Redwoods after darka must-see

I took a new approach to Crescent City on Sunday night.

Past Hiouchi, in one of the series of tight curves that break up Highway 199's brief straightaways, unworldly trees materialized in the light of my high-beams.

I've been along the stretch many times in the daylight, of course, but this was my first nocturnal passage into redwood country from the northeast.

It was easy to imagine how someone driving here for the first time would experience it. Leaving Interstate 5 at Grants Pass, getting on the "Redwood Highway," then negotiating more than an hour of fairly standard coast range terrain. Just when the driver starts to think there's nothing so spectacularly different about this neck of the woods, the monster trees materialize close enough to threaten the passenger-side mirror.

Glimpsed briefly in the night, they seem the size of barns. Impossibly big. Even a driver who plunged on nonstop, hitting Highway 101 and speeding out of the region, would have lasting memories of the roadside behemoths.

As for me, just short of midnight, I'd found another way to enjoy the fantasy land we live in.

The nighttime special effects embellished the home stretch of what has otherwise become an all-too-familiar drive. I've been helping my parents out with an extended project, which has meant quick drives to Salem and back the past three weekends.

I've nearly memorized the sequence of I-5 billboards between Grants Pass and Salem. Southbound on Sunday evening I passed an abandoned sedan on the shoulder that I was pretty sure I'd seen a week earlier. Then I saw a Ron Paul-for-president sign that I knew I'd seen a week earlier, just after the red-tagged car.

How long does it take the highway folks in Oregon to remove those cars? For that matter, why is the Ron Paul sign still up? And why are there so many more bumper stickers for Obama than for McCain?

There's been plenty of time to ponder such highway mysteries.

Hours before the encounter with the night giants, there was another twist to the most recent leg of my marathon weekend commute. After a blue-sky scorcher on Saturday, it was hazy Sunday in Salem. I didn't realize why until about the time I hit Eugene heading home. Glancing west, I saw the sun fiery orange against a sky the color of gray Necco wafers, a penny candy from my childhood.

Ten-day-old lightning-sparked fires in Northern California are exporting smoke far to the north. The haze hovered in every low spot amid the Southern Oregon mountains.

Driving home after two days of ignoring the news, I thought of another scenic stretch of highway and wondered just how close the flames were to Big Sur.

With reminders everywhere, why is it so easy for us to forget to appreciate what we have, while we have it?