7. Love Among the Treesitters
Dr. Sarah Takeda had been out in nature before—Yosemite, Big Bear, the Stanford Camp up near Lake Tahoe—but this was much more primitive. Where was the lodge? The rustic cottages? She pulled her rental car into the Lost Mountain Campground parking lot. The guy on the phone had said he’d meet her there, but she hadn’t been able to estimate the exact time of her arrival. She was to fly into the Portland airport, then rent a car and drive for nearly two hours on strange roads out into the middle of nowhere.
“Don’t worry,” he had told her, “we’ll know when you get here.”
She parked in the empty gravel lot, turned off the car and stepped out. The air was so fresh it hurt to breathe. At the edge of the lot, huge trees blotted out the October sun that had seemed quite warm when she drove down the freeway. The campground was silent. Not peaceful silent, but creepy silent. She walked to the rusted barrel trashcan and threw out her foil protein bar wrapper. Now what was she supposed to do? A vehicle approached and she instinctively moved back to the car. As if a white four-door sedan could protect her.
A green truck, old but immaculate, with the USDA Forest Service emblem on the door, cruised slowly past her. The large black woman driving it scowled at her, then nodded. Sarah gave an anemic little wave and the ranger went on her way.
Okay, Sarah thought, that was weird. She looked down to see if her outfit looked suspicious, but she had dressed as inconspicuously as possible: jeans and an old sweatshirt from college. She considered jumping back in the car and peeling out. But of course she had come too far. It hadn’t been that easy to find someone to cover her practice, and it had been much too long since she’d seen her sister.
She heard a noise in the woods and whirled around. A young man trudged toward her, his hiking boots crunching loudly on the rock. He was one of those guys whose head was disproportionately huge compared to the rest of his body. It made her think of a Mardi Gras parade.
“Sarah?”
“Yes. Are you Randall?”
“My forest name is Roebuck,” he said, completely serious.
He was better looking close up; somber brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, curly black hair that could have used a good cutting. “Thanks for coming.” He stuck out his hand. “You guys look alike.”
She tried not to cringe when she took his hand, but he smelled of deeply embedded dirt, like the transients she had treated at the free clinic in the Tenderloin when she was a resident at the University of San Francisco. “We’re twins,” she said.
He smiled and nodded. “I know, but it’s still kind of freaky. How was your flight?”
“Shorter than I thought. It’s just a little over an hour from the Bay Area.”
He looked around the parking lot. “Listen, you’d better pay the fee. Some of the rangers are sticklers.”
She took her handbag out of the car. “I saw one drive by. She looked scary.”
“No, she’s okay. And if you pay the parking fee, she’ll keep an eye on your car. There are a lot of tweakers hanging out here.”
She walked to the fee box and read the directions. Roebuck looked off into the forest as Sarah fished three dollar bills out of her wallet and stuffed them into an envelope. She tore the receipt off and slipped the envelope into the metal fee box.
“I guess I’m supposed to put this on my dashboard.”
She returned to her car and placed the parking receipt inside, then locked the door.
“Ready?” Roebuck asked.
“Let’s go,” she answered.
He led her to the trailhead and they stepped into the forest. The air instantly cooled. Roebuck glanced down at her shiny black Stuart Weitzman boots, then at her sweatshirt.
“Brown, huh?” he asked.
“I did my undergrad work there.”
“Did you know John Kennedy, Jr.?”
Was this guy a moron? “He was about 15 years ahead of me,” she said.
“Oh, that’s right. You and Hummingbird are the same age. You seem older.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. Hummingbird. Oh, please.
They marched along the dirt path, past moss-covered stumps and giant ferns and thick bushes with green leaves so shiny they looked waxed. As they hiked farther into the forest, the trees grew bigger and the trail seemed darker and chillier. After about fifteen minutes of walking, Roebuck led her off the trail, over a small rise and into a stand of old growth Douglas fir. Sarah heard creaking above her head and looked up. The trees’ limbs moved in the wind, like they were waving at her, beckoning.
“We’re in Abuela,” Roebuck said.
“Pardon me?”
“The tree named Abuela.” He pointed ahead. “It means grandmother in Spanish.”
