go west and water the trees, my son

Sequoias may not be the tallest trees in the world, as their Redwood cousins edge them out by a few meters, but man, are they the chunkiest. To share a few stats with you, Sequoias are:

• up to 2,000 years old
• reach 375 feet tall
• can be 25 feet in diameter
• volume of over 52,000 cubic feet

Putting that in context of house and home, if you consider the average good sized bathroom, about ten feet wide by fifteen feet long and ten feet high (okay, that's twice as big as MY bathroom, but...) that would be 1500 cubic feet. That means that you could fit more than 34 bathrooms in this tree.

Why would anyone put a bathroom in a tree, much less 34 of them?

Well that's the thing. When I'm out in the woods and have to relieve myself, I prefer to do it on the great big trunk of a great big tree. I like to think that I'm doing my part in the life cycle and ecosystems of the wild.....providing for one of these magnificent giants with the excess water and overflow nutrients that my kidneys have sent the way of my bladder. Call me sentimental, but I guess this act of fellow comrade nourishment just makes me feel as if I'm playing a small but significant role in the greater movings of the universe. In the end, it's about giving back.

The particular tree shown above is located in Mariposa Grove in Yosemite Park, where some of the largest of these grand mamas live. Yes, you can drive a car through it. Yes it is still alive. Pretty damn incredible.

If there were a Fantasy game based on vegetation, I do believe the Giant Sequoia would be a first round pick. Not only do they get HUGE, they are basically fireproof. When walking among them you can see at various intervals up and along their reddish trunks the scorch marks from forest fires. Sometimes a particularly bad fire will get rid of all the underbrush and even hollow out parts of some trees, but the biggest are hardly touched......some theories are that they have so much water in them and have some sort of fire proofing in their bark, that they just won't catch on fire.

So while they are playing for your team they will not likely go on the Disabled List, and they will happily just continue to grow big and tall to pad your team's stats. True, this game might take a lifetime to complete, but what the heck else you got to do, anyways? Smell the roses, draft a tree, life is short, play long.

Why the coniferous ruminations, you might be wondering? Well I'm going with some friends and some family out to a remote mansion in the woods of Sequoia National Park for the next five days. This place is called Kaweah Han and it's pure heaven. It's like a 6,000 square foot (I know, enough with the volume stats!) house perched on the cutback of a pristine alpine creek, with a power generating water wheel, no neighbors for miles and (wait for it) a HORSESHOE pit.

Man, I love horseshoes. It's such a cool game. Throwing things is fun. Ringers are fun. Leaners. I mean, you know all the times you've come SO CLOSE to something that you could almost taste the joy of achievement, but it just slipped past you? Well in horseshoes, so the saying goes, close is GOOD ENOUGH. You actually score points for being "close." Ahhhhh, the shrill sound of a ringer in the crisp woodsy morning.......doesn't get much better than that. Okay, it does get a little better, as in when you make the shoe sing on stake in the afternoon with a cold beer in hand, but I digress.......

Point is, I'll be missing you for the next several days. Will be back to help you all make your Realities more Fantastic next next Monday.......ahhhhh Labor Day.

Until then, Fantasize well, and think of me in the woods, walking on pine duff, feeding trees, and ringin' it up!