Falling From Grace (11 page)

I recalled Rainbow setting off down the trail alone to find her mother at the protest site. This woman did not understand her daughter.

“There're cougars out here, non-human ones.” I directed the comment at Mary, who stared back unabashed, the other Cougar out of trouble, twenty metres up a hemlock in the upper valley. “They like juicy children. Hell, I'll go.”

I hunted the forest near the camp for over half an hour before I found Rainbow's hiding spot, a large western redcedar lightning struck decades ago, a cave worn smooth and deep into the trunk and big enough to fit a dozen people standing. The sound of crying led me to the base of the tree and I peered in through the dark opening to find her huddled at the back of the hollow, sobbing into her skirt. I crawled through the crude entrance, my knees scuffing through dirt and wood chips, and leaned back against the time-smoothed wall, breathing in the damp smell of decayed wood.

“Go away,” Rainbow growled, her voice muffled in the folds of her dress.

“How do you know I'm not a bear and this is my den? Bears like cedar caves.”

She lifted her head to reveal a red-rimmed eye. “You're not a bear. Bears are furry.”

“You're smart.”

“I'm not going back.”

“Me neither. It's a lot quieter here.”

Rainbow dropped her head back onto her knees and resumed crying, but her sobs soon became forced, then dwindled to half-hearted sniffles.

“Did you know this tree has a name?” I asked.

Her small head waggled back and forth on her knees.

“Do you want to know what it is?”

The top of her head bobbed slowly up and down.

“Rainbow's Hollow,” I lied.

Rainbow's head shot up and she squinted from between narrowed eyelids. “Truly?”

“No, but would you like to name it Rainbow's Hollow?”

“Yes,” she said suspiciously.

“Lots of the trees in this forest have names.”

“Are trees people?”

“No, they're plants,” I answered, glad to have her attention.

“But they're like people, aren't they?” Rainbow leaned her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

“Well, they come from a sperm and an egg, like people,' I said. “Except for trees they're called pollen and seed. Trees aren't conscious like us, but they remember things. Their trunks record all that happens to them. Scientists can read what the climate was like from hundreds of years ago in the growth rings of trees.”

“Trees grow and live and remember like people, but they're slower, right?” She jumped up, instantly bright with excitement. “Let's sleep here and make a kitchen.” She stretched out her arms across the space. “It's big enough for both of us.”

“Won't your mom miss you?”

The light in her face vanished and she hung her head. “She doesn't love me anymore.”

“Of course she does,” I said without conviction.

“She loves him.”

“Who, Paul?”

Rainbow crossed her arms and turned away, chin thrust forward. “I don't want to talk about him.”

“Okay, let's not. Let's talk about trees. When I was a kid and mad or sad or worried, I had a tree I shared my troubles with. This could be your tree.”

“Could it?”

“Sure, if you promise to tell your mom when you come out here.”

She hesitated. “Didn't your mom and dad love you?”

The question threw me off balance.
Trust a child
. “You ask too many questions,” I answered. “How would you like to climb a tree?”

“Could I? Up a rope like you do?”

“Yup. But you have to ask your mom and we need Paul to help us.”

She stuck out her bottom lip and scowled.

“He's our safety man,” I coaxed.

“Okay, but I'm not talking to him.”

Paul and I rigged one of the hemlocks at the edge of the clearing with two climbing ropes. Rainbow watched from her perch on an elbow of root and prattled away about whatever came into her head, leaping from her seat, then sitting again, unable to contain her excitement.

“Do mother trees care for their babies?” She batted at the soft floppy head of a seedling sprouting from a decomposed limb embedded in the forest floor beside her.

“In a way,” I answered, adjusting the smallest harness to fit Rainbow's tiny hips, sobered by the realization that the length of webbing required for her arms and legs was not much shorter than my own. “Seedlings get nutrients from the roots of the adult tree. Try this.”

After a practice session waist height off the ground, I followed Rainbow up; she scooted along like a monkey. Her pluck reminded me of myself as a child, always in a tree. Once adults, most of us lose our ease in trees, our feet less flexible, our bodies too tall and heavy.
Homo sapiens
are the only primates who don't live part of our lives in the canopy.

“Is this right, Dr. Faye? Is this right?”

“Yes. Push your feet straight down though, not out.”

“I feel like a spider going up my web. Do you feel like a spider? Does the tree know we're climbing it? What's this tree's name? Can you feel the wind, Dr. Faye?”

Rainbow's enthusiasm reminded me of the first time I climbed a rope up a tree. My supervisor in grad school questioned my desire to study canopy bugs. “You're not serious,” he said. “If you have to study canopy arthropods, hire a certified arborist to do your collections.” I hired the arborist—an affable man named Al—took him out to the closest old-growth forest, and asked him to show me how to climb a rope into a tree.

“You?” he said.

“Yes, me,” I answered. “I'm short, not disabled.”

Al showed me how to rig the tree, how to shoot the lines, how to work them up higher and higher in stages, how to set the pulley. We hauled the climbing rope up and secured it.

“You're not so much climbing as walking up the rope.” He demonstrated how to use the ascenders and the foot loops.

Easy
, I thought, anxious to experience the rope. Ten minutes later I was dangling in mid-air, not three metres above the ground, clinging to the thumb-thick coil of polyester and nylon, terrified to let go, paralyzed in place.

“Put your faith in the rope,” Al urged from below. “Let go and lie back.”

I released one tentative hand, then the other.

“Breathe,” he said.

I closed my eyes, listened to the air hiss in and out through my nostrils, and stretched my legs against the webbing. Tilting my head back I looked up. My body rotated around the rope; the canopy revolved above me; sunlight filtered through the ceiling of needles, the blue sky high above, flickering off and on.

