by Ron Rayborne
Julie snapped off several bunches, thanking the vine for so kindly providing them. She would do her best to repay it by distributing its seeds far and wide. Another laugh erupted from her throat. Crude, enough of that.
She swam back to the other side then climbed out, lying down in the sand. It was warm, soothing, embracing. There she indulged her palate. A minute later, she was out.
Chapter 20
In her idyll, Julie lived undiscovered for another week, eating, drinking, swimming, and learning, taking a couple of days off to travel to the coast halfway through. That turned out to be quite an adventure in itself.
First, she caught the attention of a rather large predator, Plithocyon, a huge bear-like animal that looked to be at least a half ton in weight. Father of the bears. Seeing her walk freely across the grasslands it began to follow, stalking her. When she turned and noticed it, it stopped, then began swinging its head from side to side, raising its nose to the air to catch a whiff. It appeared to be straining to see her. Evidently it had poor vision and wasn’t all too sure what the heck she was. Seemed to depend more on smell than sight. Certainly she smelled edible, but she looked biggish. There was nothing in its genetic registry to account for her.
For her part, Julie, while alarmed, couldn’t help but snap pictures, keeping some trees in sight that she hoped to run to and climb should the bear get too feisty. When it noticed her noticing it, the beast growled churlishly, curling its lips, then began a waddle-like stalk toward her. Julie put her camputer back down on her chest, where it hung from a lanyard, and began to back up. The trees were a good hundred and fifty feet away. A thin stand of poplars.
Seeing her retreat, the ursid grew emboldened and uttered a deep, sonorous snarl, thunderous in magnitude, and began to trot. At this, Julie yelped — for Plithocyon was a agile runner — dropped her pack, turned and fled. The ursid pursued, galloping to her pack, then stopping, while Julie made it to the trees and began to climb the first one. Ten feet up, she turned to see the beast sniffing at the backpack. It put one foot on top, then turned it over, clawing at it. Julie yelled, shooing. She wasn’t too convincing, for the beast ignored the pesky sound. It could smell food inside and bit at a pocket. Julie yelled louder, trying to make her voice sound more authoritative. She contemplated climbing back down to hurl rocks at it. A stray thought occurred to her, Could it be that this chance encounter will plant a deep-seated memory within the beast, such that its kind would forevermore be interested in what people were carrying? Forever harassing us for scraps and being shot for it? Just as suddenly as the thought popped into her head, though, she dismissed it as illogical.
There came a sound of ripping as the plith, foot on top of the pack, attempted to pull the mysterious covering apart. At that, Julie howled in protest, then started to climb down. She had to try to save her equipment. A small pile of rocks nearby would serve as ammo.
At the bottom, she looked nervously at the bear, hoping that it wouldn’t decide to abandon the pack for her. It took no notice, however. Julie chose a rock, leaned back and hurled it. A very lucky shot, it bounced right off Mr. Ursid’s skull. Plith jumped and looked around, but seeing nothing nearby, went back to trying to open the pack. So she tried again with another, which bounced off the ground near its face. Plith paused now, making that terrifying growl of his, but did not look up.
That’s when a group of Zygolophodon happened into the clearing. While perhaps not as tall as Gomphotherium, they were still extremely stocky, looking like gray, walking boulders, she thought. The Plithocyon now swung its head to look at them. Soon as they saw him, the herd charged, trumpeting noisily. Julie jumped behind a tree and stuck her fingers in her ears. The plith turned and ran off at a gallop.
Thank you! Julie thought.
Unfortunately, however, this developed into a new problem, for the elephants also took an interest in her pack, first touching it everywhere with their trunks, then turning it over, and again. At least they weren’t trying to open it, she mused. When the old ones got bored, they walked off, but now a young one with more pep decided to have a go. It grabbed the pack by one strap and began to drag, then swing it around. Oh no, Julie worried. It seemed interested in a smell on the inside back, likely her sweat. It pushed at the pack with its head, putting what looked like considerable pressure on it. Julie thought of resuming her rock throwing tactic, but doubted it would work as she hoped. Finally, the young Zygo carefully placed a foot squarely in the middle of the pack and stood on it, rocking back and forth until a loud crack was heard coming from it.
