Falling From Grace (33 page)

The ground below is hidden from view by a curtain of green. I lever myself to the other side of the tree with a convenient limb, retrieve my radio, and depress the transmission button. “Rainbow, can you see me?”

Her high voice crackles out of the speaker, “I can't, Dr. Faye.”

“It's wonderful up here.”
You're wonderful too,
I think to myself.

“It's nice down here too,” she says. “I saw a wren.”

“Lovely. Hey, I'm going to the top. I won't be down for a couple of hours.”

“Okay. Camille wants to talk to you. Here, Cami, say hi to Mommy.”

A gentle “dwee” floats out of the receiver.

“You've got it.” I laugh. “Mommy's in the dwee. See you later.”

When I reach the top, I tie myself in and wrap my legs around the branch for extra security. The crown rocks a metre to either side in the slight wind. Three trees over and halfway up I glimpse a flash of white where I know Jen is peeling sections of moss mats from a branch and rolling the samples like carpets into plastic sample bags. I will do the same at each marker on my way down. Moss mats full of mites. I retrieve a bag of orange sections from my pocket, pop one into my mouth, and admire the view. In the distance the ocean stretches west shining and blue to the horizon. All around me treetops sway in an undulating emerald carpet. Occasionally, an emergent crown spikes higher than the rest. The rooftop of the world. I suck on another section of orange and then tuck the bag back into the pocket of my vest. Juice drips from my chin. I can't see a single clear-cut.
Ancient forest forever
. A red-tailed hawk screes overhead and my mind expands at the sound; my body longs to soar above the canopy with the hawk. No, it wants to be the hawk, the sky. I am higher than any other earthbound species. I want to get higher.

I remove a small packet from another pocket and unfold the wrapping to reveal Paul's amulet. I lift it up. The yellowed orangutan tooth swings from the leather thong; a calm light emanates from the worn surface. People of the forest. I bring it to my lips, and then tie it to the drooping leader of the hemlock.
This is where you belong
.
Up in the canopy. Person of the trees
.

I raise my arms to the sky. Tears spill down my cheeks. “Wha-whoo!” I call out across the treetops.

An answering “Wha-whoo!” echoes from below and I can hear Jen laugh.

• • •

A barred
owl hoots its drawn-out call,
who cooks for youuu.
I bundle a sleeping Camille into a fleece snowsuit and tuck her into the child carrier, which Mel swings onto his back. The baby's chubby legs dangle through the holes in the carrier and her head settles onto her grandfather's shoulders. Her eyes aren't green like Paul's but blue like her mother's, and hidden now behind closed lids. She'd spent another week in the hospital on oxygen at a year and a half, but has avoided other complications dwarfism can bring—compression of the brain stem, sleep apnea, leg complications requiring surgery. She hasn't walked yet, delayed mobility common with achondroplastic babies, but she pulls herself up on furniture and scoots along on her belly on the floor like a salamander. When Mel is around, he rarely puts her down. “It's different being a grandfather than a father,” he said one day, patiently prying the arm of his glasses out of her hand. The expression on his face made my heart twist with regret at the rift between us, our conversations uncomfortable unless about Camille. A common ground of hope.

Grace, Rainbow, and Jen stumble from their tents, shivering in the dark as they pull on sweaters and rain gear. It is four-thirty in the morning. Luckily, the sky is clear, the ground dry. I send up a silent thank you to the god of weather and hand each person a granola bar and a juice box.

“Ready?” They all nod and stash their provisions into a pocket.

I take the lead, Jen the rear, each of us with a flashlight, and the ragtag group heads off into the woods. Jen has already flagged the route and I pick out each loop of orange reflective tape circling a tree trunk there, a devil's club bush here. The going is not easy, the underbrush thick and, except for whispered conversation and the rasp of laboured breathing as we gain elevation up the valley or straddle a nurse log, progress in the deep duff of the mossy floor is slow and hushed.

