Anyone else out there a fan of the original Star Trek series? Remember the short opening monologue?

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, its five years mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Those words inspired some thoughts in April, 2019. as I watched a couple of old episodes and afterward began thinking about the redwood forest. Isn’t amazing that in today’s realm of technology, the world’s tallest tree wasn’t found until 2006 !! Decades earlier in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to experience and step on the surface of the moon, landing with 30 seconds worth of fuel to spare. Armstrong climbed down the ladder, and proclaimed:

“That’s one small step for a (*)  man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It wasn’t until 36 years later that Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor were the first men to discover and step foot at the redwood shown below, the tallest known tree in the world. Remarkably, this was more of a “final frontier” than going to the moon !!

There’s not much more to add. I thought this may be interesting to a few people. But this may explain some things Chris Atkins has shared with me while exploring in the redwood forest. Once the beaten path is left behind, the inner depths of the park can feel like going to another world. The photo below is the base of the redwood found by Atkins and Taylor, September 2006, in Redwood National Park.

• (In 2006, a computer programmer Peter Ford analyzed Armstrong’s words using software designed for nerve impulses of disabled people to communicate via computers. Ford found a 35-millisecond-long sound bump between “for” and “man”  too brief for human ears to hear, but enough to confirm Armstrong’s claim to what he really said)

Hyperion Coast Redwood World’s Tallest Tree