Torched

  Next, Blue pulled a contraption of padded straps from her pack and handed it to me. Following her instructions, I awkwardly stepped into the harness and pulled it up around my hips. Shaped roughly like a figure eight, the harness had holes made of straps for my legs. The strap around my waist held two latching metal hooks that I knew were called carabiners, as well as a brass-colored piece ending in a long loop that Blue said was a belay device. It felt strange to have the straps between my legs, like wearing a giant diaper. But I welcomed the distraction of Blue pulling and tugging at me as she adjusted everything. It was the only thing that kept my mind off the climb I faced.

  She took two black loops of rope and threaded them through the carabiners on my harness. Then she tied one loop on the bottom of the rope and another about waist high. “Okay,” she said. “These are prussic slipknots. When one doesn’t have weight on it, you can slide it.” She demonstrated, pushing it up a couple of inches. “When you put weight on the prussic, it cinches onto the rope and holds you in place.” She jerked. The loop held firm. “Basically, what you’re doing is transferring your weight back and forth. With your right foot in the foot loop, you stand straight up and push the top loop up with your hands. Next you sit back in the harness, which is held in place by the top loop, and you slide the foot loop up until your right leg is straight out ahead of you. Then you pull both legs under you and stand up. It feels kind of like pumping your legs on a swing. And you start all over again.”

  “Lather, rinse, repeat,” I said.

  “And sooner or later, you’re at the top.” She rechecked the straps and clapped me on the back. “Okay, let’s see you do it.”

  I stepped up into the foot loop, which was about eighteen inches above the ground. My weight stretched the rope taut. A bubble of panic welled in my throat. Could I really trust all the knots on which my life now depended? Promptly forgetting everything I had just learned, I tried to slide the top prussic up. It wouldn’t budge. Then I tried to slide the bottom knot. It wouldn’t move, either.

  “What’s wrong?” Panic arced my voice so high that it squeaked.

  Blue shrugged. “You’re not moving your legs enough.”

  I brought both my knees up higher and succeeded in moving the bottom knot up three inches. That allowed me to slide the top knot up three inches. Three inches down, one hundred seventy-four feet and nine inches to go.

  “Try to enjoy the climb,” Blue said. She stepped forward and stood on tiptoe to pat me on the back. “Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.”

  I felt silly, dangling only a few inches off the ground. With a herky-jerky rhythm, I began moving like an inchworm up the rope. I was close enough to the trunk that I braced my feet against it every time I moved the knots.

  By the time I got twenty feet up, sweat was running down my spine. Why had I worn a long-sleeved shirt? I looked at my watch. I had been working for twenty minutes and I wasn’t anywhere close yet. From the ground, Blue gave me a thumbs-up.

  The weight of my pack thumped against my back with each pull. The muscles in my right leg were burning. Finally, I reached the first branches, forty or fifty feet up. Solid ground, sort of. But climbing higher was still just as much of a struggle. It was like hopping on one foot up twenty flights of stairs—and with only empty air on either side.

  At about seventy-five feet up, my right forearm was so cramped it felt like my muscles had been replaced with rocks. My hands were numb. Despite the tape, the prussic cords were cutting deep notches across my knuckles. Sweat seeped into them, stinging viciously.

  At one hundred feet, I made the mistake of looking down, past the trunk, past the foot-fat branches, and all the way to the ground, visible now in the first light of dawn. It took my eyes a while to find the bottom, and when I did, my breathing sped up even more.

  Blue was gone. I was all alone.

  Startled, I let my leg drop, so I was no longer braced against the tree. As I dangled in midair, the rope suddenly seemed as substantial as a spider’s thread. I began to panic as I slowly started to revolve. My heart pounded in my ears as every muscle trembled. Was I going to pass out?

  Bracing my shaking hands against the trunk, I rested my forehead against the rough bark and tried to slow my breathing. I couldn’t do this. Then I saw Matt’s face in my mind’s eye, remembered how gray his skin had looked the night he had been arrested. I had to do this.

