Jill & Me in a Redwood Tree

Jill & me inside a Redwood Tree at Big Sur, California, October 1990.

An old girlfriend & me inside a relatively small Redwood tree at the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park which is within the famed Los Padres National Forrest. Big Sur is a spectacular place and offers some wonderful camping and lodging opportunities (we lodged). A trip I'd love to make is a drive from Yosemite to Big Sur.

These Redwoods are the tallest trees on Earth, some reaching to MORE THAN 367 feet with a diameter of more than 20 feet and at an age of 2500 YEARS! They're simply spectacular and fun to be around (and inside of)! By the way, those gaping holes in them were carved out by ancient fires.

The Redwood is a close cousin of the Giant Sequoia which can be found elsewhere, at the southern most end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Central California. The Giant Sequoias are known as the "biggest" (i.e., the most massive) trees on Earth. The Giant Sequoias grow "only" as tall as 311 feet, but to a diameter of 35 feet wide! They are the fastest growing trees on the planet and are known to live as long as 4,000 years! Whoa Sequoia!

If you are wondering what the widest tree on Earth is, that honor goes to the Tule Cypress Tree. One near Oaxaca, Mexico measures 51.6 feet in diameter. Significantly wider than both the Redwood and the Sequoia, but also far shorter than either, standing less than 150 feet tall. Short and squat little punk.

Finally, I'd be remiss to not acknowledge the chick in the photo. She's Jill, my former fiancée. We drove down the Coastal Highway (Highway 1) together from San Francisco to San Diego in October 1990. Actually, she did all of the driving. Clocking in at 5'2" or so, Jill is significantly shorter than any of the trees mentioned above. C'est la Vie.

Fear of Falling

Myself at The Grand Canyon, July 1998 (Photo by Jill Weiner)

I had always wanted to see the Grand Canyon and now... there it was. It was exactly as I had imagined it (aided, of course, by a myriad of photos and films). Of course, there can never be a substitute to actually seeing being somewhere. The scale of it was tremendous. It was simply the biggest, most spectacular, most beautiful bowl in the world. The colors were muted but magnificent. What really raised the little hairs on the back of my neck, however, was not the size or sheer beauty of the place -- but its history. There, laid bare before my eyes, was more than a billion years of geological history, going back to a time long before man, ape or monkey had walked the planet. Now, thousands of years after our arrival on this continent it was still there, barely acknowledging our existence. For me, being there, was a profoundly spiritual experience. The gods being time, space and nature.

This most spiritual experience of mine was brought back crashing down to earth by a simple human frailty: my fear of falling. It is the same fear I feel when standing near the edge of a subway platform. It is the same fear I felt driving down California's Highway 1, hugging its gorgeous cliff walls all the way down. It is the same fear I feel standing at the edge of any cliff, for that matter.

To get this photo I had to make a very short hop from the solid rim of the Grand Canyon (a rim physically connected to continental North America, of course) to a tiny little rock island seemingly floating above the canyon. It was not physically connected to the rim. Instead, its connection to the earth was more than a hundred feet below. To fall into the cravas or to shoot beyond the rock island during a short hop, would be to fall into oblivion. To faint or trip while there would result in the same.

Of course another way to look at it was that it was only a short hop from here to there. Can you see the fear gripping my body as it tensely poses for this photo? Half my mind was focused on posing, the other half on my fear of falling. A most profound and spiritual moment for me confronted by a simple human frailty of mine.

I will not die an unlived life,
I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire;
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible.
To loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise…
I choose to risk my significance;
To Live.
So that which came to me as seed,
goes to the next as blossom.
And that which came to me as a blossom,
goes on as fruit.

By Dawna Markova

I Left This Hat, In San Francisco

Photo by Jill Weiner

Nothing cheers me up more than a silly hat! Here I am trying out a very silly hat at a shop in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco in September 1990. The shop had these epic, fairy tale, floor to ceiling murals along with faux-architectural ruins tossed throughout. I'm not that skinny anymore, but I still have the bag (now relegated to holding other bags). Man, I use to love that shirt!

P.S.: I never did buy the hat.