Sleeping Beneath a Planetarium Full of Stars

Sleeping beneath a planetarium full of stars and camping in the forest become unique experiences in the national forests of the United States.

Unlike national parks, national forests offer a more rustic and rugged experience. They generally have no registration office or on-site supervision, and many have no water, hot showers, or flush toilets—only pit toilets. They either have no bear-proof food lockers or trash receptacles, so visitors must arrive well prepared.

This week, we camped in several national forests. One great advantage is that many do not require reservations: you can camp wherever a site is available. They are also one of the least expensive ways to travel. When required, you leave payment in an envelope inside a collection box. At these campgrounds, the fees ranged from five to eight dollars per night. The system relies on campers’ honesty, because no one comes around to check whether you have paid.

We spent our first few nights in Washington State’s O on the Pacific coast of the United States, where we found an unusual place: Littleton Horse Camp. It is a small campground designed for people who vacation with their horses. It has well-equipped corrals and spaces for motorhomes and vehicles pulling horse trailers. Travelers like us—without horses—are also welcome, although equestrians have priority.

There I met Honey, a golden mare with an almost white mane and tail. She and her owners were our neighbors, so I visited them because I was fascinated by the idea of camping with a horse. They told me that although they live on a nearby farm, they enjoy camping on weekends and the three of them explore the forest trails together.

As I listened, I thought about the many ways to live and how not all human beings fit into the same mold. All three of them looked perfectly content.

I have changed, too. I never imagined I would be living this adventure in places so remote that we use our phones only as cameras because the sole signal on the screen is a satellite icon—🛰️ SOS—for emergencies.

Every evening, we gathered around a small camping stove. At the same time, Martín improvised dinner from the few foods we had bought along the way that did not require refrigeration. In the half-light, beneath the red glow of our headlamps so we would not attract insects, we listened to Carter’s guitar and gentle voice disappear into the vastness of the night.

Stories from the Forest

I love sleeping curled inside the warmth of my sleeping bag, attentive to the sounds of the night. For years, an alarm clock summoned me to begin a routine of breakfasts, packed lunches, growing children, and work that never ended.

Now I awaken to birdsong that changes as we move from one place to another. Sometimes I hear faint footsteps in the undergrowth. When I go outside to investigate, I find a raccoon stealing something we forgot to put away, or a Steller’s jay loudly demanding that we prepare breakfast, hoping to escape with something delicious.

I return to my warm chrysalis, put on a sweater so I can extend my arms into the cold dawn, and sit down to write. It is a singular moment. Memories of the previous day begin to appear, mingling with the buzzing of bees against the tent and the calls of birds as sunlight gradually illuminates the forest.

I write, close my eyes and, still half asleep, allow the memories to flow. Not only the recent ones; sometimes others arrive from far away—from my childhood and from the many years I have lived.

The Mystery of the Cones

Yesterday, while we were eating breakfast, something fell from above: a small green sphere with what looked like a spike. I thought it was a bird dropping its waste. I looked up, but the branches were so high that it was impossible to locate anything.

Suddenly, an entire cone fell. It was a green conifer cone containing seeds. I had never seen one like it, because the ones we find on the forest floor are always dry and open.

Then another one fell, followed by another and another.

It was a bombardment. We had to get up because we did not know whether the attack was intentional, and objects falling from that height became projectiles. We immediately dismissed the bird theory, since few animals could reach those branches. There was only one possible suspect: a squirrel.

Five minutes later, still holding my breakfast and dodging the rain of cones, I saw her descend slowly along the trunk of a tree that must have been about one hundred feet tall. She stopped at eye level and stared at me without blinking.

I picked up my camera, and she began hiding from me, circling the trunk and leaping into the neighboring trees. I couldn’t photograph her, but I found her very amusing. I wondered why she was doing it. Did she consider herself the owner of our table, or did she want our food?

I collected the cones. I found about fifteen and arranged them in a small pile among the pebbles and dry leaves. I examined them carefully. The first objects to fall were the shiny green scales that formed the cones, each ending in a small point. That’s why I hadn’t recognized them at first.

I was away from the campground all day, and when I returned, the cones were still where I had left them. I found it strange that the squirrel had not collected them, but there they were.

The following morning, however, when I emerged from the tent, they were gone.

I laughed to myself. My concerns now are: Who took the cones? Was it the squirrel reclaiming her treasure, a raccoon, or a nocturnal rodent? They had been only a few feet from my head, and I had heard absolutely nothing.

The Triplet Conifers

I found three very tall trees forming a nearly perfect equilateral triangle. I wondered whether they might have grown from the same seed because they stood less than three feet apart, were the same height, and had similar trunks.

