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Photo: David McNew, Getty Images
The climate crisis has put sequoias on a dangerous path. A draft report from the U.S. National Park Service indicates that 10% of the largest trees in the world were wiped out in last year’s Castle Fire.
Sequoias can live for thousands of years. Trees alive today are our connections to deep time. As Christianity rose, the Han Dynasty collapsed, and countless other human activities proliferated around the world, sequoias still alive today silently rose to towering heights in isolated pockets of California’s Sierra Nevada. To stand in the shadow of a giant sequoia is to feel the heft of history drape over you.