  I took a shaky breath and did the only thing I could do: I continued to claw my way up the rope to the sit.

  Finally, I could see the platform of the sit, although it still looked far too small to hold one person, let alone two. I heard faint sounds below me. When I snuck a look down, I saw three yelling yellow dots that I guessed must be hard-hatted workers. I couldn’t make out the exact words, but it was clear they were angry. I thought of the rope dangling beneath me. Could they grab it, shake it, pull me down?

  I realized there was nothing I could do about the loggers below. Nothing but climb.

  I forced myself to look back up, trying not to think about the empty air beneath my feet. After letting out a deep shuddering breath, I once again heaved myself up the line. The narrowing tree trunk was beginning to be worn smooth by earlier ascents. There were fewer ridges for my feet to grab on to.

  Just when I felt I couldn’t go on, I heard a shout from above.

  Coyote.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Squinting upward, I only saw a vague shape with a beard—a beard?—and those unmistakable curls. But his words were clear. “What’s the matter, Sky, are you a secret smoker or something?” And then more encouragingly, “Hey, it takes a lot of heart to climb a tree. It really does.”

  Finally, twenty minutes after Coyote had called down to me and nearly three hours after beginning the ascent, I pushed myself away from the tree and grabbed the edge of the platform. I was too weak to pull myself up, so Coyote’s strong arms dragged my aching body onto the sit. With as much grace as a walrus flopping onto shore, I landed on my belly. Coyote immediately clipped a safety line onto the back of my harness.

  “The first time I climbed, I couldn’t believe people had to do this to save trees,” he said sympathetically. “I couldn’t even cheer you on. I didn’t want to alert the loggers.” He undid the two loops and pulled up the rope I had climbed, coiling it as he went. Gently, he took the backpack from my shoulders.

  A grunt was the best I could manage. I didn’t want to move. Lying with my face pressed against the gritty plywood, I could pretend it was a real floor, only a foot above the ground.

  Finally, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, sickeningly aware of how close all the edges were. The platform was only about eight feet wide, made of pieces of plywood roughly hammered together in a circle so that they ringed the tree. On the other side of the trunk, three blue tarps suggested a roof and walls. If you added up all the square footage, it was no bigger than my bedroom at home. I let my gaze go out past the tree limbs, over the side, to the ground below. The fear came back, full force, as if it had never left.

  “Home, sweet home.” Coyote dropped to his knees beside me and grinned. Blue-green fir needles glinted in his curls. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a long way down.” My voice shook as if I were freezing.

  The grin melted into a look of concern. “You’re really scared, aren’t you? Do you want to go back down? You don’t have to be here.”

  “I’m all right,” I said, knowing that my words were unconvincing.

  Coyote raised his eyebrows. “You’re the boss. Here, come sit with your back against the trunk.” He got to his feet, walking as easily as if he were in his own living room at home.

  I flipped over onto my butt and crab-walked back to the trunk, wishing my fingernails were claws so I could dig them into the plywood. Coyote sat next to me, our shoulders and hips touching.

  “You’re shaking.” He put his hand on my knee. “Listen to the tree. Feel it. Maybe I sound crazy, but after a day or two, th
is tree will be like a person to you. Did Blue tell you we call him the Old Man?”

  I managed a nod.

  “Close your eyes. Feel the power of the tree. Think about how this tree has stood here for hundreds of years and how deep its roots go. Start breathing from your abdomen.” He took a deep, rattling breath, and I followed suit. “Just let your mind go blank.”

  I couldn’t do that, but I found that I was a little more relaxed. At least my breath was no longer coming in gasps. The morning sun was warm on my skin, the bark bumpy against my back.

  Finally, I opened my eyes. Coyote was watching me, his face creased with concern.

  “Just say the word if you change your mind and I’ll help you get back down. The trick is, don’t look straight over the edge, at least not until you’ve gotten your bearings. Be here, on this platform. Focus on the things on it. Or”—he patted the bark next to his head—“look at this trunk. Look at it closely. Pay attention to it. I was reading about this poet. He said we should look at six things a day really closely. And I realized I never really saw any one thing, let alone six things.”

