Into the heart of the park? “Not sure exactly where ‘here’ is.”
“The giant sequoia grove. Just a short walk. Come on.” He lifted his chin toward a hilly path into the woods, beckoning. Frida jerked forward on the leash, sniffing the air, unfamiliar with the territory but forever willing to be a volunteer guide into the unknown. The courage of small animals is a marvel.
The three of us set out in companionable silence past a ranger log cabin outbuilding that was closed. A little farther into the trees, we passed someone, a serious cyclist—wearing all the specialist racing gear and pumping the pedals of a hard-core mountain bike.
After that, it was just us and the woods. It was lush and quiet here, and it smelled earthier, less of sunlight and more of damp ground and moss and fungi. That made me feel more relaxed, like the world was slowing down here, peacefully decomposing, so I didn’t need to rush either:breathe deep, take your time. We walked among sugar pines companionably not saying anything. Not about the kiss. Or about our midnight phone conversation, which rambled for well over two hours last night. I couldn’t even remember half the stuff we talked about now. New groups we’d found on Bandcamp. His high school. Mine. A ranking of fruit juices by thirst-quenchability. (Orange juice, high; grape juice, all-time low.)
Nothing at all really.
Funny how all the nothing conversations I had with Eddie never made me smile like that, though. I honestly couldn’t thinkof one that lasted more than five minutes. Eddie didn’t do phone calls. I didn’t used to. Guess everything was a surprise lately.
There was no one around, and Frida was tiring out, fairly calm. So I let her off the leash. She didn’t even notice it was off, silly dog. She just trotted at the same distance, veering off occasionally, but easily called back with a clap and a whistle. It was a relief to let her loose and know that she wasn’t going to bolt off and not come back.
“Of course she’ll come back. Who would feed her?” Fen asked. “She’s no dummy.”
“She eats her own vomit.”
“That’s just practical,” he said with an almost-smile, pushing sunglasses on top of his head to nest in his windblown curls. “Oh, here we are. Just up here. You ready?”
“For what?”
We rounded a sharp downhill curve on the wooded path, and there it was—thefor what.
The tallest tree I’d ever seen in my life.
“One of the largest giant sequoia trees in the world,” he said. “It’s not the Red Knight. That’s closer to the main hiking trail on the other side of the grove, and it’s the eighth-largest sequoia. This is only number twenty-seven, so tourists don’t come out here. But I think she’s spectacular. Her name is Lady of Hope.”
“Wow,” I said, awestruck as I hiked down to the base of the tree alongside Fen and Frida. We had to crane our necks backward to glimpse the green branches that met the blue sky above.
“She’s something, yeah?” Fen said.
Marvelous. Big fans of ferns surrounded the tree’s backside, but the front of it was mostly cleared ground. The roots were twisted and gnarled in the most beautiful way, and the deep lines in the bark were deep enough to fit my arms. My legs. I was used to feeling smaller than most people, but she made me feel more than small. Humbled.
“I’ve never been in this grove,” I told him. “All the summers I’ve spent at the lake.”
“Never?”
“Never seen the Red Knight, either. Just the tunnel tree when you come into town.”
He scoffed. “That’s definitely for tourists.”
“My dad and I take our photo there every year,” I argued, feeling a little embarrassed.
I felt his gaze on my face. “As far as kitsch goes, it’s pretty cool kitsch, I guess.”
“Well,” I admitted, smiling and gesturing. “It’s not this.”
“Our Lady.”
“Lady,” I repeated in an upper-class accent, teasing him.
He took it good-naturedly, folding his arms over his chest. “I come out here a lot to look at her. There’s a little spot around the back in the ferns where I like to sit and think.…” He gestured with his head. “She keeps me from losing my shit.”
“Yeah? I’ve never seen anything like her,” I said, walking with him around the roots. “She makes me feel like an ant. These trees have been here forever, right?”
“Around two thousand years.”
“Wow.”
