Muir Woods National Monument

Muir Woods, with its giant red-barked trees, soothing filtered light, and birdsong, is a haven of calm in a complicated modern world. It is also one of the nation's few intact old-growth coastal redwood forests - the only sizeable redwood stand near San Francisco Bay that, as author John Hart notes, "has literally never felt the hand of the logger."\nThough it has neither the oldest nor the largest redwoods, its completeness - mature trees, young trees, fallen trees; a verdant understory dense with plants that were around when dinosaurs walked the earth; and a riparian corridor that is both nursery and lifeline for untold generations of fish, insects, and other animals - gives it an enduring appeal. All of this beauty and vitality was almost lost in the opening years of the twentieth century, however, when a campaign was launched to dam its creek to create a reservoir that would've flooded the upper reaches of the forest.\nIn this book, you will enter the world of Muir Woods National Monument, a rich and complex environment saved by people who saw its value and worked to preserve it, and protected today by the National Park Service. A place of "green and lively light, shady yet somehow never dim, that the dusty eye takes in as a thirsty throat takes in water," Muir Woods offers timeless testimony to both the power of nature and the human need for the peace it offers.