My first visit to California had a profound effect on me. I was expecting pavement and endless strip malls after I passed through a produce examining station (invasive species prevention) on the California/Oregon border. What I saw instead was amazing. Unfolding ahead of me was endless forest, with trees taller than any I had ever seen. This went on for miles, and was capped by a 14,000 foot mountain that rose above an interstate which sat at a mere 4,000 feet.

Ah yes, forests. I grew up in Illinois. There was often talk of the mythical Northwoods and the endless forests of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. We’d take trips up there, enjoying the summers and the cool, inviting lakes. The locals (and tourists from Chicago) spoke of these magnificent forests. What I learned over time was that most of the Northwood’s old growth forest is gone.

As in 99% gone.

All the big, old trees had been cut. What remained was “nice”, but not robust. And now cabins with tacky fertilized lawns dot the shores of almost every major lake.

What the Northwoods became was a tame go cart track made for motor sports enthusiasts like snowmobilers and off-roaders. There’s nothing wrong with either in moderation, but rather a landscape that is not intact enough to avoid hearing such things if one so chooses.

I was shocked at Northern California, for it is what I imagined the Northwoods would look like after all the hype from Midwesterners. But that Northwoods forest is largely gone, replaced by second and third growth hardwoods. The big white pines are now few and far between, and you are never more than a stone’s throw from some kind of road or the roar of a snowmobile.

My admiration of the California forests—the size of the trees and the expansive national forests themselves—only grew when I visited the southern portion of the state and Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park. Yes, I had to drive past congestion and dead malls and everything I had feared, but California still had this striking balance that I wasn’t quite used to in the Midwest. To be in a national park or national forest after only a short drive is something we Midwesterners simply cannot do.

I still make the occasional run to the Northwoods, usually on the way back from a place like Montana. I notice the names of local establishments up there. Places like “The Wilderness Resort”, where there is no wilderness. Or places like “Moose’s Tavern”, where there are no moose. I feel as if I’m on a path amongst ghosts.

But not in the forests of California. For there, legends still exist.