This month, Grant Grove in Kings Canyon will host the 100th Annual Trek to the Nation’s Christmas Tree. On December 14, assembling at 2 p.m. with the official ceremony beginning at 2:30 p.m. The event honors the General Grant Tree, the long-lived, enormous, and officially recognized “Nation’s Christmas Tree.” December 14 is also a free entrance day at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, so Grant Grove will see heavier foot traffic and limited parking. The General Grant Tree stands roughly 268 feet tall and is among the world’s oldest living trees — an apt living symbol for a national observance. President Calvin Coolidge designated it the Nation’s Christmas Tree on April 28, 1926. Congress later named it a National Shrine under Public Law 441 on March 29, 1956, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz dedicated the tree on November 11, 1956, as a perpetual shrine honoring the nation’s armed forces. Those layers of designation give the site ecological, historical, and commemorative weight.
On June 21, 2008 a lightning strike ignited the Basin Complex Fire, a wildfire that swept through 162,818 acres near Big Sur, forcing evacuations, and burning most of the Ventana Wilderness area. The fire destroyed much of the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park located the western slope of the Santa Lucia Mountains, and severely damaged the Pfeiffer Falls Trail, an easy 1.5 mile out-and-back trail with views of redwoods and Pfeiffer Falls.
2020 was a difficult year for travelers, wanderers, adventurers, and explorers here in California. I did get out – sometimes with groups, sometimes furtively by myself – and was rewarded with solitude, silence, and freedom within the great cathedrals of nature that California offers from the deserts to the beaches, to the mountains and deep forests.
I’m not an introvert. I don’t suffer from Anthropophobia. In fact, I’m quite the social person. I just don’t like people.
We’re all getting ready to go back outside. This year I’m planning on writing a couple of books about Jeeping, so I probably won’t be hiking as much as I’d like (much to my bathroom scale’s distress). I’ll still be out there – I’ve got a