Attending Church in Muir Woods

by admin | August 20, 2026 10:53 pm

 

 

This land is your land, this land is my land[1]

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters.

This land was made for you and me.

— “This Land is Your Land,” by Woody Guthrie

 

MUIR WOODS, MARIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA — Woody Guthrie’s fabled song should be our National Anthem. Enough already with bombs bursting in air and the rockets’ red glare. Woody’s song stubbornly remained an earworm as my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I walked the nearly silent redwood forest of this 558-acre enclave, about a dozen miles north of San Francisco. We soon entered Cathedral Grove, where superfluous talk and noise are gently discouraged by a carved sign that implores, “E[2]nter Quietly.” We did, on a mid-August morning where the temperature barely broke 60, fog obscured the hills, and we wore sweatshirts and windbreakers.

This is what church should feel like. This felt like heaven.[3]

Coming here is a bucket-list trip for me. I managed to reach the cusp of turning 71 without having been to San Francisco or visiting this stand of the world’s tallest trees — one of the few forests untouched by humans left on this planet. The oldest trees here top 1,200 years old and tower more than 250 feet above us. If you want to feel truly humbled by the beauty of this world, Muir Woods is an excellent choice. Standing beneath redwoods that might have sprouted as seedlings 500 years before white settlers came to this continent — and still exist — is pretty damn humbling.

Redwood trees, our guide Doug tells us, derive up to 60 percent of their needed moisture from fog. Plenty of that around here. The trees have a surprisingly shallow root system that spreads out some 90 feet in diameter. Given the rapaciousness of logging as this area was settled by white folks, it is a miracle that this forest remains, largely untouched from its creation.

So, God bless John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and William and Elizabeth Kent. The first three names are well known but the latter two might not ring a bell. The Kents, wealthy by most standards of the time but apparently cash poor, bought 300 acres of what is now Muir Woods by borrowing money from a friendly banker. Elizabeth was skeptical of borrowing the money. It is perhaps apocryphal, but her husband supposedly replied, “If we lost all the money we have and saved these trees, it would be worthwhile, wouldn’t it?”

Excellent answer.

That was in 1905. A year later, 80 percent of San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake, prompting a somewhat understandable loosening of restrictions on cutting redwoods for timber to rebuild. What became the Muir Woods, just a dozen miles north of the devastated city, was saved from becoming lumber for homes and businesses, thanks to the Kents and a willing banker. More than 120 years later, we are walking these woods and counting our blessings.

Naturally (pun intended), this park is extremely popular given its proximity to San Francisco. The completion of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 vastly increased access to Muir Woods, which clocked 180,000 visitors the year after the bridge opened. Now Muir Woods hosts up to 800,000 visitors annually. Our tour guide stopped briefly after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, to allow a photo op. Another bucket list spot, the bridge is 4,200 feet long and is magnificent, though “golden” does not quite fit the color. It is almost burnt orange. (That might just be the Teasip in me talking. It is named after the strait it spans — the Golden Gate — named by explorer, adventurer and eventual presidential candidate John C. Frémont in 1846.) Roughly 40 million vehicles cross the bridge annually.

Back at the Muir Woods, I notice maintenance workers fixing rails, broken boardwalk planks, and performing other routine tasks. I am inexplicably envious. Imagine spending one’s working days doing carpentry underneath such beauty — giant redwood and eucalyptus trees (imported from Australia during the 1850s Gold Rush but now an integral part of the landscape), luscious ferns, the redolent smell of a primeval forest, while working in ideal weather (to my way of thinking) — foggy, damp, cool, lovely.

We had to leave after a mere 90 minutes in Muir Woods or miss our ride, far too short a time. We must return.

John Muir wrote in Son of the Wilderness: “Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”

Excellent advice.

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