Dear Doc Paranormal:
I swear what I’m about to tell you really happened, even though I was alone at the time, one hundred and fifty feet above the forest floor. Holding on for dear life to a massive Douglas fir.
I’m a tree-sitter. You know, the kind of crazy person who climbs a big tree and stays put in order to protect the old-growth forest. Crazy, at least in the eyes of a general public that thinks clinging to the branches of an immense fir in order to save it is insane.
I’d never considered tree-sitting until I lost my publishing job in San Francisco. Living costs there are, of course, sky-high. A deal-breaker when you’re unemployed. So when I read about a protest at a proposed logging site (which I’m not going to identify, for reasons you’ll soon understand), I figured, “What the hell.” It was a good excuse to escape a hectic town I could no longer afford anyway.
I left all my possessions with a friend. Half a day later, I was in a world of giant trees and happy people. The dramatic change was a kind of high—a hit of Mother Nature’s Ecstasy, you might say. Before I knew it, I was being roped up to a platform one hundred fifty feet high in the branches of a grand, distinguished fir.
The protester I was replacing greeted me with glazed eyes and a beatific grin. But a shiver went through me when she tried to speak and only spittle emerged.
Little did I know I’d soon be struck dumb myself.
My first hours alone in the canopy were a wonder of soft breezes and swaying limbs. I had never before felt so serene. But as twilight fell and the stars came out, I got paranoid. Crippled with stress, I’d roll off my tiny wooden platform when I fell asleep. Only after roping myself against the massive trunk in a perpetual hug was I able to relax and close my eyes.
Two hours later, I awoke with a start. The tree’s limbs groaned. The wind had picked up, I thought. Thank god I’d tied myself down.
Then I screamed. The disturbance was actually a phosphorescent stream swiftly traveling up the tree, over my body and into the night sky. I was petrified. I wanted down. But I was teetering one hundred and fifty feet above the forest floor, with no help from below until first light arrived. I had to gut this out on my own.
I took a deep breath only to be startled again. The phosphorescent stream was composed of recognizable beings—rabbits, bears, owls, even insects! Thousands upon thousands of them were shooting past me to the treetop and the twinkling infinity above.
Slowly, imperceptibly, terror turned to wonder. I started to blubber and cry. Yes! I had been granted a privilege few before me had ever experienced. A lucky few, like the tree-sitter I’d replaced—the young woman who’d been rendered speechless by the magnificence she’d beheld.
I was being overwhelmed by the spirits of deceased forest creatures, heading skywards to their Next Destination. I had entered the bloodstream of the life cycle itself.
I now stock shelves in a grocery store in a small Oregon town. Don’t talk (can’t really). Smile a lot. My co-workers call me The Mute. But I don’t mind. My only ambition is to put together enough money so I can return to the Enchanted Forest.
Because its towering pines offer deceased wild animals’ safe passage to the world beyond ours, where they cavort to their hearts’ content, free from the encroachment of man.
Cut down the old growth and we slam the door on their highway to the Other Side.
Sincerely,
Anarki
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