Not Fern Canyon

Decker Creek runs through the Bull Creek State Wilderness in southern Humboldt County through a stand of the tallest trees on earth — not a named destination, not on any recommended itinerary, just a creek and the redwoods that have grown beside it for a thousand years. Greg arrived at first light in fall, when the water level is low enough to walk the creek bed and the angle of the morning sun reaches the water through the canopy gap that only exists at this latitude in this season. This panorama captures the full scene: the creek in the foreground, the redwood trunks on both banks, the canopy closing above, the light arriving in a column so specific it seems directed. The creek was cold; the trunks were warm; the light lasted perhaps twenty minutes.

There is a well-known trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park that contains Fern Canyon, a dramatic ravine of rock walls covered in ferns. As described in SFGate:

Ensconced in Redwood National and State Parks, located about 300 miles north of San Francisco, the narrow, dramatic canyon is famous for its 50-foot rock walls festooned in oversized ferns. From the top, tiny waterfalls trickle down through fuzzy mosses, and down below a creek rushes through the center over a multi-hued pebble floor.

But this image is not of or from Fern Canyon. It's from small Decker Creek—a mosquito-infested confluence of a small creek and redwoods—near the South Fork Eel River in the Bull Creek State Wilderness inside Redwood National Park. It's not difficult to reach, though it isn't all that easy to find. But it's worth the effort. It is a timeless place, without crowds, where the water and the mist and the sunlight and the trees are the only sounds.

Provenance: Phase One XT | IQ4.150 | Rodenstock 23mm 2-image stitch