ALL THINGS COME FULL CIRCLE

Willy Whitefeather

Long ago the English were in the California Sequoia Forest (named after the Cherokee Indian, Sequoia); these Englishmen found trees so big, that they sent word back to England: “There are trees so big here that it takes fifty men joining hands to encircle one tree.”

“Bah! Humbug!” came the reply from England. “There are no trees that big! Send us the proof!” (They did not even believe their own people!)

So, back in the Sequoia Forest they cut the bark off one of the great Sequoia trees (the bark at the base is over three feet thick). They cut it into 3ft. X 4ft.squares and they numbered each square. They cut the lower section of bark off the tree with instructions on how large to build a wooden framework. It was loaded on a ship bound for England and sent to the Crystal Palace in London. There they constructed a skeleton framework and nailed the bark, side by side, up to the framework and when the job was done, the Englishmen walked around the Great Tree in London and exclaimed “Blimey! There are trees that big!”

Now the Englishmen had a saying: “Little children should be seen and not heard” but the little children of England had a song: “London Bridge is falling down…falling down…and they kept singing and singing.

And then it happened! One day some men came from Arizona, USA and brought down the London Bridge. Not the whole bridge, just a shortened version and took apart the 3ft x 4ft stones and numbered each stone. They brought it across the ocean on a ship to America and reassembled the London Bridge at Lake Havasu, Arizona, on the Colorado River where it still stands today.

The London Bridge was brought to Arizona by Mr. McCullough who invented the McCullough chain saw that is used to cut down the great trees.

One day there was a forest fire and the great Sequoia tree was burnt black because its bark protection was removed but it still stands today.

You can see and touch that Sequoia tree and you can see and touch the London Bridge for all things come full circle.

And one day all the children will sing: “Let there be peace” and one day the war-minds will give a war and no one will show up!

Every year along with the payment for the bridge, Mr. McCullough sends a Hopi (which means peace) Kachina Doll from Arizona to the giver of the London Bridge.

P.S. The sequoia tree is at the Mariposa Grove in the Yosemite National Park in California and Sequoia, the Cherokee Indian who wrote the first Indian alphabet/syllabary, died at Mariposa, Mexico looking for a band of Cherokees who had escaped the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Sequoia’s alphabet was the written code used during World War II. Language of other tribes was the spoken code.