The heart of Muir Woods — the tallest and oldest trees, the designated quiet zone, and the hush that gives the grove its name. (Boone's 1945 U.N. memorial tale dwells here.)
You've reached it — Cathedral Grove, the heart of Muir Woods, and the place that earns the name. Stop walking. Lower your voice, or don't talk at all; this stretch is a designated quiet zone, and the Park Service asks you to keep it that way for a simple reason — so that everyone can hear what a thousand-year-old forest sounds like, which is almost nothing at all.
This is the tallest, oldest company of trees on the whole loop. The giants here soar well past two hundred feet, straight columns rising into a green vault so high the light comes down soft and filtered, the way it does through the high windows of a great church. The ground is bare and open between the trunks. The air is cool and smells of damp earth and bark. People walk in here and simply go still — you'll feel it happen to you.
Take your time. Stand at the base of one of these columns and follow it up with your eyes until you lose it in the canopy, and do the arithmetic: this tree was a seedling before there was a Notre-Dame in Paris, before the Norman conquest of England, and it has stood in this exact spot, drinking this fog, through every single thing that has happened in the world since. There is no hurry in a place like this. Boone wants a quiet word with you right here — so stay put in the grove a minute, and let him tell you about a day this cathedral held a funeral for a president, and the men who came to mourn.
Photo: Matthew Dillon from Hollywood, CA, USA · CC BY 2.0
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