in the 1870s, which died. Pines!!! Well, all but two died anyway. Those two lasted about 90 years until Māori activists cut one down. They tried for both but were thwarted. In the year 2000, others finished the job. So from one to some to two to one and then none. Got all that?

Atop One Tree Hill looking towards Auckland. The fenced area is where the trees used to be.

For an urban walk, tramping to the top of One Tree Hill is a bit of a workout. It's all uphill on the way there and it's about the highest point in Auckland so the view to the city and the water beyond is pretty spectacular. We kept the obelisk shown in the second picture above in our sights and kept following the signs. It's longer than it looks because after the initial climb, the walk takes you all the way around the base of the hill before you start going up in earnest.

So about that obelisk. The same John Logan Campbell who tried to grow a stand of pines on the hill also paid for the obelisk, a monument to the Māori people, whom he apparently admired. There is a statue of a Māori warrior on the front of the the thing and two panels with some words on either side. You can decide for yourself if they are a little patronizing. Oh...and Campbell is also buried right in front of it, so it's also one of the tallest and most grandiose headstones that I've ever come across.

In all likelihood, unless you take a taxi or drive as close as you can to the summit, you'll end up walking to the Hill through Cornwall Park, a combination of planned, formal roads and allées of trees surrounded by informal landscapes and maybe the odd one or two or whole herds of sheep (it wouldn't be New Zealand without sheep, even in the largest city in the country). There are tons of trees in the Park which provide much needed shade on a sunny day. Once you start the last ascent, there's no relief from the sun, unless (unlike me) you take a hat with you.

Māori warrior statue with John Logan Campbell's obelisk.

For us, this tramp was important as our first connection to some place sacred to the Māori, which we wanted to learn more about on this trip. And the view was pretty cool. There's something satisfying about climbing a hill and seeing how your perspective changes once at the top. I'd say tramping up here was worth it.

When we visited Stonehenge in 2014, I listened to Spinal Tap's epic song about that mystical circle of rocks. We therefore had to listen to U2's One Tree Hill when we reached the top. I may have skipped The Joshua Tree in U2's catalog but my wife did not.

The best thing about climbing to the top of a hill? It's all downhill on the way back. On to something less urban.

Rotoroa Island
One of the things I wanted most to do in New Zealand was to get out onto the water in the Auckland harbor (and beyond) to Hauraki Gulf and maybe spend some time on an island for the better part of a day. Ultimately it would have been nice to head further north to the Bay of Islands, but we didn't think we had time on this trip so we settled for a day in the Gulf. Settled may be underselling the experience by a ton.

The island we chose to visit was Rotoroa Island (not to be confused with Rotorua where we headed right after we were done in Auckland), an island inhabited by two permanent caretakers, a number of different species of birds and the occasional overnight lodger. While it might have been cool to stay on the Island for a night, we decided a day trip would do us just fine. Maybe next time...

Now, if I had been heading to Rotoroa about 15 years ago, I would likely not be going for an day trip or an overnight stay. That's because from 1905 to 2005, the Island was operated by the Salvation Army as an alcohol and drug rehabilitation center. Nothing like some time on an isolated island to detox for a while, right? It ended up being so effective that people actually didn't want to leave and some fell right off the wagon when they left so they could get back there. I mean why would you want to get off an island where you were taken care of and return to society where there are challenges and temptations all around you? I'd probably want to stay too.

The Salvation Army still owns Rotoroa Island today but the property is leased on a 99 year term to the Rotoroa Island Trust which operates the island as a wildlife sanctuary. And in New Zealand, a place with no endemic mammalian species except for a short-tailed bat, that means birds.

A family of takahē. Rotoroa Island.

Unless you have your own boat or intend to hire your own boat or seaplane, you'll likely need to take a ferry over to Rotoroa and you'll need to make an all day commitment. The ferry drops off passengers at about 10 in the morning and picks everyone up at 3:45 in the afternoon. Need some lunch? Bring it. There's no food available for purchase on the Island.

Our tramping agenda for the day was to basically cover from the north to south end of the island seeing as many species of birds as we could along the way. There's a guided walk available for purchase as a supplement to the ferry ticket. We started there and then took care of the rest of the island on our own. The guided walk, led by our guide Toni, who is one half of the permanent resident caretaking couple, got us a good look at the north side of the Island including some history and some information about the birds. And the Trust's efforts to eradicate all mammals, most especially rats, from the Island.

Rotoroa is semi-tropical, which meant when you got off the paved or gravel paths that are marked around the island, you are essentially in a less humid and less hot version of a jungle. Even some of the paths that are created around the Island are overgrown in parts which makes you feel like you are crashing through someplace a lot less tame than New Zealand. The first photograph of this post was taken on Rotoroa. It's sort of cool in a stupid sort of way.

Chris Booth's sculpture Kaitiaki at the south end of Rotoroa overlooking the Hauraki Gulf.

It's a decent almost one hour walk from the north end of the island to the south so spending about six hours on the Rotoroa is perfect. It gave us time to spend about 90 minutes on the guided walk, stop for some lunch and then make it all the way to the south end where there is a sculpture overlooking the water and the adjacent islands. Along the way there was plenty of time to check out the flightless birds (New Zealand has more than its fair share) including the endangered takahē, the mischievous weka and the pukeko, which makes me totally believe dinosaurs and birds share common ancestors.