We stop at a small clearing and disperse, each choosing a flat, moss-cushioned spot on the ground. Mel, two body lengths from me, removes the pack and zips Camille into his jacket, her back to his front. The baby's fat cheeks peek out of the opening at his collar. We lie on thermal sleeping mats and wait.

A finger of cool air brushes across my face, and moss at the edge of my matt tickles my scalp. The ground smells of rotting wood and humus. I roll my head toward Mel, Camille awake and wide-eyed. They both watch the sky; I can't see the expression in their eyes. Mel strokes the baby's forehead and tucks her hat over her ears. I try to imagine Paul in Mel's place, his daughter warm on his chest. Camille stirs and the image fades, leaving my body aching in its wake. My grief has diminished over the years since Paul's death, lost among the feeding, the toys, the endless laundry, the exhaustion that comes with parenting alone, but in places like this—silent and green—sorrow swoops in and pierces me like an arrow.

Sometimes, after a rare restful night, after a few hours in the lab, with a glass of wine in the kitchen, my thoughts turn to the future. Marcel wants us to visit him in Quebec. Bryan still writes. He has friends, he says, not all little. “I could introduce you.” I assure him he has rocks in his head. He and Michelle married last year. They're expecting a child. Perhaps when Camille is older, I'll take the children on a road trip. See the prairies. Introduce them to the endless wide-open skies and the land with no trees. Start a new story.

Above, stars twinkle through the opening in the canopy, bright pins of light on a black canvas. No clouds, no wind. A half-hour passes. ‘I'm hungry,” Rainbow whines. “Shh,” Grace whispers and we hear the crinkle of paper as she opens Rainbow's granola bar. The sky lightens to purple, to blue; the stars fade and flicker out.

Whoosh
. A murrelet hurtles overhead.
Whoosh whoosh
, two more.

“I see them,” Rainbow cries out.

“Shhh,” Grace croons. “Count to yourself.”

Four, five birds circle and call above the canopy.
Keer, keer.

Six, seven, eight. Another rockets through the trees, metres above our heads; the air sings through its wings.
Keer, keer
.

Camille scans the sky from the warmth of Mel's body, eyes wide and mysterious in the half-light. I imagine she must hear the beat of his heart beneath her. She turns her head as she tracks another murrelet across the heavens. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. “Dwee,” my daughter gurgles. “Dwee, Dwee,” and she laughs. The music of her laughter rises up, up, up, a feather on a breeze, up through the canopy, past the lichens that cling to the bark, the mites in their moss mats, past her father's amulet swinging from the top of the hemlock, and disappears into the sky after the murrelets, heading for the sea.

Keer, keer.

Acknowledgments

Faye is
a creation of my imagination, unlike the hundreds of thousands of very real little people the world over who are parents, lovers, children, siblings, and friends, and who work in a wide range of fields: science, medicine, education, law, business, and agriculture, to name only a few. A number of books were of valuable assistance in helping me develop Faye as a character, in particular,
Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes
by Dan Kennedy,
Dwarfs Don't Live in Doll Houses
by Angela Muir Van Etten, and
Growing Up Small: A Handbook for Short People
by Kate Gilbert Phifer. I would also like to thank Little People of British Columbia (
www.littlepeopleofbc.org
) and Little People of America (
www.lpaonline.org
) for their fabulous websites full of excellent information.