“I know what abuela means,” she snapped, following him through the brush. A figured emerged from behind Abuela’s massive trunk, and Sarah gasped. The green-clad person spoke quietly into a radio clipped to his or her collar; Sarah hadn’t yet determined whether it was a man or a woman.
“That’s Dervish,” Roebuck said over his shoulder. “She’s guarding tonight. The timber company hires climbers to harass us. We try to keep them on the ground.”
Sarah extended her hand to Dervish.
“You’re Hummingbird’s sister,” Dervish stated, holding Sarah’s hand but not shaking it. She was a fragile-looking dredlocked blonde with light blue eyes and, at that moment, a very red and runny nose. She’d be cute if it weren’t for those hideous dreds, Sarah thought, her forest name should be Medusa. “Is that all you brought?” Dervish tapped Sarah’s purse.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll take it,” Roebuck said.
Sarah hesitated a moment before handing over her bag.
“It’s okay,” Dervish assured her, “We’ll send it up in the basket. You’ll be reunited with it as soon as you get up there.”
Sarah suddenly realized she was going to climb a 150-foot Douglas fir. She looked up again, and way way way way up there, spotted a wooden platform. “God,” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “How do we do this?” she asked.
He opened a large backpack that leaned against the tree trunk and pulled out a handful of straps and buckles. “This is a harness,” he explained. “You attach yourself to that rope and pulley, then hoist your ass up.”
She stared at him until he laughed.
“How did you think you were going to get up there?” he asked. “An express elevator?” He handed the harness to Dervish who began fastening it around Sarah’s shoulders and thighs.
An inkling of panic rose within her but she quickly squelched it. Nothing had scared her in a very long time. She’d had all the fear beaten out of her when she was a resident—or so she thought.
“You look like you’re in pretty good shape,” Roebuck said, appraising her boyish figure.
Sarah shrugged. “I work out.”
“You shouldn’t have any trouble. Just use your legs as much as possible.”
“Women don’t have a lot of upper body strength,” Dervish added, pulling a strap tight. “Don’t fight it. Relax.”
Sarah looked up again at the platform. “How high is that again?”
“About 12 stories.” Roebuck answered.
“Holy crap.”
“No worries,” he said, “You’ll do fine. I can tell when people aren’t going to make it.”
“How?”
It was his turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I can just tell.”
Dervish clipped her onto the rope. “Check it out,” she said. “If you start to fall, the rope pulls tight. Kind of like a seat belt. Just lean back and climb on up.” She handed Sarah a pair of stiff climbing gloves and smiled. “Good luck,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve as she returned to her guard post.
Sarah took their advice and relaxed; if her sister could do it, she certainly could too. After a couple deep breaths, she st
arted up. It was surprisingly easy at first. She hadn’t spent much time climbing trees growing up in Pasadena, but she’d been pretty agile on the monkey bars. She grabbed branches and hand-holds that seemed very well used, like a million people had climbed the tree. Up, up, higher and higher. Don’t look down, she advised herself, though she’d never been particularly afraid of heights. This is nothing, she thought, yet her arms were tingling a bit and sweat ran down her neck.
But suddenly, the piece of bark on which she had planted her foot gave way and she slipped. The rope jerked taut, just as Dervish had promised, and Sarah swung out slightly. She looked up to see how much farther she had to go. Quite a ways yet. Then she disregarded her own advice and looked down. Her heart, already pounding from the adrenalin rush of slipping, began crashing around in her chest. She knew it was really bouncing too, because she had seen plenty of echocardiograms. She’d also seen plenty of head trauma from falls and broken spines and shattered limbs and brain damage and just plain corpses. What the hell was she doing up there? She couldn’t move. Her mind was sprinting like a hippie to free hummus, but her body was absolutely paralyzed. These, she knew, were the beginning symptoms of a panic attack.
Sarah closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and blew out several times. Cleansing breaths, just like she told her patients who were delivering. She should be back home with them. Elena Rodriguez was probably going into labor right this minute and furious because Sarah had gone out of town. She’d probably get stuck with a male doc—that would truly fry her hormonally challenged ass.
“You okay?” Roebuck shouted from below.
