A day in the life of General Sherman: our intrepid reporter gets up close and personal with this long-time champ and perennial favorite big tree.

Big trees. You can measure them, pore over their statistics; compare their age to human history; draw, paint, photograph or rhapsodize about them; or stand under them and gawk. You can be stunned into awed silence or jolted into shouts of animated amazement. But if you are like most other visitors to a national champion tree, you will leave within a few minutes, an hour at most.

These are all valid ways to appreciate big trees, as is learning about them through pictures, prose, or word of mouth. But our human way of life, especially the modern American variety, places a dark filter over our perceptions of the life of a big tree. They say it takes one to know one but I'm not about to start injections of chloroplasts and plant hormones. So I decided to slow down and spend an entire day getting to know one champ better. And what better one than the biggest tree on Earth--the General Sherman giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, California?

November 14, 2007, Sunrise

After an 8-minute, 92-million-mile journey, at 7:24 a.m. the first direct rays of the sun paint the dead spires of General Sherman's crown with a ruddy glow. Although the crown is 275 feet up--about even with the torch hand of Lady Liberty--it is already an hour past official sunrise because General Sherman stands in a depression below a higher ridge.

Three minutes later the sun lights up the highest green foliage and gradually the chloroplasts start waking up. Robins, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, and woodpeckers have been active and calling for a good while, but the tourists have not yet braved the cold morning air.

The first thing everyone notices about this giant sequoia, of course, is its size. No matter where you go in the world you will not find a bigger tree. This is the Mother of all Trees, the Big Enchilada, the King of Kings, the Great One, the Numero Uno. And yet, although you can tell it's really, really big, you can't really tell it's the biggest just by looking.

That is partly because it grows in a forest of giant sequoias with a number of them indistinguishable in size by the eyeball method. John Muir didn't call this grove the Giant Forest just because of General Sherman. In fact, he made no mention of this tree. Some, like the 286-foot Diamond Tree, are taller. Others, like the Washington Tree, General Grant, and the Grizzly Giant, are a few inches to a few feet wider near the base where we lowly humans are most easily impressed.

But when Master Tree Measurers like J.W. Jourdan, Robert Van Pelt, and the late Wendell Flint did their magic with survey lasers and the kind of mathematics most of us were glad to find out we actually didn't need later in life, they found the General Sherman occupied more than 55,000 cubic feet--about 10 percent bigger by volume--than its nearest rival.

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There are many other more colorful ways to convey the true size of General Sherman, like the National Park Service sign that says an equivalent volume of water would supply the average household for three and a half years. But short of clambering around on it like a squirrel, I think the best way to appreciate its size is to mentally bring it down to our level. Picture just the main trunk lying down on a football field, its base on a goal line.

Now add a row of two-story houses along the length of the tree. As you walk along the sidelines, starting at the goal line across from the tree's base, how much of the houses would you see behind the trunk? At the goal line, only the top of the chimneys would be visible; take a couple steps and the roofline would appear. Just before the 12-yard line the gutter would come into view. Sprint down to the 50-yard line expecting a big change, but the trunk still would prevent you from seeing anything below the second story windows. Go another 25 yards and you are now 80 percent of the way. Even here, just 17 yards from the crown, the prone trunk would completely block the front door.

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Morning

By 8:00 a.m. sunlight filters through the forest to dapple the southeastern side of General Sherman. With the temperature climbing but still in the 40s. and the sun still fairly low in the sky, photosynthetic activity is sluggish at best. This late in the year photosynthesis is closing in on the point where growth will cease for the winter, but the clear skies promise a strong finish. Birds continue their frantic search for food after the long, cold night.

An audacious red-breasted nuthatch, just 4 1/2 inches long, lands on General Sherman's huge flank. It pokes around in bark crevices for hiding insects but soon flies off, perhaps overwhelmed by the prospect of covering 17,000 square feet of bark on one tree.

At 8:45 a.m. a Douglas's squirrel calls out from General Sherman's crown and seeks out green cones. During the average day it will cut and cat or store nine or 10 cones, the equivalent of about 3,500 cones in a year.

A big sequoia like General Sherman produces about 2,000 new cones each year, but they remain green for several years until cut. So inconsequential are sequoia seeds that it takes 90,000 to make a pound; their nutritional value is so low squirrels ignore them in favor of the soft tissue of the green cone scales. Many of General Sherman's potential progeny are released in the process although the likelihood of their survival to a mature tree is on the order of a million to one.

So far, General Sherman's day is just like any other sunny November day in the last 2,200 years. But now, at 9 a.m., the King of Kings is visited by an animal unknown to it in its first two millennia: The first two tourists have arrived. Like many others throughout the day, they cannot resist the gravitational attraction of General Sherman and, against posted requests to the contrary, hop the fence to pose with and touch greatness.

Afternoon

Photosynthesis is now in full swing. The stomata are all open to take carbon dioxide into the scaly leaves, capillary action is sucking up water through the xylem, chlorophyll is absorbing sunlight to power their combination into energy-storing carbohydrate. But despite this knowledge, it is difficult to gaze up at a living organism that weighs as much as three 747's and imagine how it formed, literally, out of thin air, water, and light. It's difficult because we are short-lived humans; the road to truly understanding big trees is paved with time.

