Show SEQUOIA FOREST A OF ANTIQUITY has seen civilizations rise and crash it was possible pos sibl only yesterday by geologic time when the sequoia forest began its definite existence years at a guess two hundred million years ago it was well established and had fixed hab its much as at present passi passing n lightly over years 10 years ago the genus homo perhaps began to take refuge ge in its branches in the days when moses was a mountain climber on a portion of the earth s crust very nearly the an of the sinai peninsula a region that was not to receive the name of california for some forty centuries a forest of sequoias stretched their green and glossy fin gers into the shimmering western sky already for an anima ined pe through summer and winter cold and heit heat he it seed time and bar vest day and night it had pressed inch by inch into the firmament ring by bv ring it had imperceptibly added to its girth ninevah and babylon pome and carthage tyre and jerusalem rose and fell avrus and genghis khan rhan alexander julius caesar and na conquered the world con duclus and buddha jesus and mohammed the realm of the spirit solomon and socrates gall leo and darwin produced the bitter and potent fruit of the thin thinking ling mind homer and vergil verel and dante and shakespeare gave to the world of the imagination a local habitation rerI pericles cIeS and aspasia paolo an I 1 francesca launcelot and guinevere e counted 0 u n ted the world well lost for the brief b rl e f ecstasy of love the sequoia forest untroubled by the rise and tall fall of nations ancon scions of the sulphurous depths of 0 passion and woe of the human spir it unchanged by the cataclysmic chan changes chanes es in the world of human thought mercifully untouched even by terrestrial cataclysms that ov over whelmed many a mountain and plain scattered its golden pollen in the spring its ripened cones in the fall sang its inimitable dreamy song when the winds passed through it almost within sound of its hush ing great civilizations came to ma turley and sank into the soil so deep that the youngest even now is inarticulate alice day pratt in the atlantic monthly |