Sarah swallowed hard and cleared her throat. Thinking about work had calmed her. “Yeah,” she called back, “I’m okay.” She looked up and saw a head looking over the platform. Emily? Damn her anyway. Sarah had thought she was done rescuing her. Okay, if wimpy little Emily could get up there, she could too. With determination, she quickly climbed the rest of the way, probably moving too fast to be safe, but she was completely juiced and just wanted to get off that rope as soon as humanly possible.
Finally, she reached the top and pulled herself up. The platform was made of cedar boards, built doughnut-shaped around the tree trunk, about eight feet wide. Her sister reached for her arm and pulled her toward the trunk. Then Emily unclipped her rope and reclipped it to a metal ring screwed into the tree. Sarah sat gasping, staring at her twin. They hadn’t seen each other in three years, since Grandpa Takeda’s funeral.
“Sarah?” Emily looked shocked to see her.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing here? Are Mom and Dad okay?”
Sarah nodded and touched her throat. “Do you have any water?”
“Of course.” Emily crawled over to a cooler and pulled out a metal bottle. Sarah drank deeply, then moved a little farther away from the edge. “Are you all right?” Emily asked.
Sarah nodded again, though she was jarred by her sister’s appearance. It used to be like looking into a mirror, but now they couldn’t be more different. Emily’s skin was glowing and plump, like Sarah’s had looked ten years ago. Sarah had always sported some version of the classic Asian-girl pageboy haircut—now it was chopped bluntly but artistically at the nape of her neck—and Emily kept hers long. It had helped others tell them apart. But now, Sarah was stunned to see Emily’s head shaved with just about a half-inch of thick new growth sticking up all over. What was it about the woods that made women mutilate their hair? “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, reaching over and petting her sister’s hair. “Mom and Dad are fine.”
Emily smiled. “Then why are you here?”
Roebuck had just reached the platform and climbed aboard. Sarah nodded toward him. “He called me.”
Emily’s face suddenly turned hard and she glared at Roebuck. “What is this?” she asked “Some kind of intervention?” She spat “intervention” like it was a highly contagious disease. Sarah was amazed to see her timid sister lash out like that. “How dare you?” Emily growled.
Roebuck shook his big head, clearly exasperated. “You can’t have a baby up here, Hummingbird. It’s time to leave, regardless. Winter’s coming. It’s hunting season. I thought she might talk some sense into you.”
“You know what, Roebuck? Fuck off!”
“Oh, that’s lovely,” he answered. “Say it louder so our fetus can hear it.” He crawled over to the other side of the platform.
Emily turned back to Sarah. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad to see you anyway, as long as you don’t try to talk some sense into me.”
“Who me?” Their eyes met and they grinned identical grins—sisters again. “How far along are you anyway?”
Emily opened her jacket. “Five months.” She looked down at her lap. “I’m fine.”
“You should at least have an ultrasound. Some blood work.”
“Good grief.” Emily laughed. Sarah noticed she still covered her mouth with her hand. “Billions of women have had babies through the ages. It’s a completely natural human function.”
“Yes,” Sarah agreed, “but I’ve seen what happens when things go wrong. It’s the twenty-first century. There’s no reason to take any chances.” Emily mocked her by wiggling her head in that infuriating way that made Sarah want to deck her. Instead, Sarah sighed. “Will you at least let me examine you?”
“Maybe later,” Emily said gaily. “Tell me how the folks are doing.”
“They are virtually unchanged.” Their parents had both been born in relocation camps during World War II and spent the rest of their lives flying well below the radar. They had lived as straight and narrowly as a Pasadena accountant and housewife could. Sarah was their golden child; Emily, they pretended, was “studying up north.”
For the next hour, the sisters caught up on the last three years. Sarah was full of gossip from their fifteenth high school reunion. “The women looked great,” she reported.
“And the men looked like hell,” Emily finished.
Sarah was relieved to know they were still two halves of a whole. Growing up, Sarah was good at math and science; Emily excelled at English and writing. Sarah was competitive and aggressive; Emily preferred to watch and listen. After high school, Sarah went back east to college and on to medical school in the Bay Area, where she stayed. Emily went north to the University of Oregon, where the treehuggers of Eugene had made her one of their own. She had told Sarah it was the first time she felt as if she belonged somewhere. Sarah had been too busy with her studies to pay much attention. And when Emily emailed that she was working to protect the environment, Sarah thought it involved going door-to-door for donations or something, not becoming a human shield. Their parents seemed to think Emily was a member of a cult. Sarah just figured she was hiding, like she used to do when they were little. She didn’t see that much difference between the upstairs linen closet and a tree. Still, it was quite disturbing to see the way Emily lived. Sarah realized she had slipped into her objective scientist mode so she wouldn’t start freaking out.
