In 2024 I spent a year living in a van among the trees. Here is some tidbits I learned along the way.

Running around the redwoods and their surrounding coniferous forest woke up my inner child.

When you’re surrounded by living organisms hundreds of feet tall and thousands of years old you can’t help but feel like a kid.

Redwoods are host to ‘epiphytes’ meaning they can support the growth of other trees in their canopy. Floating sky trees!

Fog accounts for 40 percent of their moisture intake.

You might expect such a statuesque tree to have equally dramatic pinecones, but in fact they bear tiny one inch cones.

The ‘tree’ that has captured my imagination the most is petrified wood.

These logs are from an ancient forest that stood over 225 million years ago.

Minerals from volcanic ash were absorbed into the wood over thousands of years and crystallized.

Remarkably the crystal maintains the same exact shape and patterns as the original tree like knots, bark, and tree rings!

As a lifelong East Coaster wildfires have existed in my mind as a theoretical issue — someone else’s backyard.

When your home is on wheels wherever you wake up that day is now your backyard. Confronting the widespread destruction of forest fires has been upsetting but equally transformational in my understanding of our changing climate.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! While hiking through an old burn area in Lassen National Park I witnessed the magic of the mycelium network. Dotting the charred trees were hundreds of white mushrooms working hard to replenish the forest.

As if I needed another reason to think trees are remarkable, I learned that trees find a way to help each other postmortem.

Nitrogen-rich dark soil called ‘humus’ forms from the decaying matter in the nooks and crannies of a dying log.

Nurse logs offer seedlings shade, nutrients, water, and protection from disease. How selfless?

Some final thoughts + reflections…

It’s hard to overstate how much trees have come to mean to me living on the road. So this week I am going to be sharing a few of my favorites.

Trees remind my brain where I am in the country when I wake up in a new place every day.

I’m grateful for the trees that line curvy mountain roads and shield me from the fear of running the van off a cliff.

Their thick canopy makes our Starlink internet connection weak and blocks me from doom scrolling. It’s almost like the trees are guilt-tripping me, ‘Unplug and read your book! You know a tree was chopped down to make those pages!’

This photo is of a maple draped with moss and lichen in the Washington rainforest.

Did you know that moss can survive with only 2% of its water content and will come back to life almost indefinitely? Also, a handful of moss can be home to upwards of 300,000 microorganisms.