Here is a great story for our second Fall TreeHugger post of the season courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. I don’t know the author, Betsy Corcoran, but I have it on good authority that she is a Burlingamer. The full-page piece is headlined “We Drove 3,900 Miles From San Francisco to Boston With Seven Giant-Sequoia Seedlings.” Betsy relays the story of her and her husband marveling at the Giant Sequoias to the point were

Rangers frown on taking even a stick from a national park. Still, I needed a reminder of these groves’ peacefulness and strength. I slipped a few of the marshmallow-size sequoia cones into my pocket. A year later, they released seeds, which I decided to try to germinate. It worked. Fast-forward four years: I had nurtured nine baby giant sequoias that were now outgrowing their large plastic buckets. I planted two in my tiny backyard—perhaps a bit ambitious given how large these trees could get if they survive, say, 1,000 years. (If they last even 100, they will likely outlast my house.)

But the rest of the trees? I wanted them to go to people who meant something to me. My brother, Chris Corcoran, who lives outside Boston, loved the idea. He wanted a tree, no questions asked. His enthusiasm inspired me: Why not take a road trip, with trees? As friends heard about our evolving plans, they began raising their hands.

And so the story went. She had to get a “phytosanitary certificate” to transport them out of state and deal with a variety of other details like

Traveling with trees is a bit like traveling with puppies, minus the poop bags. We overnighted in places where we could take the trees out of the van, water them and give them a couple of hours of light. Whenever we glanced in the rear view mirror, we could see the trees gently waving their tiny branches in sync with the motion of the van. Our destinations included family and friends in places as diverse as Salt Lake City, Oconomowoc, Wis., Chicago, Maryland, and the Eastern seaboard: Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

It’s a great story and if you are a WSJ subscriber click on through. I sure hope the US Forestry Service hasn’t shown up at her house.