The Tree

The abrupt purr of rain jerked J’s attention from reading about his deadly encounter in the New States, back to his daily concern with survival in the Serengeti. He had been digging into his memoir of the tumultuous years after he found the unexpected loot. This sudden weather shift drew him up to the high view surrounding his Captain’s chair. He marked his place in the manuscript and moved to the big window. He could see plains forming an amber carpet all the way to a distant, dark wall of trees. Above him a steel gray ledge of cumulus clouds extended to the forest edge. The late afternoon sunlight peered under the western edge and gave the billowing clouds a yellow hue. They heralded the edge of the storm enveloping him from the east, from the mountain. . Bright sunlight still splashed across the golden grass of the savanna. The wind-stirred grass undulated with flashes of darkened gold. An occasional crack of lightning lit the five kilometers between J and the dark of the forest. This was a daily event at his African home as regular as the number nine bus in Seattle. Towers of cumulonimbus would generate on the hot slopes of the mountain and amble down like a gardener watering the high plains. A grill admitted sounds of the wind raising a heady wail as it buffeted his towering view room. He’d been so into his past adventure he had missed the first drum roll of this march of dark cloud. A flash of white took a picture of the plain in front of him and thunder vibrated the air in the room within seconds. The discharge was not more than a kilometer away. J moved swiftly back to the chair as it was insulated and the walls were conductors. He was sitting at the highest point in his vicinity. Two minutes later the next crack of thunder was simultaneous with the lightning. The sizzle of the electric charge flew down the conduits in the walls and J could detect the sharp smell of ozone. He welcomed thunder and wind as nature’s attendants heralding the imminent arrival of a torrent of rain. What a treat — there was a warm feeling to be safe in the midst of one of nature’s dangerous productions. J always rooted for the storm to pass directly overhead. This was much easier to survive comfortably when he was ensconced in the Tree. When he was out on the plains his fascination with the green hue of the thunderstorm sky and the mamma clouds, looking like their namesake loaded with water, made him a sitting duck for the oncoming deluge. Several times he had been caught out in one of these storms and despite his intimate knowledge of their dynamics, the close up roar caused a surprisingly ingrained and abiding fear. The smell of ozone and the rising humidity combined with his earlier reading to take him to a previous storm in a prior world. He picked up the journal and flipped to the events that had caught him up in the deluge of that distant day. His curiosity and impulsiveness had launched him along a crapshoot path that led to this insulated moment. J looked around his African aerie --- living in a protected pocket amid a sea of danger, the world all changed around him. Back then he had been in the high forested lake country of the Puget Sound region. • There was no wind. Below, the mountain lake was a mirror reflecting the tall peaks on the other side of a narrow valley. A loon call drifted its low-high note across the quiet, celebrating the stillness of the afternoon lake. The sky was blue in unpolluted splendor. It had taken a two-hour drive plus a four-hour climb for J to get here from his home, but it felt like a world away. He was on his own in this remote region of the alpine wilderness. It had been a family tradition to come up each October and backpack into the high Cascade Mountains. They had found a place to pause, marvel at nature and contemplate J’s favorite topic — the meaning of existence. Or as his wife had liked to put it, they wondered about the existence of meaning. Surrounded by granite cliffs, deep blue lakes and green forests, it was the ideal place to reflect on meaning. Almost everyone who sat here and looked at the view had the same thing to say; “It’s beautiful.” J the scientist asked, “Why is it beautiful?” What, in their inner mind made them all think this was beautiful. After all, it was just nature. His wife’s answer was “They just knew it was beautiful. If you’re a Homo sapiens, you know it’s beautiful. Even you know it’s beautiful.” Perhaps this had something to do with the ‘meaning’ of the existence before them. They felt lucky to be able to take these few days from the daily treadmill to explore these questions, and the merit of their lives. Their favorite place was the Enchantment Lakes - where large rock ledges, mountain cliffs and larch forests surrounded alpine lakes. J and his wife had often climbed the ten miles of switchback trail up the narrow valley side. The trail was as difficult this time as he remembered. But he reveled in the exertion and the aching muscles. This was the price to pay for solitude. Without the arduous journey myriad people would have loved such a beautiful place to death long ago. It had been well on the way to being worn out until regulations were instigated to limit the number of visitors. J had difficulty with the regulations --- he couldn’t forecast the weather enough in advance. He was capable of planning but he also exhilarated in spontaneity. Life should be an adventure. Too often the choice was between that and nothing. Once he had followed the maxim ‘You only live once.’ It turned out this idea converted too easily from an excuse to do something dangerous in his twenties to a conservative ‘be careful’ rationalization as he passed forty. His practical bent, tied to his idealism like a tail to a kite, allowed him to conform to regulations when they were logical and only marginally intrusive to his freedom. He could ask and follow directions. In certain situations he was even addicted to ritual. More than once his wife had wondered aloud how a non-superstitious scientist could wear the same socks for a three-day tennis tournament just because they were ‘lucky’. He had shrugged, ‘it was OK as long as he knew they were simply rituals’. He could give them up in a flash if they interfered with logical life. The smelly socks were borderline. No doubt they improved his confidence and made for positive thinking. In a contradictory fashion — characteristic of his entire personality — J didn’t adapt well to the alpine reservation system. He did not like to invest the work in backpacking into the mountains when the skies turned ugly. His vocation provided him with the knowledge of the weather a few days in advance so this soggy strait was not necessary. But month-old reservations often had to be abandoned due to storms, and many glorious days were unavailable for instant reservation. Fortunately, after the summer season and the first big chill the number of hikers decreased dramatically and the park service did not concern themselves with the rules. These days the forest rangers had their hands full trying to save the forests from timber rustlers. Renegade loggers would grab a patch of timber from the national forest and vanish before anyone came near. There were many unemployed loggers and ample idle equipment to make this viable. Traditional logging had disappeared with traditional forests. The price of clear or tight knot lumber from the oldest, tallest timber tempted even the most moral of the loggers. On the eastern slope this problem had evolved with the new border at the Columbia River. In the post-revolution alignment of states the region east of the river that skirted the mountain range was now another state with fairly elaborate border checks. One of the few things they were not severely rigid about at customs was people bringing in valuable lumber. J came to the Enchantments alone for the quiet and the memories. Also, the basic questions had yet to be answered and he liked to