While researching this novel, I literally went up into the trees, tagging along on five research trips into the old-growth forests of Washington State and Vancouver Island. I would like to give a huge thank you to my friends Nalini Nadkarni from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and author of
Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees
and Zoë Lindo from the University of Victoria for teaching me hands-on about canopy research. Nalini introduced me to tree showers, tree painting, and moss jewellery, was responsible for the quote “Unlike people, trees give back so much and require little in return,” and took the time to count the number of references to trees in the bible. Zoë introduced me to the fascinating world of mites and spent an afternoon in the lab guiding me through the process of preparing a specimen slide. Appreciations also to Kevin Jordon of Arbonaut Access for double- and triple-checking the gear and for coaxing me forty metres up a veteran western redcedar in the Walbran Valley. The view was spectacular. A big thank you to Anne McIntosh from the International Canopy Network (
www.evergreen.edu/
ICAN
/
), who welcomed me along on her research, taught me how to rig a tree, and became a friend. I would also like to thank the following people for their assistance: Neville Winchester from the University of Victoria; climbers and canopy researchers from the International Canopy Network and other institutions including Bryan Torian, Hannah Anderson, Tara Chestnut (with Maggie and Molly), Traci Sanderson, Genevieve Becker, Janet Foley, Nate Nieto, DJ Cox, Matt Dunlap, Sage Dunn, Gabriel Horton, Judy Cushing, Lee Zeman, Aaron Crosland, and Katie Madsen; and colleagues I met at the Canopy Confluence who integrate canopy science with their creative expression including Jodi Lamask and Zack Bernstein (dancers), John Calderazzo (poet), Dana Lyons (songwriter), and Chuck Willyard (painter). The textbook
Forest Canopies
edited by Margaret D. Lowman and H. Bruce Rinker was an invaluable resource. I am grateful to Roman Dial, Nalini M. Nadkarni, and Judith Cushing for their chapter on empty space and the lovely line “. . . where rain falls, sunlight passes, winds blow . . .” that I shamelessly paraphrased. For details about marbled murrelets in old-growth forests I thank Dr. Alan Burger, Paul Harris-Jones for his book
The Marbled Murrelets of the Caren Range and Middlepoint Bight
, and Maria Mudd Ruth for her book
Rare Bird
.

While the Otter Creek protest is fictional, it is reminiscent of the long and ongoing tradition of forest activism in British Columbia. Examples of high profile conflicts include, among a host of others, the Walbran, the Carmanah, Cathedral Grove, and most significantly the Clayoquot—the largest protest in Canadian history—where more than ten thousand people from around the world participated in the protest and nine hundred and thirty-two individuals from children to grandparents, and from all walks of life, stood on a logging road on Vancouver Island in defence of old-growth and were arrested. The Clayoqout blockade resulted in the creation of the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve. I am indebted to Gary Moore, one of the arrestees, for lending me his folder of notes and legal papers and for telling me his story.
Clayoquot Mass Trials: Defending the Rainforest
edited by Ron MacIsaac and Ann Champagne,
Big Trees Not Big Stumps
by Paul George,
The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, A Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
by Julia Butterfly Hill, and
Forest Giants
by Bob Van Pelt were invaluable references. I am grateful to John Vaillant, author of
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed
, for his detailed description of the logging of an old-growth tree from which I borrowed heavily. I thank activists Nathan Clark and Tessa Helwegd, and filmmakers Richard Boyce and Rick Delgatty for sharing their stories. Thank you also to nurses Danielle Snowsell and Kory Boulton for teaching me about head injury, coma, and the
ICU
. Any errors are my own.

Gratitude and flowers to Ruth Linka, my publisher, for believing in my work. Admiration for Emily Shorthouse at Brindle & Glass for always answering my emails with patience and good humour and keeping the connections flowing, and to Kathy Page for her wonderful editorial skills and diplomacy. For critiquing the manuscript at various stages I am indebted to Nalini Nadkarni, Zoë Lindo, Kevin Jordan, Pearl Arden, Denise de Montreuil, Anne McIntosh, Lesley Pechter, Penny Joy, Leith Leslie, Peggy Frank, Tory Stevens, Barbara and Gary Moore, Elizabeth Blake, and Ken Wu. Thank you for your gift of time. If I have forgotten anyone, my apologies and appreciation.

As always, hugs to my children, Noah and Camas, for your unfailing support and for going up into the trees with me. I dedicate this book to my husband, Gary Geddes, who is firmly attached to the ground.