knows: the word tree must grow up, get real. It’s not the size that throws him, or not just the size. It’s the grooved, Doric perfection of the red-brown columns, shooting upward from the shoulder-high ferns and moss-swarmed floor—straight up, with no taper, like a russet, leathery apotheosis. And when the columns do start to crown, it happens so high, so removed from the pillars’ base, that it might as well be a second world up there, up nearer eternity.
All the agitation of the journey ebbs from Olivia. It’s like she knows the place, although she has never been west of Six Flags Over Mid-America. Along a narrow road through the coastal forest she calls out, “Stop the car.”
He pulls over onto a shoulder soft with needles a few feet deep. The car door opens and the air tastes sweet and savory. She wanders out from the passenger side into a grove of giants. When he joins her, her face is streaked and her eyes hot and liquid with joy. She shakes her head, incredulous. “This is it. This is them. We’re here.”
. . .
THE DEFENDERS of the forest aren’t hard to find. Different groups are organizing throughout the Lost Coast. There’s a report of some action almost every day in the local papers. Nick and Olivia live rough, car-camping for a few days, feeling out who’s who in a ragtag cast that is makeshift and an organization that is improvised, to say the least.
They learn about a volunteer encampment in the muddy fields of a sympathetic retired fisherman, not far from Solace. The bivouac swarms with more activity than coherence. Quick young people, loud in their devotion, call across the tent-dotted meadow. Their noses, ears, and eyebrows flash with hardware. Dreadlocks tangle in the fibers of their multicolored garb. They stink of soil, sweat, idealism, patchouli oil, and the sweet sinsemilla grown all through these woods. Some stay for two days. Some, judging from their microflora, have been in this base camp for more than a few seasons.
The camp is one of many nerve centers for a chaotic movement without leaders that mostly goes under the name of Life Defense Force. Nick and Olivia scout the fields, talking to everyone. They share a dinner of eggs and beans with an older man named Moses. He, for his part, questions and vets them, too, assuring himself that they aren’t spies for Weyerhaeuser or Boise Cascade or the more proximal force in these parts, Humboldt Timber.
“How do we get . . . assignments?” Nick asks.
The word makes Moses laugh out loud. “No assignments here. But no end of work.”
They cook for dozens and help clean up afterward. There’s a march the next day. Nick letters posters while Olivia joins the sing-along. A flame-haired, plaid-clad, hawk-silhouetted woman passes through camp wrapped in a woven shawl. Olivia grabs Nick. “It’s her. The one from the television clip back in Indiana.” The one the beings of light wanted her to find.
Moses nods. “That’s Mother N. She can turn a megaphone into a Strad.”
As the light falls, Mother N holds an orientation talk in a clearing next to Moses’s tent. She scans the rings of seated bodies, acknowledging veterans and welcoming newcomers. “It’s good to see so many of you still here this late in the season. In the past, a lot of you have headed home for the winter, when the rains shut down the logging shows until spring. But Humboldt Timber has started working year-round.”
Boos ripple through the crowd.
“They’re trying to get the cut out before the law catches up with them. But they haven’t counted on all of you!”
A cheer breaks like a whitecap over Nicholas. He turns to Olivia and takes her hand. She squeezes back, as if this isn’t the first time he has touched her in gladness. She beams, and Nick marvels again at her certainty. She has gotten them this far navigating by feel—Warmer, this way, warmer—whispered instructions from presences only she can hear. And here they are, like they knew where they were going all along.
“A lot of you have been out here for a while,” Mother N continues. “So much useful work! Picketing. Guerrilla theater. Peaceful demonstrations.”
Moses rubs his shaved head and shouts, “Now we put the fear of God in them!”
The cheer redoubles. Even Mother N smiles. “Well, maybe! But the LDF takes nonviolence seriously. For those of you who just arrived, we want you to take passive resistance training and pledge the nonviolence code