  As Coyote spoke, I found myself focusing on him, specifically on his eyes. The flecks of gold and brown in his light green eyes sparkled like mica.

  He fell silent and looked back at me steadily. Up here, it was just the two of us—no MED, no FBI, nothing.

  “I didn’t even know you were going to be here,” I said.

  “Are you sorry?” His expression was uncertain.

  “No! Of course not! There’s no way I could manage to be up here by myself.”

  “I’m just here to show you the ropes.” He waited until I smiled weakly at the pun. “Once you get the hang of it, we’ll haul in some more plywood one night and build a new sit for me. That way we can spread out and protect more of the forest.”

  Finally, I gathered my courage to look away from Coyote. I was careful to gaze only at things in my immediate vicinity. The bark on the trunk behind him, for instance, was irregularly furrowed, dark gray, but with hints of orange in the crevices. Past the trunk, I focused on how smaller pieces of plywood had been tied to branches to make shelves. Backpacks and bags were cinched to tree limbs.

  Two shelves had been lashed to branches near me, and I cautiously turned my head to look at them more closely. One held an old quilt, climbing equipment, ropes and a cell phone charging on a car battery. The other had an old coffee can filled with tools. A Nancy’s yogurt container served as a vase for a bunch of wildflowers. With a pang of jealousy, I wondered who had brought Coyote the flowers.

  Coyote got to his feet. I saw now that he also wore a harness with a line clipped to the back. It was fastened to a rope that ran between two thick branches. If he fell off the platform, the line would stop him after a dozen feet or so. In theory.

  Moving as if he was unaware that only a slender rope stood between him and certain death, Coyote walked a few steps over to an L-shaped shelf that served as a makeshift kitchen. On it sat a tiny camp stove, a stack of tin pots, jugs of water and lidded buckets of food.

  The rest of the shelf was taken up by a few books. I turned my head to look at the titles. The Monkey Wrench Gang; McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial; The SAS Escape, Evasion & Survival Manual and Baking in a Box, Cooking on a Can.

  Slowly, I began to relax against the solid trunk of the tree. Coyote carried over two tin plates. Each held a bagel, an apple and a handful of hazelnuts. “All the comforts of home. If you don’t expect home to be too comfortable.”

  Mustering a faint smile, I bit into an apple, my mouth salivating at its tart sweetness. “Has it been hard, being up here? It seems so lonely.”

  He seemed surprised by my question. “For me, it’s like being a kid again. I get to live in a tree fort. Besides, there’s plenty to do. I read, talk to the others on my cell, document what I see. We each have a list of media outlets across the country that we call every day with updates.” He looked at me more closely. “You look like you’re still breathing shallowly. Concentrate on taking big, slow breaths.”

  I did while looking at his chin. “So you decided to grow a beard?”

  He grinned and shrugged one shoulder. “This isn’t exactly a practical place for a razor.”

  Or a shower, I thought. Getting clean up here must involve a lot of contortions with a sponge and cold water, not exactly an appealing thought. I looked down at my hands. The once-white tape was now black. “Should I take off the tape that Blue put on?”

  “Let’s see.” Coyote reached out and caught one hand, cradling it between his own. “You’ve got some blistering here where she missed a spot.” He pointed at a space between my fingers and palm that I now saw was red and puffy. “Can’t have you getting an infection.” He rummaged through the items on one of the shelves and pulled out a small brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He poured a capful on my hand before I had a chance to think better of it. It stung like hell, the red places bubbling white. He began to unwrap the tape.

  From the forest floor all around us I heard the growl of saws. It was hard to believe these were the same woods that had seemed so still the night before. I took a chance and let my gaze focus beyond our platform.

  The forest was a green, undulating sea. From this height, I could see for miles. On my right, uncut forest all the way to the horizon, a blanket of trees. On my left, it was a different story. The gap on the horizon I had spotted earlier was about a mile away. I could see machines trundling back and forth.

