The fire is almost out. With a sigh, I stand up. It’s time to check the perimeter and then go to bed.
Micah really is startlingly perceptive. He gives me a sharp look as he stands up too. Then asks softly, “You still want me to leave you in the morning, right?”
I lick my lips. Shift from foot to foot. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
12
It’s not evendawn the next morning when I’m awakened by a deafening crack.
It’s so loud and so unexpected—waking me out of deep sleep and followed closely by a howl from Molly—that I launch abruptly into a sitting position with my heart racing and my eyes wide.
“What the hell?” Micah moves even faster than I do, swinging his legs over the side of the table-bed and grabbing for his rifle as he stuffs his feet into his shoes.
I do the same, and we’re both stepping out of the camper less than thirty seconds after the sound, a fully alert Molly at our heels.
The situation becomes clear immediately despite the darkness of the surrounding woods.
One of the dying white pines close to my camp has fallen.
These woods are doing the best they can, given the dramatic changes to the climate these past few years. Most of the trees are still hanging on to life, but there are always some who give up the fight, still standing as dead monuments to a world that used to be.
Every once in a while, a tree will surrender completely and fall.
I know exactly which tree this is. I know every single tree on the perimeter of this clearing.
It crashed down close enough to block the main trailhead and take out some large branches from the nearest trees to my camper.
“Fuck,” Micah breathes out, standing beside me with his rifle and staring at the carnage.
I’m doing the same. It’s strangely devastating. A large section of my camp, my home, has been damaged. If the tree had been angled just a little differently, it would have taken out the camper with us inside.
I’ve felt safe here these past years, but I’m not. Not really.
Random chance could still take away everything that’s mine in only an instant.
“Fuck, Kat,” Micah says, lowering his rifle and turning to me. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I manage to say. I know all the right things to say in these situations. Everyone does. “No one was hurt. It could have been so much worse.”
“But this is bad enough. I thought that big fella had a chance of coming back to life.”
I thought so too.
“Do you want to start clearing this out now or wait until it’s light?”
I’m still standing. Still staring at the wreckage. My eyes are burning now, and my throat aching. And, as silly as it is, it’s the fact that Micah called the treebig fellathat pushed me this close to tears.
When I don’t answer, Micah steps closer. Puts one hand on my back. He doesn’t say anything.
After several seconds, I suck in a forced breath. “Let’s start clearing it now. It can’t be too long before sunrise.”
It takes hours.
Hours and hours.
Even with two of us working straight through, it’s well after noon before we get the branches collected, the tree trunk chopped into usable chunks, and the worst of the cascade of pine needles raked into the underbrush of the woods.
I’m dripping with sweat and covered in tree sap. My back and arms are aching. The entire world smells strongly like pine and probably always will.
