T. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth

It was cold. There was a smell of rain on the air. A thickening mist clung like gauze to the high branches and a pair of birds fled through it as if they'd been shot out of a gun. How can I say what I felt? The pulleys creaked, the drummers drummed and my daughter rode up into the mist, higher and higher, till the pale-white bulb of her face was screened from view, and the last things visible — the dark, gently swaying soles of her running shoes-finally disappeared aloft.

That night it rained. But this was no ordinary shower or even a downpour, this was an El Nino event, evil harbinger of the apocalyptic weather to come, and it was accompanied by high winds and a drop of twenty degrees inside of an hour. I was in a motel room in Eureka at the time, working my way through a bag of Doritos and a six-pack of Black Cat malt liquor (choice of environmentalists everywhere), while watching Humphrey Bogart grimace in black and olive on a pale-green motel TV screen and waiting for Andrea and Teo to be set free on bail. The wind came up out of nowhere, flinging a hail of rubbish against the door and rattling the windows in their cheap aluminum frames. A framed list of motel do's and don'ts fell from the wall and landed face-up on the bed, right about where the back of my head would have been if I'd been asleep. I went to the door first, then thought better of it and brushed aside the curtains to peer out the window just as the rain exploded across the parking lot.

The fall of water was so violent it dimmed the lights across the street, and within seconds it was leaping up from the pavement in a thousand dark brushstrokes, as if gravity had been reversed. I had three beers in me and three to go, and when the next gust bowed the window, I backed away and sat on the bed, thinking of Sierra in her tree. What if a branch tore loose? What if the tree fell — or was struck by lightning? And what of her fear and desolation? There were no painted renegades out there now, no nose-fluters or drummers, nobody making lentil stew or chanting slogans-no one at all, not even the enemy. Who would haul away her bucket of waste, already overflowing with all this, excess water, who would talk to her, comfort her, keep her dry and warm?

She was twenty miles away, on property owned and jealously guarded by Coast Lumber — a hypervigilant and enraged Coast Lumber, awakened now to the undeniable fact that my daughter was occupying their turf, high up in one of the grandest and most valuable of their trees, thumbing her nose at them, making a statement, saving the world all on her own — and even WI could get that far in the storm and locate the place to park the car off the public highway and find my way through the big trees to her, what then? She wasn't just rocking in a hammock-she was a hundred and eighty feet up, and there was no way for me to reach her. On a clear, calm day, sure, maybe-bring on the harness and jumars, and I'll do my best, though I have to admit I've never been one for heights (roller coasters leave me cold and ski lifts scare the living bejesus out of me). And with the wind and the crash of the rain, she probably wouldn't even be able to hear me shouting from down below. But I would be there. At least I would be there.

I left a note for Andrea, fired up the black BMW she'd bought while I was putting in my time at Vacaville and Sierra was doing the same at another state institution (not to worry: it was UC Santa Cruz), and headed off into the storm with my three remaining cans of Black Cat. It wasn't a night to be out. Trees were down, and they'd taken power lines with them, and though this was the first heavy rain of the season, the roads were already running black with water and debris. I dodged logs, fenceposts, bicycles, boogie boards, cooking grills and a ghostly dark herd of cattle with tags in their ears. And I fought it, fought through everything, forty-seven years old, nearsighted and achy and already hard of hearing, the radio cranked up full, a sweating can of malt liquor clenched between my thighs, the headlights illuminating a long dark tunnel of nothing.

Three times I went by the road I wanted and three times had to cut U-turns in a soup of mud, rock and streaming water, until finally I found the turnout where we'd parked that afternoon. It had been compacted dirt then, dusty even, but now it was like an automotive tar pit, a glowing head-lighted arena in which to race the engine and spin the tires till they stuck fast. I didn't care. Sierra was up there on top of the ridge before me, up there in the thrashing wind, scared and lonely and for all I knew dangling from some limb a hundred and eighty feet in the air and fighting for her life. I had five beers in me. I was her father. I was going to save her.

What was I wearing? Jeans, a sweater, an old pair of hiking boots, some kind of rain gear — I don't remember. What I do remember is the sound of the wind in the trees, a screech of rending wood, the long crashing fall of shattered branches, the deep-throated roar of the rain as it combed the ridge and made the whole natural world bow down before it. I was ankle-deep in mud, fumbling with the switch of an uncooperative flashlight, inhaling rain and coughing it back up again, thinking of John Muir, the holy fool who was the proximate cause of all this. One foot followed the other and I climbed, not even sure if this was the right turnout or the right ridge-path? What path? — and I remembered Muir riding out a storm one night in the Sierras, thrashing to and fro in the highest branches of a tossing pine, just to see what it was like. He wasn't trying to save anything or anybody-he just wanted to seize the moment, to experience what no one had experienced, to shout his hosannas to the god of the wind and the rain and the mad whirling rush of the spinning earth. He had joy, he bad connection, he had vision and mystical reach. What he didn't have was Black Cat malt liquor.

I spat to clear my throat, hunched my shoulders and hovered over the last can. I was halfway up the ridge at that point, sure that at any moment a dislodged branch would come crashing out of the sky and pin me to the ground like a toad, and when I threw back my head to drink, the rain beat at my clenched eyelids with a steady unceasing pressure. Three long swallows and my last comfort was gone. I crushed the can and stuffed it into the pocket of the rain slicker and went on, feeling my way, the feeble beam of the flashlight all but useless in the hovering black immensity of the night. I must have been out there for hours, reading the bark like Braille, and the sad thing is I never did find Sierra's tree. Or not that I know Of. Three times that night I found myself at the foot of a redwood that might have been hers, the bark red — orange and friable in the glow of the flashlight, a slash of charred cambium that looked vaguely familiar, the base of the thing alone as wide around as the municipal wading pool in Peterskill where Sierra used to frolic with all the other four-year-olds while I sat in a row of benches with a squad of vigilant mothers and tried to read the paper with one eye. This was her tree, I told myself. It had to be.

"Sierra!" I shouted, and the rain gave it back to me. "Sierra! Are you up there?"

I don't really remember what the past few Christmases were like. One year-it might have been last year or five years ago, for all I know-Chuy and I went up to Swenson's and had the catfish boat with gravy and stuffing on the side, and another time we sat in my living room and watched the buckets splootch while sharing one of the last twelve-ounce cans of solid white albacore on earth. We ignored the expiration date and ate it with capers and pita bread and a bowl of fresh salsa Chuy whipped up, and I remember we washed it down with sake heated in a pan over the stove. And what was on the radio? Ranchera music and a trip-hop version of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." This year is different. This year it's Andrea and April Wind, and Yuletide cheer chez Pulchris.