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HE CAME TO A PLACE where the thick main trunk ended in a wide blackened stub. It looked like the tree had been struck by lightning, probably many years ago. Around the splintered stub, a half-dozen mini-trunks had sprouted and grown upward seeking the sun, the largest of them two feet in diameter and rising another forty or fifty feet. Each mini-trunk would be a giant in the third-growth Wisconsin forest where Peter grew up. He was having trouble wrapping his mind around the scale of the redwoods.
Another red rope marker, and another. Green travel ropes hung in the difficult places. Sunlight now came through in larger patches, but it was hard to find a logic to the trunks and limbs. There were entire suburbs in this giant tree, each a different tangle, bower, or thicket. It would be easy to get lost. Then he realized that he was seeing more than one tree, that he was in a ring of trees whose main trunks were no more than ten or twelve feet apart.
Peter climbed toward the sun.
It occurred to him to announce himself. “Hello,” he called out. “Is anyone here?” If the tree explorer was any kind of a nutcase, Peter didn’t want to surprise him. “Hello? Anyone?”
There was no answer but the wind in the branches.
The red rope markers led him in a circuitous path. Around another blackened area, through several dense tangles where branches grew in every direction, but always upward, toward the sun.
The tree canopy opened as he climbed. He could smell the heat of the sun on the redwood bark. The sky was a high brilliant blue, and the peaks and valleys of the Coast Ranges stretched out around him, wearing their undulating pelt of trees.
Finally he saw above him a slender triangular platform. As he got closer he saw it was some kind of netting stretched between the tops of several trees, maybe twenty feet on a side. Irregular shapes showed through the netting at one end, maybe tools or supplies left behind. Above the netting hung a triangular sun cover, larger than the platform, turning the sun strange dappled shades. It would keep the rain off, too. Redwoods grew in rain forest, after all.
This was not just some tree hugger’s weekend nest.
It was too well-designed, too organized.
“Ahoy the platform,” he called out. “Anyone up there?”
He counted to twenty. No response. The platform cover rattled softly in the breeze. The sun was warm on his back. Through the branches he could see trees without end, or so it seemed.
“Okay,” he called out. “I’m coming up.”
A broad horizontal branch stretched toward the platform, with safety ropes strung at waist height, making an easy path. He noted where the platform was tied off, checking each rope and knot before he trusted the netting with his weight.
When he stepped onto it, the netting gave slightly beneath his weight, like a trampoline. He heard a faint twanging sound behind him. Then a voice.
A female voice.
“Hands up, asshole. That’s far enough.”
3
Peter turned and saw a woman with a bow and arrow standing on the broad horizontal branch, ten feet away. The bow was stretched taut, the arrow set to the string and pointed at his chest.
She wore a faded pink Riot Grrrl T-shirt, patched hiking pants, and a daypack on her back. Behind the bow, he saw red hair cut short over a freckled face, intense eyes, and a long narrow nose that came to a point like a rapier. She had serious climber’s arms, and held the bow steady. The branch she stood on might have been a city sidewalk for all the attention she paid to it. She was entirely focused on Peter. It was not a comfortable feeling. He was an ant under a magnifying glass, and her gaze was the sun.
Peter put his hands up. The movement made him bounce slightly on the netting, which was probably why she’d waited until he made it to the platform. He’d have trouble moving quickly on the spongy surface. She had good tactics, whoever she was. Better than some infantrymen Peter had known.
“Hi,” he said, trying for cheerful and harmless. “Nice place you got here. I’m Peter. What’s your name?”
Riot Grrrl looked at him with those blazing eyes, but didn’t answer. She had the edge of her lower lip between her teeth, thinking. Her arms did not shake with the tension of the bow. She projected utter confidence and capability, but Peter thought he saw a muscle twitch at the edge of her eye.