The sun is now warm enough to stir air currents and launch a few insects.

Biologists have catalogued nearly 200 species of insects and arachnids that spend a significant part of their life cycling on or in a giant sequoia. Although many burrow into the bark or suck juices from the needles, their effect is generally negligible and none have been known to directly kill a mature tree in the wild. At the peak of summer, General Sherman may harbor well over 100,000 arthropods and yet be little worse for the wear, thanks to its chemical defenses and bark that's up to 2 feet thick.

At 4:40 p.m. the last tourist snaps a photo and walks away shaking his head in disbelief. Even though it is a weekday in November, more than 100 tourists, representing at least five different languages, have visited General Sherman today. In the summer that number would be many thousands.

Sunset

In the fading light General Sherman closes its stomata to reduce water loss and shuts down photosynthesis. Now, the starch produced in the chloroplasts is shunted through the phloem for maintenance and growth. At this point in its life, the biggest tree in the world increases its radius only about a millimeter each year.

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Sudden changes in nature like tornadoes, earthquakes, and mass migrations make headlines, but most of the natural world, including big trees, is built by incremental changes magnified by time.

But now the General Sherman's size really comes into play. If all its bark were laid out in one flat continuous sheet, the resulting area could easily hold three professional basketball courts with room left over for the coaches and bench warmers. Beneath all that bark lies the cambium, the living, growing, wood-producing layer that has made General Sherman what it is today. The low and short-lived November sun probably resulted in little growth today, but on average, General Sherman grows a layer of wood equivalent to a 2x4 nearly 4 feet long every day. That makes it one of the fastest growing organisms in the world.

Early Night

As darkness envelopes the tree, the color, texture, and other details are lost to my senses and the intimidating mass forces itself to the fore of my perception by the deeper darkness it creates against the night sky. General Sherman's sides stand out starkly against the starry field but the black void between them seems impossibly wide all the way up. A spotted owl calls out to state the obvious: this is an old-growth forest.

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The temperature drops rapidly into the 30s with a touch of breeze as the cooler air moves downslope. Occasionally, a branch creaks in the forest. Otherwise, I sense no change other than the slow turning of the universe overhead.

In the daylight, General Sherman's bulk gives an impression of great longevity and permanence. But around 9:00 p.m. I look up past the crown and see that the Andromeda Galaxy, the farthest object visible to the naked eye, shines down on General Sherman's crown with 2 million-year-old light. Yes, someday, even General Sherman will fall. The only question is, what will be the cause?

Today, General Sherman and many other giant sequoias are protected in national parks but they live only in a narrow elevation belt in the Sierra Nevada. Above 7,500 feet it is too cold, below 5,000 feet it is too dry. This Sequoia Belt moves up or down the mountains according to long-term climate.

From pollen in soil layers we know that sequoias have only been in this elevation range for about 4,500 years, only a couple of sequoia lifetimes. Global warming will move this belt higher. The sequoia species may move upward with the change in climate, and we might have to help, but the big old trees will be left low and dry. Fortunately, at 6,900 feet, General Sherman grows near the high side of the Sequoia Belt, but will we someday have to install a sprinkler system?

Midnight

With my headlamp I found a tiny spider and two mites, smaller than a period on this page, running about in spite of the cold. I've been running around, too, to keep warm. Otherwise, nothing else has happened in the last few hours, although I could speculate that a perching bird ruffled its feathers and small rodents have silently tended their business. Meanwhile, your not-so-stalwart photojournalist starts having serious thoughts about hot chocolate and a sleeping bag. Since little to nothing has happened in the last several hours, this reporter will unabashedly guess that for the next five hours little to nothing will continue to happen.

Dawn

As far as I can tell, I was right. Andromeda and Pegasus have been replaced by Mars and Gemini, but all else is the same. One half hour later, the dawn twilight begins to chase away the darkest shadows and dimmest stars. Within another half-hour a muted color returns to General Sherman's bark. At 6:15 a.m., 15 minutes before official sunrise, the first bird, a brown creeper, calls out a tentative, high-pitched see. Fifteen minutes after sunrise, two American robins perch on the two highest spires of General Sherman, as irreverent to royalty as a fly buzzing around a king's head.

The past 24 hours of General Sherman's life are probably typical for a November day but they have not been average because so many things change with the seasons. On an average day, statistically speaking, General Sherman would sequester two pounds of carbon dioxide, grow four pounds of wood, six cones, and 1,200 seeds, amaze 3,800 tourists, and pose for thousands of pictures. But still, that would be just one day.

In its lifetime, General Sherman has experienced over 803,000 sunrises and sunsets, 28,700 full moons, 880 total lunar eclipses, six total solar eclipses, and survived about 90 fires and dozens of earthquakes. It has produced more than 3 million cones and 600 million seeds, fed over 1,000 generations of Douglas's squirrels, and harbored hundreds of millions of bugs.

By spending a day with General Sherman I have gotten to know it better in ways words and pictures cannot truly convey. Ultimately, there is no way to completely understand what time with a big tree means unless you experience it yourself. Do so, and I guarantee your enlightenment. General Sherman will oblige, I'm sure, but any big tree will do.

Whit Bronaugh hails from Eugene, Oregon.

Story and photos by Whit Bronaugh