Pygmy Forest
Started: 2024-08-03 17:12:54
Submitted: 2024-08-03 18:01:27
Visibility: World-readable
A forest of tiny trees, wrapping up our time camping at Van Damme State Park on the Mendocino Coast
Monday, the 15th of July was our last day camping at Van Damme State Park on the Mendocino coast. As I packed up the tent I noticed a sticky coating of something like sap on the rain fly, which must have dripped off the deciduous trees above us when fog condensed on the leaves. The wooded campsite with its own creek-side access was nice, but I could have done without the sticky residue on the tent (which I still haven't gotten around to cleaning off, as I write this nearly three weeks later).
The last thing we saw on our way out of Mendocino was the Pygmy Forest, located on the other end of Van Damme State Park. We could have hiked there from our campsite, but it would have been an 8.5-mile round-trip so I figured it would be easier to drive there.
There's a complicated geological explanation for the pygmy forest, involving a thin layer of soil sitting above a layer of iron hardpan that prevents tree roots from passing through it. The result is that trees can grow in the thin soil but the soil remains nutrient-poor, so they aren't able to grow and they remain stunted.
The state park had set up a boardwalk in a small loop through the forest, which gave us an up-close view of the forest. Looking at the trees it was clear they were stunted, though I didn't have the full frame of reference to really visualize how tall the same species grew in better soil nearby. The trees were scraggly, looking more like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree than a healthy tree growing in the forest. The tallest trees were maybe two meters tall, just tall enough that they were as tall as me when I was standing on the boardwalk, giving the appearance that they were nursery trees waiting to be transplanted, but the interpretive signs assured us that they were much older than they appeared. Around the stunted forest were healthy-looking normal-height trees; the normal forest looked like it was about to overrun the small parking lot. The whole thing was weird and surreal, and it was interesting to see it.
We left the Mendocino coast and drove back home, following state highway 128 up the Anderson Valley and over the coast range to Cloverdale, where we joined US 101 south through Santa Rosa. We stopped for lunch and I checked my map and decided that we could follow 101 south across the Golden Gate Bridge without impacting our travel time. (This was the more geographically-direct route, but it involved navigating a lengthy stretch of 19th Ave in San Francisco, which is always crowded with traffic. The alternative, I-880 in the East Bay, is also slow just about any time of the day.)
Just as we were crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, Julian announced that he needed to go to the restroom, having passed up his chance after lunch. I missed my chance to turn into the bridge's visitor facilities immediately after the toll plaza. Our next good stop was a restroom I was pretty sure I remembered being in Golden Gate Park on MLK, just east of Crossover Drive; then remembered that I couldn't just turn left from Crossover Drive onto MLK so I had to take a somewhat-circuitous route crossing JFK Promenade to reach the restroom, which turned out to be right where I remembered it, with easy parking on the street right in front of it. I counted this as a minor achievement of parenting, and evidence that my knowledge of Golden Gate Park is good for something after all.
We returned home without further incident, after a long weekend camping on the Mendocino coast.
