Muir Woods National Monument | California

"Here in this grove of enduring redwoods, preserved for posterity, members of the United Nations Conference on International Organization met on May 19, 1945, to honor the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, thirty-first President of the United States, chief architect of the United Nations, and apostle of lasting peace for all mankind." - memorial plaque in Cathedral Grove Muir Woods, 1945

Here is a post of many photos and few words. I think these are the best photos I have ever taken. I went on a hike in Muir Woods National Monument last July right before I moved out here to Boston. Somehow I never got around to editing the photos or sorting through them, but just looked at them when I felt homesick.

I already waxed poetic about Sequoia sempervirens, the coast redwoods, true icons of the Californian Pacific coast, on a previous post about Big Basin State Park, so I'll just leave these photos here.

Doe and fawn

Californians and non-Californians alike: please visit this place. Please hike beyond the first 1.5 miles of the park. The next time I come here, I'll hike to the beach. I hiked here alone and realized I'm seldom out in nature by myself. These are the most beautiful trees on Earth.

Take a look at these big ass trees

Here we enter Cathedral Grove, where some of the largest, oldest trees in this forest stand. This is probably as close as I will come to a spiritual experience, and this forest is probably as close as I will have to a house of worship.

Looking through these pictures, I feel a bit overwhelmed with homesickness for California. In college, I lived in a treehouse-like apartment in a redwood grove. My apartment in Boston is on the sixth floor a block away from the so-called "Methadone Mile." Though Boston has certainly grown on me (bricks and bricks and bricks and bricks and the ability to walk across the city easily, I know that the East Coast is not home. Somewhere out West is home.

But thankfully I'm back in the San Francisco Bay Area for awhile longer. This summer has been exhausting but so much fun. I have had the most wonderful experience doing research that I believe in, and learning as much as I can from the residents and attendings on the orthopedics service.

"Not only would this focus attention upon this nation’s interest in preserving these mighty trees for posterity, but here in such a ‘temple of peace’ the delegates would gain a perspective and sense of time that could be obtained nowhere in America better than in a forest. Muir Woods is a cathedral, the pillars of which have stood through much of recorded human history. Many of these trees were standing when Magna Carta was written. The outermost of their growth rings are contemporary with World War II and the Atlantic Charter." - Secretary of Interior Ickes letter to President Roosevelt, February 1945

“These great redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument are the most enduring of all trees. Many of them stood here centuries after every man now living is dead. They are as timeless and as strong as the ideals and faith of Franklin D. Roosevelt.” - Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., U.S. Secretary of State, 1945

The park is heavily trafficked near the entrance, but much quieter farther off. I'll go farther next time.

As much as I think I want to live somewhere else, looking at these photos reminds me that California is my home.

I didn't track my mileage or elevation gain, and don't have numbers to share. A bit more on logistics: I took a $5 shuttle from Sausalito to Muir Woods, which gave me a lot of time to look out the window and daydream about owning a cottage looking out over the Pacific Ocean, with redwoods on my property and within hiking distance.

Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito

Winter break was not as productive Lord of Three Realms-wise as I had hoped, but I spent it relaxing with family, catching up with friends, and grinding harder on research than I ever had. Three phone meetings, many late nights, and much eye strain staring into lines and lines and lines of code later, and I'm pounding out an abstract. Anyhow, I had a whole slew of posts I wanted to write, but instead I present this.

Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Point

There have been a lot of 2016 reflection posts, resolutions, and recaps. I thought about writing one of those, but what are years but arbitrary social constructs, and am I really new? But since the theme of Lord of Three Realms is and will always be to become a better version of myself, here are some quick goals for myself now that I am 22 (birthday was on Christmas):

• be a better friend and keep in touch with the people I care about
• be more efficient, have more self-discipline, and waste less time
• bear misfortune worthily
• more recreational reading and writing

Fort Point and Karl the Fog

Without further ado, here are some photos I took during a day trip in July. I've split the day up into Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito here and then Muir Woods National Monument in a later one. I found these photos scrolling through my camera roll and kept turning that Mark Twain quote over in my head.

The coldest winter of my life will probably be this one in Boston, and most certainly not a summer in San Francisco. It was figurative language to begin with, but I thought it would be a funny blog post to write when it will be below freezing tomorrow.

Visitors to San Francisco should definitely walk across the Golden Gate Bridge if they are adequately dressed. I made the local's mistake of thinking I could tough out the wind, Karl the Fog, and the chill by wearing shorts in July, but I was wrong. The wind is intense and I felt a bit nervous for the cyclists.

Spend some time at the visitors' center to learn about the bridge, its history, and the engineering behind it. MUNI has a stop right at the front, which was also crawling with charmanders and bulbasaurs (I visited during the Pokemon Go craze of summer 2016).

The fog disappears

The variation in temperature and visibility over a mere 1.7 miles of bridge was pretty astounding. It took less than half an hour to cross and yet looked like two completely different seasons. San Francisco Bay weather, am I right?

I took a bus into the town of Sausalito walked around while waiting for a phone call. It's a charming seaside town with cute coffee shops, but I camped out at Starbucks because I had a gift card. A bus runs from Sausalito to Muir Woods National Monument, my final destination, but I dallied too long around the pier looking at boats and thinking about what it would be like to live by the sea and have easy access to the redwoods.

Boats

Admittedly, this was not a very in-depth post about the Golden Gate Bridge or Sausalito, but just a repository for the pictures I took and a prologue to the much longer post with many more photos about Muir Woods National Monument. This, too, was really just an excuse to poke fun at "the coldest winter of my life was a summer in San Francisco" while winter begins in Boston.

In any case, 2016 was a wild ride, and 2017 is a new year. Good luck to you all and thank you for reading my blog this year!