“You okay?” Al called up.

I couldn't bring myself to look down.

“Try again.”

I took another deep breath and started my jerky passage up the rope. As I climbed, the world of the forest canopy opened up in front of me like a hidden valley on the other side of a mountain and a feeling of elation slowly displaced my panic. I didn't make it to the top of the tree that day, but I was hooked.

“I've never balked at heights before,” I had commented to Al at lunch beside a small stream.

“Don't worry,” he answered, “my first time up a rope scared me too. It's the exposure, hanging in mid-air.”

“It's all about trusting in the rope, I guess,” I concluded.

“Yeah, but you know,” Al replied, “if it breaks, the rope won't save you.”

Rainbow and I climbed to where the trunk split into a broad crotch ample enough to accommodate us both. I showed Rainbow how to secure herself to the branch with a nylon lanyard and a carabiner.

“Wow,” she crowed. “Paul, look at me.” She waved at him.

“You weren't going to talk to him,” I teased.

“Oh, I forgot,” she said, then yelled down. “Don't look at me, Paul.” Without a breath she babbled on. “This moss is as thick as a bed. Do you like being a tree doctor?”

“I like working as a forest ecologist. And that's not moss on the branch, it's tree-ruffle liverwort.” The dark green shiny mat of flattened leaves hid the bark of the limb.

“Funny name. I have a wart on my knee. Can I be a forest cologist when I grow up?”

“Wort not wart and the term is e-cologist,” I corrected.
The field of canopy research won't know what hit it.

“Are there other little eeecologists?” She poked at the liverwort.

“I'm the only one I know.”

“I hope I stay small like you.”

I mussed her hair affectionately. “Here,” I said and searched the lacy foliage along a branch above our heads. I plopped a hairless green-and-yellow-striped caterpillar, as long as Rainbow's baby finger, into her cupped hand. The caterpillar squirmed and she squealed.

“If you're going to study ecology you can't be squeamish,” I cautioned.

“What is it?” Rainbow lifted her palm close to her face.

“A phantom hemlock looper larva.”

“What does it do?” The looper inched its way across her palm.

“Chews on needles.”

“Does it hurt the tree?”

“Only when there are lots of them.” I plucked the larva from her hand and returned it to the branch. “It'll turn into a moth in the fall.”

“How?”

“Do you know the word
metamorphosis
?” She shook her head. “It means a change of form. A crawling larva transforms into a winged flier.”

“Like the Beast?”

“Beast?”

“Beauty and the Beast.”

“You sure know your fairy tales,” I said. “Let's see what else we can find. There.” Amber-coloured sap oozed from a gash in the trunk. “We might find bark beetles.”

“Ruff, ruff,” Rainbow barked like a dog and giggled.

“Clown.” I lifted the edge of a piece of bark and a flurry of tiny oval brown beetles scurried out.

“What's the sticky stuff?” Rainbow blocked the passage of the beetles with the edge of her hand and the shiny bugs scuttled up and into her palm.

“It's pitch, tree blood. When the beetle drills a hole to eat the wood, the tree fills the hole with pitch to chase the beetle out.”

Rainbow watched the minute arthropods scuttle across her skin. “Could a beetle eat a whole big tree?”

“No. It would take hundreds. And they like old or dying trees and have lots of help from other creatures. And it takes a long time. Ready to go down?” I clipped in Rainbow's descender and unclipped the Jumars to ready her for the rappel.

“Ready spaghetti.” She reached out, plucked a scrap of fungus from my hair, her hand smeared with pitch, and giggled. “You're turning into a tree.”

“You too.” I tugged a twig full of lacy green needles off Rainbow's sweater, and mused how chlorophyll and human haemoglobin differed by only a single molecule.

“I'm a tree,” Rainbow's high sweet voice rang out across the forest like birdsong.

9

Paul and
I drove to Duncan for supplies. When word got out, a stream of people dropped by my tent with requests and I scrawled a list in a notebook. Mary sidled up, Cedar on her shoulders, bouncing his palms on the top of her head. I waited with irritation for the woman to speak, knowing she had no money. She lowered the baby to her hip and jostled him gently, although the baby appeared perfectly happy. I strained to hear her soft voice. “Sorry?”

She blushed. “Would you . . . talk to Rainbow?”

“About?”

Cedar squirmed and she set him onto the ground between her feet where he immediately stuffed a handful of moss into his mouth.

Spit it out
, I wanted to yell to both of them.

“She won't eat. She says . . . she doesn't want to grow. She wants to stay small like you.”

“Oh.” I held back a smile. “What an imp.”

“She thinks the world of you. I hope you don't mind her tagging along all the time.”

“No bother,” I answered. “Sure, I'll talk to her before we leave for town. She's got a mind of her own, though. Might not make any difference.”

“I'd appreciate if you'd try.” Mary paused. “I admire you too.”

The statement took me aback.

“I watch you out here doing your work, climbing those skinny ropes into these huge trees. I'd die of fright before I left the ground.” She picked at a strand of matted hair with her fingers. “You're a wonderful role model, a strong independent woman.”

The sentiment, however banal, surprised me. “Don't.” I held up my hand. “I'm no different than any other canopy scientist.” I noticed Cedar, tottering on the top of a stump, hands sticky with pitch. “You might want to watch your kid.”

“Oh, baby.” Mary scooped him up into her arms. “He's been a terror since he started walking. I'd better get ready for the road,” she said and took a few steps away, then pivoted on one foot, her skirt swirling around her legs, to face me again. “Don't worry about Paul.”