The rain fell harder; her tarp sagged under the weight of water, and she was afraid that if she tried retying, she would lose her blue roof altogether. The temperature dropped, and wet seeped through her clothes. She wrung out her knit hat like a dishrag, and all the while, Galadriel’s branches swayed and groaned. Jess’s supply bags streamed with water, and she lost radio contact with Leon on the ground.
Then Jess no longer felt like Huck Finn rafting in the trees; she was Ishmael clinging to a fragment of the Pequod in the storm. Branches thrashed in the dark above her, and she wondered if they might break and fall.
She had seen fallen redwoods, their massive trunks, their shallow roots upended. The giant trees were not anchored deeply in the soil. When redwoods fell, they took down every tree below. Their weight, their height … She knew this tree was healthy. Leon said Galadriel was solid to the core, but when night came, she heard a boom. Thunder? Trees toppling? Huddled in her sleeping bag, she clipped on her battery-powered book light and tried to read. At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.
She was exhausted, but she could not sleep. Adrenaline kept her alert, although there was nothing she could do to save herself. She could not climb down in this darkness and this weather, nor could she shield herself from lightning.
She tried to concentrate on Thoreau’s calm book, his little cabin at Walden Pond—but what did Thoreau know? He’d never been to California. She thought of Leon and his pride in her for climbing, his pleasure that at last she was experiencing what he loved most. But Leon couldn’t help her now, and remembering his pleasure made her feel a little sick. No, no, I didn’t come here for him, she reminded herself, but that was only partly true.
Common sense rebelled. What were you thinking? she asked herself, as Galadriel groaned and cracked and the branches above her turned to deadly missiles in the wind. She had been thinking she would try to love Leon better. That she would turn her back on rare books and commit herself to something greater. She had not been wrong in this. She had not been wrong to defend the trees. So why was George the one she wished for? His was the face she longed to see. His were the arms that she imagined as she closed her eyes. His, the voice she missed.
It was still raining when she woke, but the wind had died. Her radio buzzed in her hand.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she told Leon. “I’m wet.”
“We’re bringing food.”
Half an hour later, he radioed from the bottom of the tree, and Tree Savers began hooking the supply bags to the ropes. That was when she heard the crack above her.
“Headache!” she called into her radio, but even as she said the word, the branch whistled past, a weight like a falling car, plunging fifteen stories. She heard the crash, the screams below. “Leon!”
She crept to the edge of the platform and saw a cluster of tiny figures, the Tree Savers in their green sweatshirts. Like a missile, the massive branch pierced the earth. She began to tremble. Her hands shook, and her teeth chattered.
“I’m here,” Leon told her on his radio. “Nobody’s hurt.” He spoke in his cool, calm voice, only slightly broken up with static. “We’re ready.” He meant ready to send up the supplies.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“What?”
She felt that at any moment she would plummet. Like the tree branch, she would whistle through the air, cratering the forest floor. Just as she began to fall, the world would rise to meet her. She would detonate on impact, her brain would splatter. She gasped for air. Strange, she knew that she was having a panic attack. She knew exactly what was happening, but she could not stop it. She couldn’t breathe. The earth kept rising up to meet her.
“I can’t,” she gasped into her radio.
“Your friend is here,” Leon said.
“What?” She could barely process this.
“Jess,” Leon warned. “You committed to a week. If you bail, someone has to take your place.”
“I have to come down.”
A long pause on the other end. “Come down then.”
But Jess could not take the climbing line in her two hands and make that descent. Fear swallowed her up. She tried to draw strength from the redwood. The storm was over; the winds were gone. She would sit and contemplate the ants, so small and strong and organized, always moving forward, up and over every obstacle. She would marvel at the secret gardens of moss and brambles and new trees in the redwood’s crown. She told herself all this, but the crack of falling timber echoed in her ears. “Please, please, please, come get me.”
When Leon appeared, climbing nimbly, balanced beautifully on his rope, he found Jess crouching with her head between her knees. He saw exactly how frightened she was, and he looked at her with a mixture of pity and anger. Jess had insisted she could handle climbing, pronounced herself cured, insisted on a full-week shift. Now she cowered like a cat up a tree, a total liability.
He examined her with his clear blue eyes, and looking up at him, she felt his distance. She felt, despairingly, that she had failed a test, and she hated herself for failing, but she hated him more for testing her at all.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I shouldn’t have encouraged you. You didn’t want to be here,” he murmured.
“I did,” she said.
“You just wanted to prove to me that you could last.”
“No, I wanted to prove it to myself,” she said.
“Really? That was …” His radio crackled. “It was wrong of me to let you.” He gestured for her to stand.
“Why?” She held fast to the boards of the platform.
“Because you weren’t prepared.”
He remembered a day, a soft, windless day when they’d lain together undressed under the trees. A single pine needle had drifted down. He’d watched it fall on her white skin. “Get up. Come on.” As he helped Jess to her feet, he pushed that memory away. “Your friend is waiting for you.”
“Oh, God.”
“He came up yesterday, lecturing everybody, demanding to see you.” The next words were almost taunting. “Now he’ll get his wish.”
That was the hardest moment. That was when she wanted most to stay up in Galadriel, but her body rebelled. Her heart raced. The crash of the tree limb resounded in her ears. She could not calm herself. She had to find her way down.
Miserable, she stood before Leon as he checked her ropes, her clips, her harness, and she knew what he thought of her. She knew what he suspected, and she saw that he wasn’t angry. This was worse than anger. He viewed her coolly, absolving her even as he disengaged from her.
He clipped the steel link of her harness to the secondary rope he’d rigged from the ground. “I’m coming down with you. I won’t let anything happen, but you have to listen. Do you understand?”
Her hands were stiff with fear, inflexible. She held the rope too tightly, and her palms began to bleed. She saw the blood but could not feel.
Her ascent to the platform had been giddy, joyful. Clear sky and celebration, a picnic under the trees the night before. Sweet cool air, a calming joint, smoke mingling with the fragrant forest, pine and mulch and bay laurel. Climbing had been an otherworldly magic-carpet ride. The descent was like rappelling into the circles of hell. She saw the Tree Savers standing in their green sweatshirts. Standing silent. Waiting for her. And then she saw George watching for her as well. George, who didn’t acknowledge Jess to his friends, had no problem materializing in front of hers.
“Jess!” he called, even before her feet touched the ground. “Are you all right?”
Leon slid down and unclipped his harness and then unclipped hers.
George rushed to her and Jess stepped back.