Forbidden Forest

California, December 28, 2012

On our way to Taiwan
Perrin

        

      Today we went on a hike in Berkeley through a beautiful forest with trees whose branches hung elegantly from the tree tops. In California the trees are much different than the east coast. They look more exotic and hang more wildly, like a jungle. There are also many, many kinds of trees. It seems like more that in Vermont, but maybe it's just because they each have their own personality. Each one hangs a different way and seems like if it were in a jungle, a different kind of monkey would be hanging from each one. I like that about them, but if you step into Charlie and Matilda's Forbidden Forest, you can see the king of trees. The redwoods.

        Even though these redwoods are relatively small, it still takes three people barely holding hands to hug one all the way around. Though these may seem thin, they are some of the tallest trees in the world, taller than their thick cousins which live south of the bay area. The Forbidden Forest is a little redwood forest that we walked through on our hike. We walked it on the way down the mountain. On the way up, we took the main trail and found some interesting mushrooms including a deadly poisonous one that Carly discovered. I also found a stick that I named the Straight Stick because it was the straightest stick I have ever found. It reminded me of a Harry Potter wand which is why I liked it so much.         

        Near the end of the hike, as we were nearing the top, we met two Asian people, and one coincidently was a Buddhist monk from Taipei! The other was a monk from Malaysia. It's funny how the world seems so big but everything seems to be a coincidence.

        The view at the top was fabulous! We could see the Golden Gate bridge and basically all of bay area. The world seemed spread out in front of us.