  Coyote put a Band-Aid across my hand. “Ready to get to work?”

  “Work?”

  He handed me my pack, as well as a notebook and pen. “You brought a pair of binoculars, right? We keep track of how many trees are cut, what species, the size, as well as any animals and birds we see. And any time a tree goes down or you see a new animal—especially a lynx—then take a picture with this.” He unzipped a camera bag that was tied to the tree and pulled out a black digital camera. It had a long telephoto lens.

  “Jeez, that’s nice.” The camera must have been worth at least a thousand bucks.

  “Yeah.” Coyote looked away. “Major bribe gift from Dad for forgetting I saw him with someone other than Mom.” He cleared his throat. “Anything you have trouble identifying, ask me. We’ll use all the information for the basis of the reports we make to the media every afternoon.”

  “So far, there hasn’t been anything about these sits in the paper.” I felt oddly embarrassed, like it was my fault. “I looked again this morning. I mean, yesterday morning.”

  Coyote sighed. “They never really covered what was happening in Eugene, either. The one time they did, they made us sound like a bunch of flakes. Cedar says the mainstream media isn’t interested in subverting the dominant paradigm. But we’re still on a bunch of the environmental Web sites. Eventually it will start to percolate out.”

  After cinching my pack to a limb, he picked up his binoculars and scooted around to the other side of the sit, with the trunk between us. I got out my own binoculars. It was disorienting to look through them, so I put them down again. Even though it was illogical, looking through them made me feel like I might lose my balance and fall.

  Instead, I thought about what Coyote had said about the poet’s advice to observe. I looked around at what I could see without my binoculars. Insects whirred and buzzed everywhere. Blue jays flitted from branch to branch. A little creature I had never seen before skittered up a nearby trunk. Coyote said it was a tree vole. He also taught me how to tell the difference between lodgepole pine and Ponderosa pine, between hemlock and cedar. It turned out the Old Man was a Douglas fir.

  Gradually, my curiosity got the better of my fear. I picked up the binoculars again and looked at the spot that was being logged.

  “Logged” didn’t even cover it. The forest was being mowed down. It wasn’t just the lynx that wouldn’t be able to live with the trees gone—it was the birds and the tree vole and the animals I couldn’t even see.

  Then,
even at this distance, I heard one of the chain saws cut out from among the chorus of all the others. I swung my binoculars to where a tiny dot of a man walked back from a tall tree, his chain saw at his side. The tree shivered, swayed and finally crashed through all the trees between it and the ground. At last, it hit the earth with a bwaaam-boom. The downed tree bounced up and fell again, finally coming to rest.

  “Welcome to industrial forestry in action,” Coyote said drily. I had been so engrossed in watching the tree’s demise that I hadn’t noticed he had joined me on my side of the trunk.

  “What is that thing?” I asked as a big yellow machine trundled over the hill and into view. It looked like a nightmare bulldozer equipped with claws and saws.

  Coyote swung his own binoculars over. “Looks like it belongs to Edward Scissorhands, doesn’t it? It’s called a feller buncher. They can’t use it on the bigger trees, but it really does a number on the secondary growth.”

  Through my binoculars, I watched the machine’s claws reach out and grasp the two-foot-wide trunk of a fir, lacing around it like interlocking fingers. In one terrifyingly swift motion, a saw cut through the base of the trunk as easily as a hot knife through butter. The engine whined as the feller buncher began to move away from us, the tree still grasped in its claws, still upright, but now severed from the earth. Slowly, the machine maneuvered the tree to a pile of logs and released it.

  All morning, I tried to make accurate notes as I watched several small trees and another mammoth one cut loose from the earth. The sun got in my eyes, and I had to squint. Each time I blinked, it became harder and harder to keep them open.

  I started when Coyote took the binoculars from my lap. “You’re falling asleep,” he said gently.

  I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have realized how tired you would be after having been up all night. You should take a nap.”