Muir Woods

As has been clear on my blog til now, part of me is dissatisfied with life on the East Coast / at BU partially because I deem it "not pretty enough" or "lacking in things normal colleges have." In addition to wanting to go to graduate school at a place like Berkeley, I want so much to be able to travel the world, learn about different cultures and lifestyles, and see either beautiful natural wonders or local things like museums or famous pieces of architecture. The weird thing is, I have seen so many of those beautiful things (within the US), such as at national parks like Yellowstone, Grand Teton, or Yosemite. I feel so lucky and privileged to have gone to all of those places, but never appreciated them when I was there. I wish I had, but try not to regret the decisions I made years ago, but instead look forward and learn. I have an immense new appreciation for beautiful places that I go to now, and hope that I will be able to revisit the places I have been in the past to truly experience how magnificent they are.

One of my goals in life, which can be found on a Facebook note I wrote several years ago, is to "live in a place where I wake up every morning and can't believe that I'm really in my life, because the place is so beautiful." California (and North Carolina) have both done an excellent job of living up to that goal. I feel like every time I go to a new place during my college summers, I make the beauty I described in that goal even more wonderful. But, that goal doesn't just include the place I live. It includes being able to easily access other just as beautiful places, and Muir Woods more than fulfills that goal.

Muir Woods National Monument is a forest just north of the Bay Area famous for gigantic redwood trees, which can have a diameter up to 20ish feet in length. The forest is beautiful and has tons of incredible flora and fauna (a short description of the National Monument can be found in an online version of their brochure here). During our drive to the park and during our hike, I couldn't stop staring in wonder at all of the amazing life and landscape around me, and was so overwhelmed to take it all in and realize that I was in such a beautiful place. It's quite awful that I'm trying to articulate clearly a description of the woods and how I felt about it, but that's proving rather difficult as thinking about it leaves me speechless.

The drive to Muir Woods was an experience in itself. We drove through (what I call, but are actually not) mountains (large hills) at an enormous elevation, so we had views down into the valleys and to the ocean. We were also on incredibly windy roads, which was scary, but, that's what you have to do when you want to get through mountains / large hills.

View of the valleys

Windy road (this wasn't the worst of it) + gorgeous view 

More gorgeous views

Once in the park, we first walked through the more crowded trails where the redwoods are. It is GORGEOUS, not just for the trees, but everything. There's a stream running next to the path where large ferns are growing, in addition to these funky giant three leaf clovers. And then, of course, there are the redwoods. They're huge, super tall, and you can't help but be in awe when you look up and see the tree canopy on the sky.

Redwoods! 

Bridge over the stream

Giant clovers/fern

In Cathedral Grove

Amazing sight to look up at 

Tree base

Tree's base...

Farther up...

...higher...

...and top!

Full view of Cathedral Grove

After walking through this main part of the woods, we crossed the stream and began our real hike, off any sort of built cement/raised wooden "trails." We ended up going essentially straight uphill for about two hours (go figure it only took ~45 mins to come back down). I don't have any pictures from this portion of the hike. I have a weird phobia of heights when there is nothing sturdy separating me from a fall to my doom, and given that most of these uphill trails were extremely narrow and on the edge of very large hills (aka falls to my doom), I was mostly concentrating on looking at the path right ahead of me and making sure I didn't slip.

The fallen tree bridge leading us to the real hiking
trails. Gotta love the scholars on a bridge!

The hike we took should not have been that difficult despite being completely up steep hills. I was in the snail-pace-slow slow group, which is bad because it shows how ridiculously out of shape I am. Regardless, I successfully made it to the top of the mountain/tall hill. Despite being completely exhausted and my legs screaming at me in pain, the hike was completely worth it.

We'd actually come to a fork in the trail after a particularly steep section, at which point we could either head back or continue going up. Some guys were coming back down and told us it was completely worth it to go up, and showed us pictures of the view. It was this that convinced us to continue to the top. (What's funny is that the whole way up, we were fuming mad for listening to them because we were all tired and in pain, but forgot all about it at the top. Then, when we'd come back down, we showed people contemplating going up our pictures, which convinced them to go up. We wondered if they began to hate us as much as we began to hate the guys who convinced us to go up).

Muir Woods is beautiful, but this view from the top of the mountain (which is actually in Mt. Tamalpais State Park) completely took my breath away. I almost cried because I was so overwhelmed by how beautiful it was, and was so overcome with emotion that I can and will see amazing places in my life, as proven by the magnificent sight lying before me. 

Hilly range

The Pacific Ocean is peeking out! 

The hilly range and the ocean behind it 

I can't believe I am in a place that is so beautiful

Hills meeting before the beautiful ocean 

Hill, ocean, and contemplation rock

A little over half of the Cal Amgen 2012 group, photo credit to my
roomie Han and her camera with the amazing panorama feature!

For those of you in life who have seen bigger and better things than this probably simple view of some hills and the ocean, I hope that one day I can see as wonderful things as you have. But this view, stunning for me, has now set my bar high. I know that I will continue to push it higher as I carry out my traveling dreams, but this trip, this amazing sight, these feelings that I had when I emerged over the final hill and was met with one of the most gorgeous sights I've ever seen, will always be special to me, and I don't think I could ever get tired of it, no matter how many times I go back.