{"id":22402,"date":"2025-05-28T00:54:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T06:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=22402"},"modified":"2025-05-26T13:57:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T19:57:47","slug":"redwoods-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/28\/redwoods-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Redwoods Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY JOELLEN COLLINS<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
JoEllen Collins\u2014a longtime resident of the Wood River Valley, now residing in San Francisco\u2014 is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, a teacher, novelist, fabric artist, choir member and proud grandma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Often asked about unique sites and attractions, I can be suddenly aware of them and take for granted places of great value nearby. Those of us who have lived in a resort town, as I once did, sometimes miss other nearby and exciting places. When my little girls and I resided only about half mile from a spectacular area of tide pools, it was easy to ignore the offered images and magic of the residue of water and critters so unique to ocean life. Perhaps a Little League game required an amount of happy time on a day when the weather invited us to explore that damp paradise, and we had to be elsewhere. When I was a child in San Francisco my parents tried seriously to visit nearly everything that was nearby – parks and places to explore, and the vibrant surroundings of San Francisco. Now that I reside in the Bay Area, I am near available and magnificent places once again. Sometimes I really feel refreshed and ready to explore my new environment.<\/p>\n

Recently, a group of us visited a place I had never explored, unlike my longer and previous travels to faraway places like India, Thailand or Tanzania. We spent a few hours walking and being amazed in Muir Woods to visit a redwood forest not too far from where I now live. We spent a few hours walking, studying and absorbing this magnificent sight. I hadn\u2019t been as close to a redwood in decades and thus experienced a mixed blend of emotions, including regret at not having been there before, and overwhelming peace surrounded by these massive redwoods.<\/p>\n

I was with a friend who had experience and extensive knowledge of this treasured site, and she opened my eyes to other things I would not have observed just on my own, so it was a blessing of an experience. I learned not only of the miraculous regrowth of the magnificent trees even after massive fires and other environmental issues threatening nonexistence, I wondered at the proliferation of plants and creatures who live off and around the massive redwoods.<\/p>\n

Finally, I understood more about things like the biology of the berms, those massive, seemingly gross protuberances dozens of feet above the ground that grow as a way of nourishing and sustaining the tree they sit on and the insects and birds which may need some nourishment from them. Somehow, I had never learned that in my biology class in high school.<\/p>\n

The peace and quiet was so comforting and reminded me that even when I am not here, we have been given places of great comfort and peace and magnificence to ponder our position in our lives with what beauties are nearby.\u00a0\u00a0So I\u2019m thankful I got out of my little place of life and once again spent some time in nature. I plan, as I did in Idaho, to spend more time outside whatever the difficulties of access might be. Thank you, John Muir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JOELLEN COLLINS Often asked about unique sites and attractions, I can be suddenly aware of them and take for granted places of great value nearby. Those of us who have lived in a resort town, as I once did, sometimes miss other nearby and exciting places. When my little girls and I resided only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-on-lifes-terms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22403,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22402\/revisions\/22403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}