Trillium Falls

Trillium Falls, Redwood National & State Parks

Back when I was in law school during the Mesozoic Era, I would often work very late nights, regularly into the wee hours, before heading back down to Hyde Park on the IC. Our office was on the southern side of the loop on LaSalle, just a short walk from Maury's Deli, where they served up excellent Chicago dogs, and ginormous sandwiches. Before it got too late, I would usually hop over—no Door Dash back then—grab a sandwich and a couple of Heileman's Old Styles to go. I'm a little pickier about my beer these days, but I will always have a fond place in my heart for HOS, for the memories of those times, and for their ads on TV that featured images of streams and waterfalls flowing through sylvan glades and forests illuminated by streams of light, and one time, featuring the music of Vangelis' L'enfant from Opera Sauvage. Just magical.

So, when I was visiting Redwood National Park, and I came around the bend to Trillium Falls, I had the instant rush of those memories all over again. The falls were still mostly in shadow, illuminated by the glow of trees above the crest of the falls. Rocks were glistening in the reflected soft light, moss supremely green. Though not exactly crowded, especially down in the water where I was, there were quite a few people around. I did not hear them. And in this image, you see only the serenity.

Provenance: Phase One XT • IQ4.150 • Rodenstock 32mm

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Just up the trail corridor in the same park complex, another encounter with the forest in morning silence: the cathedral quiet of Prairie Creek Redwoods at dawn.

Further south along the Avenue of the Giants, where the trees carry their history differently: the fire-scarred giants of Founders Grove, Humboldt Redwoods.

From the same region of the coast, a study in how this forest receives the morning light: the quality of light in Prairie Creek Redwoods.

For the history behind why Redwood National Park and places like it exist at all: the Centennial Stump in the General Grant Grove — the tree that fueled the debate.

For another waterfall tucked into old-growth, further south in the California redwood range: Tiptoe Falls at Portola Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains.


Fine Art Redwood Photography

Morning light streams through the redwood canopy and illuminates Trillium Falls in Redwood National & State Park.


Morning light streams through the redwood canopy and illuminates Trillium Falls in Redwood National & State Park.
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Trillium Falls

There is a moment on the trail when the forest changes its quality of sound — not louder or quieter, exactly, but different, as though the redwoods themselves are cupping something. Then you round the bend and Trillium Falls is there: a cascade of modest scale but enormous presence, tucked into the forest like a secret kept only for those who walk in.

The falls were still mostly in shadow when this was made. Morning light had reached the canopy above the crest but had not yet descended to the floor below. The water catches that glow as it comes over the top, and the long exposure has pulled the cascade into silk — smooth and continuous — the broken flow settling into a dark, still pool at the base. The moss on the surrounding rocks is so saturated a green it seems lit from within. Every surface that is not water is wet, glistening, alive.

There were other visitors on the trail that morning. You would not know it from this image. A waterfall in a redwood forest has a way of drawing your attention so completely inward that the rest of the world quietly recedes — footsteps, voices, everything. What remains is the sound of the water and the sense, difficult to name but impossible to miss, that you are in the presence of something that has been here a very long time.