Standing With the Giants at Mariposa Grove

Desert Oracle Radio

Ken Layne

Society & Culture, Places & Travel, Philosophy

4.8 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mariposa Grove was a sacred grove for millennia before it became part of the Yosemite Grant, lovingly tended by Yosemite Guardian Galen Clark for more than a quarter century.

Sacred groves and forests are protected for their spiritual and ecological importance. Such groves are found today throughout India (home of more than a million holy forests), Japan (many thousands of chinju no mori surrounding Shinto temples), and Ethiopia (35,000 primal forests circling Ethiopian Orthodox churches).

Sacred groves protect many rare, threatened, and endemic species of plants and animals, and are often the last stand of ancient forest in a community. Biodiversity thrives within these sanctified nature preserves, while festivals dating back to antiquity provide people with a deep and lasting connection to their culture, religious practices, folklore and history. Learn more about Galen Clark from the National Park Service.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.
0:07.0	Dear Mrs. Carr, I have from time to time heard from you through some of our mutual friends from Pasadena who have visited Yosemite.
0:24.5	I have not seen a copy of Mr. Muir's book, nor heard before that it was published.
0:33.2	If he dedicated it to anyone, it should have been to you,
0:39.5	as no one person has given to him the great encouragement and assistance which you have.
0:48.1	I have not seen him but once since he was married.
0:53.6	He then looked more careworn and not so happy as he used to be,
1:00.9	when engaged in his excursions within and studies of
1:06.3	nature's wonderful works in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
1:13.6	From a letter of reply by Galen Clark, December 3rd, 1894,
1:23.8	handwritten beneath the letterhead, Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove,
1:32.0	Guardian's office,
1:34.2	Galen Clark, Guardian.
1:37.9	Alongside the Seal of Minerva, State of California.
1:47.1	Mariposa Grove, the largest stand of sequoias within Yosemite National Park,
1:55.5	was maintained as a sacred site by American Indians for more than 3,000 years.
2:04.6	That's an educated guest by tribal elders and anthropologists.
2:11.5	And coincidentally, the approximate age of some of the grove's most ancient trees.
2:19.2	Three thousand years.
2:22.9	That's the estimated age of the famed grizzly giant, standing tall at 209 feet.
2:33.1	It might be 2,700 years old, and it might be 3,200 years old, no real way to
2:40.2	count, as long as it lives, as long as it stands. The British Canadian conservationist,
	...

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