CONTEMPLATION

Santa Cruz County: Resources, Advantages, Objects of Interest by Isabel Hammel Raymond, 1887

"Many thoughts will occupy the mind as we stand at their feet, looking upward, their tops seeming to pierce the sky. One feels like a pigmy or dwarf beside them. My mind was caused to wander back to remote ages of the past, and wonder how many winter winds had whistled through their branches, and the thunder bolts that they had warded off. These monarchs of the forest may have occupied the spot where they now stand ages before a human foot trod the soil, or a human voice disturbed their silence, and before the Christian religion was promulgated." 

Source: The Autobiography of James Crooks, A.M., M.D., [Terre Haute, Indiana], 1900.