Two things stick with me from our tramp around Rotoroa. First, the water in Hauraki Gulf is just the most gorgeous blue-green color. I expect to see water as cool and inviting as that in places like the Caribbean; I didn't expect to see it in New Zealand. Second, spending a day on an island with nothing to do but walk and surround yourself with nature is good to do once in a while. We spend a lot of time rushing from one place to the next while we are traveling. We deliberately slowed down on this trip a couple of times. Rotoroa was the first of a couple of days where we made ourselves relax a little more than we normally do.

Redwoods Treewalk
Of all the tramping we did in New Zealand, our walk in the woods at the Redwoods Treewalk in Rotorua (why any place has two places worth walking named Rotoroa and Rotorua is beyond me but it is what it is...) was definitely the most unusual and not just because we were walking among a forest of California redwoods.

But since I mentioned it, let's start there. I mean why is there a grove of California redwoods in an island country thousands of miles from California? Well of course there's a logical explanation that speaks right to human greed.

When European settlers first arrived in New Zealand, the entire landmass was mostly old growth forests. So, being European and used to plundering natural resources of newly discovered lands as soon as possible, they started cutting down the forests for lumber. I mean, why not, right? They found lumber from the kauri tree perfect for use in ships due to its height and exceptionally straight growth. Then they started realizing the forests were disappearing at a pretty alarming rate and would need to find something that grew faster than the native trees if the lumber industry was going to survive. 

Enter the California redwood, which was introduced by the New Zealand government in 1899 to the Whakarewarewa Forest near Rotorua and then in other areas in the 1920s and 1940s. This initiative was after experimenting with several species, including the Monterey pine, since the mid-1800s. Turns out the redwood takes very well to certain parts of New Zealand, particularly the area near Rotorua. 

California redwood. Rotorua, New Zealand.

So what's so great about roaming around a stand of redwoods in Rotorua? Well, you aren't walking on the ground. You are walking on a series of bridges suspended from the trees anywhere between 30 and 65 feet off the ground. For someone who is constantly in search of getting a new perspective on things, I had to do this. I've never walked around a forest from this sort of vantage point. I mean...why would I? And how?

There are some rules. There are person and weight limits on the bridges that span between trees and there are weight limits on the platforms that circumvent the each tree. Don't want to strain the cables holding up either the platforms or the bridges and certainly don't want some kind of wild swaying of the bridges due to tons of people walking in step with one another. And don't worry about the bridges harming the trees. Everything is hung off the branches and there are no mechanical connections, which admittedly makes everything sway a little bit. 

As for the person and poundage limits? Not an issue, at least not when we were there. We rarely had to cross a bridge at the same time as another group. 

I'd have to say this experience is one of those that fits into the "where else can you do this?" category. The best part was never having done this before and never in all likelihood going to have the chance to do it ever again. It for sure got us a different look at a redwood forest. I'd only ever walked through one at Redwood National Park north of San Francisco before and this was definitely a unique experience. As a tramp, it wasn't particularly difficult but I am counting it as one of my personal great walks in New Zealand. We went there to walk and nothing more. Therefore it's on the list.

Timbas. Walkway. Fern. Not often you can have this perspective.

Even if one day I return to New Zealand, I'm not likely to ever tackle any of the real Great Walks, if for no other reason than I can't see myself slowing down enough to do nothing but walk for three days or so. One day is fine. Three days separated by less walking is also fine. Heck tramping every day is fine if I can do something new or exciting when I get to the end of my walk. For this trip, these three will have to suffice. Each meant something to me and I'm glad I did them all. I got something out of each one, which is not something I can say about every experience I've had in the last almost six years. 

Would I have done these in a place other New Zealand? Maybe. But I can't say for sure. The fact that the kiwis (the human ones; couldn't resist using it once despite the earlier disclaimer) have Great Walks and call this stuff tramping made it irresistible. I have a feeling I'll be doing some tramping in the very near future on another continent. And maybe some more towards the end of this summer.

Didn't need this on this trip. Maybe one day...

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How We Did It
One Tree Hill is located about five miles from downtown Auckland at the very highest point of Cornwall Park. You can walk there if you want. We opted to take the light rail known as the Auckland Train Network to the Greenlane station on the Southern Line. It's pretty easy to use. From there, it's a pretty good mile and a half walk (or tramp) to the top through Cornwall Park. If you get into the Park and it seems like you have been walking forever, I found that the last walk up the hill was steep but quick. Don't give up. Reward yourself with some hokey pokey ice cream at the Creamery on your way back if you must. I must.

If you decide to go to Rotoroa Island and you opt to take the ferry instead of procuring your own custom transportation, it leaves from the Auckland docks at 8:45 a.m. on the water side of downtown. It does not run every day. Check the Fullers360 website for details and to reserve tickets. Follow the directions to the dock and be sensitive to the instructions for arrival time and for packing food. Fullers runs other boat trips to other islands in the Hauraki Gulf if the Rotoroa trip is not available on the day you want to go.

Redwoods Treewalk is located south of the town of Rotorua. While you could tramp there, it's probably too far to bother. Better to take a taxi or the Number 3 bus from downtown; it drops you off right at the end of Long Mile Road and it's about a 1km walk from there. We got to the Treewalk by walking from the Māori village of Wharekarewarewa which seemed like a quick walk but depended on us cutting through an office property which was prohibited. We went around through the woods, which was longer but not as long as walking on the road.

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