Giant Redwood trees once lived here, in Colorado, and many of their colorful stumps were preserved by volcanic ash along the easy 1 mile Petrified Forest Loop (at 8,400’). Early visitors took pieces of the petrified stumps and even left saw blades in the Big Stump above. See an array of Eocene fossils in the visitor center, including plants, bugs, fish and animals, and a rhinoceros bone. The volcanic ash layer captured a snapshot of the lake, meadow and forest here, which helps us understand how various plants and creatures evolved and adapted to a changing climate. But make no mistake, the current man-made climate crisis does not provide time for evolution or normal adaptation. Suddenly, our planet has a new, unprecedented and deadly climate, and most life won’t survive, unless we fix it now.

I wondered how large the peak range of the redwood trees must have been to have survived until today. They must have been successful in many different areas, like here, where the climate eventually become inhospitable to them. Now they only remain naturally in California and Oregon. People don’t seem to appreciate that for plants to survive over the long term, they need more than a few small, isolated reserves. They need to thrive in many different locations to have a chance of finding a stable and suitable one where they will have a future. Human limits, including pollution caused climate change, will extinguish species and ecosystems until we prioritize the protection of living things. Otherwise, all that will remain will be fossils and images of once thriving species.