me and the sherm

Stephanie deserves all the credit for taking this incredible photo of me and General Sherman. I was walking around on the sturdy wooden fence that encircled the tree, trying to take a picture from the best vantage, when Stephanie took the camera from me, squatted all the way down on the wet ground and got this crazy cool shot.

Justin and General Sherman at Sequoia National Park

It occurs to me that this picture and the previous ones don’t really convey the mammoth scale of this tree, it being THE LARGEST ORGANISM ON EARTH! I also realize that I previously claimed to have touched said organism, but hadn’t offered any proof to support so outrageous a claim. Ahem:

Justin and Stephanie touching General Sherman at Sequoia National Park

I should preface the next shot with an excerpt from Wikipedia:

In January of 2006 the largest branch on the tree…broke off. No one was present for the incident, but the branch, which had a diameter of over 2 m (6 feet) and a length of over 30 m (100 feet), bigger than most trees, smashed part of the enclosing fence and cratered the walkway pavement surrounding the sequoia.

That’s a big branch! Check it out:

A limb that fell off General Sherman, in Sequoia National Park

Because it’s not really possible, in my opinion, to take (or show) too many pictures of the world’s largest organism, here’s General Sherman in one last shot, from top to bottom.

General Sherman at Sequoia National Park

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 8:21pm
Outdoors

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2 comments

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Brian/Dad
2/21/07 6:49pm

You are so right until I saw the picture of you and Stephanie touching the largest orgasm on earth I would never have perceived its enormous size.

justin
2/21/07 7:46pm

I love that picture because I don’t even think I appreciated how freaking big it was—in the context of a Sequoia grove. Took us two tries just to get the shot because we had to run from the fence to the tree. I halfway imagined National Park Rangers to come out or an alarm to go off.