None had retained its lower branches; the few remaining ones were very high. What caught my attention was how they grew without touching one another. Their branches seemed to alternate so they would not block each other’s light. It was as if the three trees had reached an agreement.

Mother Trees and Nurse Logs

I am neither a biologist nor a scientist, but I have loved observing since I was a child. I use my camera to record what I see, and photographs allow me to return in time and discover patterns, references, and differences among landscapes.

In tropical forests, I never saw as many fallen trunks as I have in the cedar forests of North America. In the jungle, even the giants decompose quickly because of the heat, humidity, fungi, and lichens, allowing seeds to grow rapidly through the leaf litter.

But in these temperate forests, I found something I had never seen in the Amazon: nurse logs. On colossal fallen trunks that take centuries to decompose, I saw dozens of new trees growing. Their roots embraced the old wood as they fed upon the life already at rest, preparing to become the forest’s new giants.

I also found other trees that fascinated me. When many of the oldest trees die or fall, new life emerges from within their bark or from their very depths.

I photographed an enormous tree that had fallen, with part of its root system still anchored in the Earth. The colossus landed across neighboring trees, which held it above the ground. Even more remarkably, their branches had grown around the fallen trunk and wrapped themselves around it as if embracing it.

I imagine this process took many years. Yet the mother tree—the fallen giant—never died because some of its roots remained buried in the soil. Branches emerged from its leaning trunk and eventually became trees themselves, already so tall that they disappeared into the canopy.

I counted six trees growing from that single trunk.

Later, I searched for information because I did not want to rely solely on my assumptions. I learned that in botany, when a branch begins growing vertically, it can produce what is called a reiteration: a new trunk developing from the main tree. Structurally, what I had found was a single living organism with several enormous vertical trunks.

Tiny Seeds

As I walked among the tallest trees on Earth—the coast redwoods, which can grow more than three hundred feet tall—I searched for their cones and assumed they would be proportional to the trees’ immense size.

But when Carter appeared carrying this tiny cone, I could not believe it. I held it in my hand and thought about how nature is never predictable and always finds a way to surprise us: hidden inside were its minuscule seeds.

The Wounds of Time

As I walked among these colossal trunks, I noticed something that surprised me. The park’s largest and oldest trees bore enormous black scars at their bases, some so deep that they resembled caves made of charcoal. I assumed the scars were hundreds of years old because the “younger” trees remained untouched.

These coastal giants have bark up to twelve inches thick, which helps protect them from fire. Fire can also clear the forest floor, expose mineral-rich soil, and create favorable conditions for fallen seeds to germinate.

Those black caverns in the wood remind us that life in the forest sometimes emerges through fire and begins again.

The Magic of the Rainforests

The first time I saw photographs of rainforests in the Northern Hemisphere, I was astonished. Until then, the word rainforest had evoked only the tropical jungles of the Amazon.

I saved those images in a folder on my computer where I collect places I would like to visit, even when they seem like impossible dreams. Those forests felt so distant that I never imagined I would one day walk among them. Life allowed me not only to be there but to observe them closely.

It is a world where the greens of olives, mint, lime, pistachios, emeralds, and jade intermingle. Moss covers the Earth, rocks, trunks, and trails. It even grows beneath the water and hangs from tree branches, weaving itself into lacework that glows when illuminated from behind.

Living Among the Mist

We felt the embrace of the damp mist and walked among clouds, not only in the forest but also on the beach. Sometimes the fog was luminous, ethereal, warm, and clinging; at other times, it was gray, dense, and cold.

When night came, we put on our headlamps so we could cook. The moment I switched on the white light, I had the impression that millions of insects were flying around my face. As a precaution, I immediately switched to red, although I didn’t feel anything biting me.

Intrigued, I turned the white light on again to examine what I had seen. Looking closely, I discovered that they were droplets of fog.

The sight was so beautiful and fantastic that I completely forgot about the food. The powerful beam of my headlamp illuminated the minuscule drops of water as they swirled endlessly around me.

At nearly sixty-nine years old, it was the first time I had ever seen them that way.

The Stars That Would Not Let Me Sleep

Although it wasn’t yet very cold at our first campground in the California mountains, we left the rainfly off the tent. We slept beneath its mesh canopy, as though we were inside a planetarium.

Between the towering branches, I could see a perfectly clear sky. It was so crowded with stars that there did not seem to be a single patch of darkness without a point of light.

The spectacle was so beautiful that I didn’t want to sleep away. Who could fall asleep while looking at a sky like that?

I felt as small as the Little Prince gazing into infinite space, knowing that somewhere among those stars was his rose. 🌹

Our map from last week route