While trees were growing, a historic reflection

High on the western slopes of the California Sierra Nevada mountains grows a vast array of sugar pines, black oaks, and the most iconic trees on the planet, the Sequoia.

Some of these trees are taller than a 30-story building with enormous trunks, and 40 people holding hands would barely circle the circumference of one of these giant trees.

For centuries the Miwok Indians called the trees Wawona after the hooting sound of the indigenous spotted owl, which nested high in the boughs of these monumental towers in the Sierra mountain range.

The early pioneers called them "the big ones." Plant bota...