But it was nice sitting up there chatting with her sister. The setting sun warmed them and the branches moved pleasantly in the late afternoon wind.
“So what’s with Roebuck?” Sarah asked, lowering her voice since he was sitting just a few feet away, working on his laptop. She suddenly understood why treesitting was so well-documented—there wasn’t much else to do up there.
Emily shrugged. “It was fine for a while, until I got pregnant. Now he’s gone control freak on me.”
Sarah was impressed by Emily’s seemingly newfound ability to stand up to a guy. She’d apparently gotten over her chronic habit of being some guy’s bitch. “So, where do you pee here?”
Emily handed her a plastic jug and discreetly went to the other side of the tree so Sarah could have some privacy. The harness was a little unwieldy; she had to undo her leg straps to get her jeans down. It was very undignified, but at
least she didn’t have to go Number Two. As she zipped up her jeans, the radio crackled and Emily murmured into it.
“Woo hoo,” she hooted. “Herman’s bringing us dinner.”
“Who’s Herman?”
“He’s the guy who owns the diner. He brings us food every once in a while. You timed your visit perfectly.”
It was nearly dark. Roebuck and Emily lit some kerosene lamps and offered Sarah a greasy sleeping bag to wrap up in. As they waited quietly, Sarah looked out into the indigo sky where stars began to appear. There was no noise except for the wind ruffling branches, an occasional truck on the distant highway, the creak of the tree as it rocked slightly. Sarah knew her body was experiencing the after-effects of that massive adrenalin rush, but she couldn’t remember when she‘d felt so utterly relaxed.
The radio crackled again and Sarah heard a pulley squeak as Roebuck pulled their dinner up. At home, she usually grabbed takeout from one of the little restaurants in her Noe Valley neighborhood. Then she read or watched television and went to bed early. She kept telling herself it would be different once her practice was established and her student loans were paid off. Then she’d have time to pursue other interests of some sort. The air was getting cooler by the minute. Sarah leaned back against the trunk. She felt slightly nauseated from the smelly sleeping bag, but she could eat. As long as the food wasn’t too funky.
Emily opened up an aluminum food container and inhaled. “Ahh,” she said blissfully. “Ravioli.” She handed it to Sarah. “Herman makes awesome vegan dishes.”
Sarah sighed. Vegan. Great. She expected it would taste like bark dust, but it did smell heavenly. She took a bite. “Mmm.” She nodded at Emily. It was delicious, despite not having any animal grease whatsoever. Tender, with a variety of fresh flavors and textures filling her mouth: tomato, oregano, perhaps a hint of cayenne. Vegan. Who knew?
Roebuck began stuffing his huge head. “So,” he asked after an enormous gulp of a diet Coke, “why are you a doctor?”
Sarah snorted. Was that the best he had? “That’s what I am. Why are you a treesitter?” She looked at Emily, who winked. Just like old times: Sarah beating up on Emily’s boyfriend.
“Once these old growth trees are gone, they’re gone.” He looked down at his food, clearly torn between delivering a political diatribe and macking down. “Do you have any idea what the logging corporations are doing to the environment?” he continued. “When you fly back to your cushy life in San Francisco, try looking out the airplane window at what’s left of the forest. All I can do is protect one tree, but they really need to stop clearcutting, man. The ground is bleeding silt into the rivers. It causes massive flooding and erosion. It’s killing the salmon. It’s killing the birds. It’s killing the freaking earth.” He finished with a deep belch, then patted his chest. “And you can quote me on that.”
The women chuckled, but Sarah was moved by his vehemence. When was the last time she felt so passionately about anything? After so many years of preparing to become a physician, now that she was actually practicing, her career seemed anticlimactic. She was completely consumed with work, but sometimes she had brief moments of lucidity when she clearly saw that she had no personal life whatsoever. She finished off her ravioli and sat back, digesting. “That was great,” she announced.