“NO!” Julie shouted. The herd turned to look at her, stared, then gratefully, turned back and sauntered off. Julie waited, giving them a margin of distance, then sprinted to her pack, grabbing it and dashing, or more like dragging the heavy thing, back toward the trees.
She opened it to survey the damage and let out an expletive. “Not the pot!” she wailed. Though it was supposed to be collapsible, it had a bad habit of opening while she walked, and she’d had to remove the pack and close it many times. Now it was smashed flat.
“Well, guess I won’t have that problem anymore!” Julie said to herself. “Damn!” She decided that it might be best to leave before the plith returned, so she stuck the pot back in her pack and headed out.
Julie began to wonder if maybe she should have kept one of the firearms, if at least to scare off those brutes that needed scaring off. Another regret.
After a jaunt through open birch forest, which offered up wonderful views of sky and sea, the way before her was gradually downhill, with expansive grassy plains reaching all the way to the hazy shoreline. On her left, the last of the birch forest broke off sharply down and away from her, while on her right were low hills and, closer by, strange outcroppings of rock. Ahead looked like miles of parkland and the usual groupings of beasts scattered about. With ample space between them, there was no real danger of too close an encounter.
The sky was darkening now, a scent of ozone in the air. Julie looked up to find that it was filling with thick, ebony clouds, which undulated in characteristic waves. Mammatus. A heavy rain was likely coming. The clouds had the benefit of blocking the sun, bringing the temperature back to a more comfortable feel.
She thought about those birches. With the coming change in global climate toward the dry, they would slowly begin to recede eastward, toward the Atlantic, as would other hardwoods like Maple, Plum, Pecan, Elm, Hickory, Alder, Bald Cypress, Liquidambar, and Nyssa, eventually ending up in the northeast. Animals that depended on these flora would also begin to go away, such as some families of borophagine canids, oreodonts, dromomeryicids and chalicotheres. On the other hand, there would be an increase in plants that do well in dry conditions such as Juniper, Mountain Mahogany, Palm, Oak, Pine, Fir, Spruce, grassland, chaparral and desert. In the Great Basin, the mixed conifer forest would retreat northward and into the mountains to be replaced by a dominance of oak-pinyon-juniper woodland and hard-leaved shrubs.
The world would continue to dry, peaking at around six million years before the Anthropocene, in what science would call the Messinian Salinity Crisis, a time when the climate became seriously arid.
Sadly, coinciding with this drying crisis and sharp increase in seasonality, a faunal crisis would occur wherein over five dozen mammal genera would become extinct, the worst in the record of North American land mammal genera, till the age of man. Most browsing taxa would disappear, along with the decimation of grazing and mixed feeders as well, thus ending this special event on the earth, the Clarendonian Chronofauna. But that was still a long, long way off as far as she was concerned, and she could enjoy this paradise as long as she wanted.
The cool breeze was welcome, and the tall grass tossed about in waves all around her. Off in the distance, Julie eyed that which she was going to investigate: that thin trail of smoke climbing high into the sky with a glowing ember at its base. As the sun receded westward and clouds to gather, the progressively darkening sky made that ember bu
rn brighter, offering an appealing contrast to the blues and violets.
A light patter of rain started softly falling, the pit, pit, pit of drops hitting the tops of the grass and the tiny purple, green and white flowers near their tips. The sprinkles increased until they blended together in a hushed melody, accented by the occasional whistle of a ground squirrel calling others of its clan in from the wet. She’d earlier observed that, at variance to the single, sharp note of their later descendants, these squirrels made more of a quick, melodic trilling. It was not unpleasant.
When the rain began to come down just a little harder, the grass bowed over to let the drops off, wetting her bare legs. Like the grass, a herd of Protohippus hung their heads and ears low, dripping and snoozing. Even though the shower was not a strong one, the total mass of drops between her and it blurred the horizon, and the glowing ember that was the volcano dimmed.
