And then when you finally reach the end of your journey you are looking at the oldest living thing on the planet, a bristlecone pine tree 4,768 years, nicknamed Methuselah, after the oldest man in the bible, who was the grandfather of Noah.

A tree that was a seedling 200 years before the Egyptian Pyramids were ever constructed, or the ancient Sumerians on the Tigris-Euphrates river learned to make iron, a tree that has lived through 4.75 millenniums of major nature disasters and miraculous inventions. An amazing specimen of life that has survived under the harshest of conditions.

So sacred is this living treasure that recently a 23-year-old arborist, Jared Milarch, climbed to its undisclosed spot and introduce the ancient tree to modern science. His objective was to cultivate seedlings that where genetically identical, cloned, from the amazing Methuselah. So guarded is the location of the tree, he was swore to secrecy for fear of tourist damaging the tree or sneaking off with souvenirs of bark and branches.

Milarch and his father, David, who founded a non-profit organization—Champion Tree Project—are on a mission to clone 850 registered national champion trees and help reforest the continent with seedlings from these tree giants of history.

This effort has lead father and son to Washington D.C. with three-inch "tufts of baby green needles" from their harvest of two Methuselah seedlings. These needles are to be donated to the U.S. Botanic Garden.

This amazing tale of people caring about the earth and its wonders was a rather small story in the paper but one that immediately caught my attention after having recently spent several days in one of my favorite locations, Big Sur.

I only had to travel less than 200 miles to enjoy some of the most natural coastline on the planet. Cambria—six miles south of San Simeon on US 1—is a quaint town where the beaches are rugged and sea mammals are the real estate owners.

It's a spot where I can sit on one large rock and watch a sea lion sunning or an otter primping on another rock almost an arms length away. I can wake up in the morning to the bark of a sea lion. And I can walk along grassy paths accompanied by hawks soaring over head.

There is nothing to do in this small town, population 6,444, other than playing tourist—shopping and eating. But that was perfectly fine with me after the hectic pace of working at a newspaper. It is a vacation spot that offers the gift of solitude and time to let your motor idle while appreciating the majestic environment that engulfs the community.

This untouched surrounding, with its windy afternoons and roar of the waves crashing fearless onto shore, is natures way of demonstrating whose in charge with a polite but forcefully dose of, "and don't you forget it."

Every time I come to the tip of Big Sur, I marvel that a place like this still exists. That oil wells aren't drilling offshore or densely placed housing hasn't cluttered and destroyed the coastline. And there is a sense of satisfaction in knowing that somewhere along the way there were people with the vision and foresight about the beauty and importance of nature. People who made an effort to preserve this small stretch of California coast, which is basically to wild to tame.

Each time we drive down I imagine that it looks very much like it did hundreds of years ago. I think about the ships that must have struggled through its dangerous coastal channels, and the lighthouse—Piedras Blancas—just up the coast that helped guide those seamen through.

And I look at the areas scraggly oak, ash and cypress trees that are coastal trademarks, and like ancient Methuselah have probably endless stories to tell if only their branches could speak.

It is during these trips that I pass on my appreciation of nature to my children so that they understand how rare it is to be able to sit next to a sea lion or otter. How special it is to walk under the wings of a hawk, and how important it is to care about the preservation of the trees and sea grasses that landscape the coast. This experience, which so many take for granted, is an important lesson that needs to be taught so that future generations understand the meaning of these rare places and work to maintain their preservation for centuries. And so that some day people won't have to climb 10,000 feet to a secret location to save one of the world's oldest wonders, they can just drive down Big Sur and relish in it.

Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@svcn.com.