My Life Bucket List: Visit The Redwood Forest

When people ask me what my favorite place is, I don’t name one that actually exists. Instead, I make up a place in my mind. Two, actually. In one its springtime and I’m in the middle of a meadow, the grass up to my calves and the sound of a creek far off in the distance. It’s quiet, but the perfect amount to be alone with my thoughts but not too quiet that I feel physically alone. The grass is soft, not too scratchy, and I imagine myself laying down on a blanket, eating strawberries and doing the cliche guess-what-shape-the-clouds-are thing.

In my other place, it’s fall, and the leaves are all sorts of different colors. It’s a forrest, with paths lined with trees in perfect rows, and beyond them, scattered trees of all sorts of different sizes, so the path in front of me is the only thing that’s visible, and everything else is masked with the colors of fall. It’s brisk, long sleeve and jeans whether but the breeze feels perfect being lost in the middle of the forest. The leaves pick up and fall around me and I continue straight on the path, not really sure where it’s leading me but not really too concerned about my destination.

These are my happy places. The places I escape to if I need to escape to my thoughts. So, when I learned that there was a place in the world that sounded something like my forest escape, I quickly added that place to my bucket list, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would someday have to visit, to experience the emotions and feelings I would get by being in a place that almost perfectly matched the one I had envisioned in my mind.

For those of you that don’t know, the Redwood Forest, properly titled the Redwood National and State Parks, are parks located along the coast of Northern California. Combined, they contain approximately 133,000 acres of park. The trees themselves, the Redwoods, are the oldest and tallest trees on Earth. The trees on average grow to be approximately 112 meters high and span about 7 meters, or around 22 feet, in width. In other words, these trees are big. And they are scattered through the forests, protecting the pathways and the people exploring inside from the outside world.

In short, its a unique sight. The perfect escape, the perfect hide out. And if you’re a nature lover like I am, I imagine you will not be disappointed. In both my happy  places, I am happy because I am at one with myself and with nature, not worried, not stressed, just relaxed. Taking time out of the day to escape from people and the stress of modern day society and being with the things that make the world what it is.

Another thing that fueled my desire to visit this national monument came from watching snippets from my favorite bloggers wedding video. While she didn’t technically get married in the Redwood Forest, she does live in California, and her wedding location was nothing short of ideal. A little venue tucked away in the crevices of the forrest, surrounded by trees and friends and family and quiet. As a result, I found myself drooling over a wedding location as ideal as hers, and also having an increased desire to finally visit the Redwood Forest.

Hopefully someday I can make my dream escape a reality!