Droplets of clean water ran down her cheeks. Julie inhaled deeply; the smell of wet grass was heady, intoxicating. Other animals called out, but their voices were muted, obscured in the rising aural timbre of the rain. Her feet were, by now, thoroughly soaked in her socks and shoes, and she decided to remove them rather than risk the blisters that would result if she continued on in them. Sitting in the wet grass, she pulled them off, then tied them to her pack by the laces. Then she decided to disrobe entirely, to peel off her saturated clothing and go au naturel. And why not, the weather was certainly balmy enough. She laughed at herself, a sight she must be.
Unlike in the future, there was no need to fear this rain. Thus, standing and re-donning her pack, she recommenced her walk, delighting in the feel of wet grass under her feet, between her toes. It was a freeing, liberating sensation. Where she met bare earth, her toes would squish through the cool mud, sometimes sinking to the ankle. In these places, she wove a zigzag path through ground squirrel communities, their denizens, tight, warm bundles of fur, fluffy tails covering their noses, now safely nestled in their underground dens, dozing away the trauma of the shower. Julie laughed again. Then she began to sing.
A favorite vocalist, it was Enya’s It’s In the Rain.
Now that it was almost night, she needed to find a place to sleep, though she wasn’t sure she’d be able to in the rain. The sky was, by now, evenly veiled in clouds, the water coming down in sheets. Julie looked around for some way to escape the squall. There were trees she could hide under, yet there were other creatures standing beneath them. She came across a small, shallow cave that she could probably squeeze into, but, alas, the ground inside looked wet, gritty and uncomfortable.
After another minute of searching, she found a large, heavy-looking overhang of ancient sandstone and embedded river rocks. Below it, on a raised platform of eroded sand, was a nice, thick tuft of green grass. The overhang impeded most of the rain and the turf beneath was largely dry. Still, thanks to the breeze, some made it in anyway. Julie took off her pack, groaning with relief, and set it down resting against the boulder, then she surveyed the area, looking for something. There were a couple of old, fallen trees thirty yards away, and she headed for them. It was dark now and hard to see, but she could still make out dry branches lying on the ground and set to gathering them. Back and forth she went, until she had made a leaning wall of tree limbs firmly positioned against the open side, which checked the further encroachment of the rain. After this, Julie dried herself, spread her sleeping bag on the soft grass, and, gathering some food, lie on top of it.
Thunder sounded in the distance, and she wondered if it was the storm or the volcano. Minutes later, she was asleep.
When she woke, the sun was peeking through tall cumulus clouds, while water drip, drip, dripped off the face of the overhang above and around her onto the saturated grass. Birds sang brightly, calling out the new day. Another day of wonder and joy. In no hurry, Julie went back to sleep.
She was awakened an hour later by a violent tremor. She’d been dreaming and heard the rumble of some gargantuan beast coming to mash her into the soil. Julie jumped up, and, bleary eyed, looked around for the raving devil. There was none about, yet the ground continued to roll, dislodging some of her lean-to branches.
Earthquake!
Pebbles spilled off the underside of the overhang, peppering her head and shoulders painfully. Julie staggered into the open and tried to brace herself. The ground continued to roll beneath her. Then there was a terrific explosion. It came from the direction of the ocean, and she looked that way, eyes wide with fear. The volcano. A plume of gas and dust was rolling out the top, below which a bright layer of lava flowed.
Herds of animals went racing by, she could see them through gaps in the trees, the sound of their hooves creating a thunder of their own. There was another explosion and quickly Julie plugged her ears. The next one knocked her off her feet, but she was up again in an instant, ready to move. With that last display of raw power, however, the stentorian rumbling stopped, the earth ceased shaking, and, plume billowing, the crisis passed.
When she was satisfied it was over, Julie straightened and summoned her nerve. A Miocene alarm clock. Never much cared for alarm clocks, she thought. She turned to look at the plume. It darkened the southwest quarter of the sky, but was dissipating. Steam boiled up from the area where the hot lava connected with water. The future Los Angeles was under construction. She had to see it.
