Hawks and eagles glide overhead. Fifty yards away, a wind-swept logging road is bathed in sunshine, but the forest floor is dark and silent, covered in a deep bed of decaying bark, ferns, moss and fallen twigs. Rain drips from leaves, falling onto mossy underbrush.
Visitors here find themselves enveloped in a quiet, moist twilight.
A majestic, intimidating and vast stretch of patriarchal trees crossed by only two true hiking trails. Other paths tend to disappear in the rain. Rising above the old timber town of Fortuna, the Headwaters core appears from a distance to be a gentle slope, dark and smooth. The redwoods, some of them nearly 2,000 years old, actually rise above a succession of ridges and gullies. California has other well-known redwood groves popular with hikers and campers.