Some of the most impressive trees in the world stand in this park. Yet we see only their trunks – their soaring branches merge into a canopy overhead that is virtually impossible to photograph expressively. I was left to concentrate on that part of a redwood tree that best tells its story – the lines and textures of its ancient trunk. I was photographing such a trunk when a hand suddenly appeared from the other side. It was the hand of a young child, climbing into the crook of the tree so that her father could take her picture there. I made this shot of us her hand as it entered the crook and grasped the tree. This image incongruously matches the touch of a child’s hand to wood that was growing almost a thousand years ago. Her youth is forever linked to its age, and through it to the story of nature itself.