The temps were already climbing. Julie gathered her clothing and walked to a stream to wash them, pounding with rocks and wringing them out. Wrinkle-free they would not be. She put them on wet, reflecting amusedly about why it was so hard to get wet clothes on. But she’d decided that it was a good idea, as the wet would help to keep her cool in the baking sun.
She decided to check on Jaqzen’s progress and switched on the PinPointer. There he was, seventeen miles back. Uncomfortably close. Too close for her. Julie slipped into her pack and headed out.
The ground grumbled and moved continually as she closed in on the volcano, but it was only a shadow of its earlier activity. Occasionally, however, these fairly quiescent times were interrupted by more violent phases. In the intervals between noisy eruptions, an eerie quiet dominated, for by now she was alone, everything else that had any sense having long run off for safer environs. If the quiet held long enough, though, she knew they’d be back.
As she walked, Julie began to encounter splatterings of hardened pyroclastic lava that had ejected from the volcano in the past and landed on this far side. The closer she got, the more frequent their occurrence. Rather than being alarmed about it, though, she was reassured, for she surmised that these extra violent expulsions were uncommon, as there was plenty of vegetal growth within. Walking on the hardened lava was something else. Though technically the volcano was putting out a fluid, low silica basaltic lava called Pahoehoe, which is generally smooth, the action of launching and landing at distance, it partially cooling in flight, made it sharp and dangerous like the more high silica-content of Aa. Julie put on her gloves for fear of slipping and gashing her hands into one of the sharp projections. She tread carefully.
Julie was thrilled to find within these solid lava mounds seams of translucent Olivine, an exquisite, olive-green crystal, called Peridot when of gemstone quality. She stooped down to study them, then found a nice specimen lying in olivine sands around the mounds and pocketed it.
The tension mounted in her as closer she came, step by halting step, until, finally, she was there, standing on a rise above the agitated sea, waves pounding the cliffs below. The Miocene Pacific. As beautiful as it was vast. To fall there, a hundred feet down, would be certain death. Then, ironically, as she thought about the prospect, another sudden movement of the earth almost pitched her into the waves and she jumped back in fright, subsequently deciding that it might be safer to lie down on her stomach to watch the show. She wedged herself between two thin trees near the edge, an arm wrapped around each.
The actual volcano was less than a quarter-mile away, but huge gobs of bright red lava sp
illed from it into the raging sea as from a giant soda that had been shaken. Steam sizzled audibly, and an acrid, burning, sulfuric odor filled the air. Julie tied a wet cloth around her head, covering her face below the eyes. Another rumble that she felt to her very core sent a thrill of excitement through her, but she was safe. After each, more of the red-hot lava would belch out and roll down the side. This was not a peaked volcano though, but a lower level plateau version. Rather than height, breadth would be the end product as more and more land was gradually being added to the future state.
Julie knew that a tectonic rift ran right through here that would become known as the San Andreas Fault system, a system notorious for its many devastating earthquakes and the resulting billions of dollars in damages it would cause. She knew that the sliver of land on the west side of that fault, land that would contain the Santa Lucia, Gabilan, and Santa Cruz Ranges, Point Reyes Peninsula and all the cities around them, in short, most of coastal California, was on the Salinian block which was sliding inexorably northward. The highest tips of those later ranges were either still under the sea or islands jutting out from the mainland, anxious for their day in the sun. In fifteen million years, the spot where these lands were would be 150 plus miles north of here. Meanwhile, the rest of California would be pushed and pulled, sliced and diced.
Presently, Yosemite’s domes and prominences are still embedded in soil. The Grand Canyon is developing, as are the Andes. North America is detached from Central and South America and would be so for another 12 million years. On the other hand, Antarctica, while attached to Gondwanaland, is drifting away from it. With summer temps there reaching up to 45 degrees Fahrenheit, tundral plants, and small trees grow on its coast and well inland. In Alaska, temperate forests of Oak and Beech, Hickory, Walnut, Sweet gum, Basswood, Elm, Wingnut and Katsura are common.