“Yeah,” Emily answered. “Herman’s an awesome chef, but his customers just want diner food. If you ever go there, order the special.”
“Are you a vegan now?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing with a face,” Emily answered. “Or eggs or dairy. They’re gross.”
“That’s quite a change from the girl who could eat her own weight in spare ribs.”
Emily got a dreamy look on her face. “Mmm, Mom’s spare ribs were the best.” She laughed. “Remember in fourth grade when I started feeding that homeless guy who hung out at the park? What was his name? Jimbo?”
“His name was Bingo and I had to go tell him to quit taking food from you because you were giving him your lunch every morning and you finally fainted in Girl Scouts that one day.” She turned to Roebuck. “This is how our childhood went: Emily’s big heart got her into trouble and I bailed her out.”
“Come on!” Emily protested.
“It’s true. Doing Mark O’Donnell’s homework? The feral kitten you tried to hide in the attic? Letting Jennifer Nguyen borrow dad’s car?”
“Okay, okay.” Emily leaned back and rested her hand on her tummy. Sarah knew that her sister, pumped full of bliss hormones, had felt her baby move. She’d seen that look on countless expectant mothers. She stared at Emily’s ragged nails and suddenly missed her desperately. Emily opened her eyes. “Want to feel?”
Sarah crawled over and placed her practiced hands on Emily’s belly. She felt the familiar bump of a big old fetus kicking about.
“Everything okay in there?” Emily asked.
“Near as I can tell. But what’s it going to take to get you out of this tree?” She sat crossed-leg next to Emily, her fingers still pressing on her twin’s tummy.
“We’ve been here off and on for almost two years,“ she said. “I feel like it’s my home and I want my baby born here. If we leave, I may never come back. The minute we abandon her, Abuela gets whacked. I don’t want that kind of sap on my hands.”
Sarah thought of “The Sopranos” for an instant. “But I thought they didn’t even log in winter; there’s no reason for you to stay up here. Haven’t you done enough?”
“At least I’m doing something important with my life,” Emily replied.
Sarah had to swallow a laugh. “And I’m not?”
“Bringing more people into an overpopulated world?”
Sarah pointed at Emily’s swelling belly. “Uh, hello?”
Emily shook her head. “Oh, I don’t count because I’m saving the earth.”
They both laughed, somewhat hysterically, mouths uncovered for the world to see. Roebuck stared at them like they were a load of plastic bottles dumped in a landfill.
“You two are a couple of freaks,” he muttered, “in stereo.” He then began gathering their food containers to send back down in the basket. When he was finished, he took out a battered guitar and began strumming quietly.
“If you play Kumbaya I’m jumping,” Sarah warned, gathering the stinky sleeping bag around her against the bracing air. She rested her head on her sister’s lap, which smelled of wet wool and vegan ravioli. She suddenly felt a familiar rage against her sister and wanted to pummel stupid Emily’s belly with her fists. She released the urge with a low groan, then sighed. Her sister was such a nitwit to get pregnant in a tree. She really hadn’t changed a bit.
Sarah felt movement beneath her cheek. The babies in her patients’ wombs were sort of science projects; she viewed them with a clinical wariness. But this fetus was her future niece or nephew. She would see it grow up, past infancy into a baby, a toddler, a kid, a tween, a teen, an adult. It was barely believable. It was the best thing ever. It was the half of her that she had been missing.
“We usually get buzzed by the logging helicopters at about 3 a.m.,” Roebuck said. “It will probably scare the hell out of you. Big noise; bright light.”
“That’s okay. I’m used to my pager going off at all hours.” The tree rocked slightly, almost as if it were breathing. Sarah was drenched in peace. So what if Emily has a baby in a tree? She’d be okay. Sarah would find some kind of treeclimbing midwife to send out; there had to be at least one kicking around the woods. And Emily would quickly realize the impracticality of caring for a newborn on cedar slabs in the dead of winter. And if she didn’t, well, what the hell? There was something so powerful about being up above it all. Life goes on. “Hummingbird and Roebuck sitting in a tree,” she chanted. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Emily poked her in the ribs and they giggled again. “Freak,” she whispered.
“That can be
my forest name,” Sarah replied. She snuggled down drowsily and fell asleep until the helicopter buzzed the tree and scared the hell out of her.