Falling From Grace

by Ann Eriksson

  “Wind is a possibility. Or hitchhiking on another animal,” I said. “The important thing our study shows is that the oribatid mite community within suspended soils in the canopy are formed mainly by dispersal and colonization within the canopy system. In other words, canopy species originate within the canopy”—I waited for the revelation to sink in— “and”—I raised my finger to punctuate the point—“at least one-third of the canopy species we identified are undescribed or species new to science. Questions?”

  Matt’s hand shot into the air. “Dr. Pearson,” he said. His beard, his optimistic energy reminded me of Paul and a wave of regret washed over me. “What are the implications of a Centinelan extinction when many canopy mites are new species.”

  I composed myself. The astute question had impressed me and I paused to consider my answer.

  “What’s a Centinelan extinction?” someone asked.

  I leaned against the edge of the desk and crossed my arms, glad to distract myself with a story. “In 1978, two ecologists carried out the first-ever botanical survey of a cloud forest on a ridge in the western Andean foothills in Equador,” I explained. “The ridge was called Centinela. The ecologists found ninety species previously unknown to science. These species lived nowhere else, a unique flora in an isolated ecosystem. Matt, tell us what happened when the ecologists returned to Centinela to continue their collections a few years later.”

  He seemed pleased at the question. “The forested ridge had been cleared for agriculture.”

  “And the implications?”

  “The ninety new species had become extinct overnight.”

  “Yes.” I took over again. “Many other isolated island ridges occurred in the area, which also must have developed species found nowhere else. These ridges were also cleared for farmland, but before anyone had a chance to carry out a botanical survey. A Centinelan extinction occurs when an ecological island, like the ridge in Equador, is cleared. Species go extinct in a virtual instant, including those unknown to science before they are gone.”

  “Could the rainforest canopy be like Centinela?” Matt asked, his voice rising with excitement. “Isolated and full of new undescribed species that provide ecological functions and services we don’t know about yet?”

  His question conjured up images of logging trucks loaded with old-growth cedar barrelling out of the upper Otter Valley. The image triggered a spike of anger that travelled up my spine and vibrated at the base of my skull. I struggled to push it away. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the industrial clear-cut forestry allowed today results in Centinelan extinctions for canopy mites on a grand scale.” I thought of the blue timber tags on my study trees and my voice rose. “How could it not? They are logging whole forest ecosystems before we can count and study the species we know about, let alone those we have yet to find. Not only that”—I went on, the floodgates swinging open—“they are doing it with impunity, breaking the law, breaking agreements,” I shouted, “with no consideration for endangered species, for the benefits those forests provide. It’s not science, it’s greed, plain and simple greed.” I paused to take a breath. Rows of stunned faces peered back at me. I caught myself. What was I doing? I fumbled around for a way to backtrack. I’d never before let my teaching cross the boundary into politics.

  Matt’s hand shot up again.

  “Yes, Matt,” I answered, hoping for a change of subject.

  “That’s why you got arrested?” he said.

  I went still, the students fell silent. “I . . .” I groped for words. The image of Paul hanging in mid-air, blood dripping from his wound, appeared in my mind. How could I tell the students my arrest had nothing to do with greed, mites, or ecology? Nothing to do with conserving the forests. “I–”

  Matt gave a single loud clap with his big weathered hands. The sound startled everyone in the room. He pushed his chair back, the legs scraping on the linoleum floor, and got to his feet. He raised his hands in front of him and clapped again, then again. One after another, the students in the room stood up and joined him until the room resounded with applause, like rain on a rooftop. I put up my hands to stop them. “No, please, don’t,” I pleaded. “You don’t know.” But they didn’t hear me and they didn’t stop. They kept on clapping until the students for the next class arrived at the door.

  A handful of students waited for me outside the classroom. “Dr. Pearson,” one of them asked. “Will you tell us about your arrest?”

  “Sorry, I can’t talk,” I lied. “I have an appointment.”

  Margie held up the newspaper photo of me under the arm of the officer. “This was harsh. I’m going to write a letter to the editor and to the police.”

  Matt and the others agreed. “What else can we do to help?”

  I carried on walking. I needed more than letters. I needed a miracle. I raised my hand awkwardly in a half-hearted acknowledgment. “Thanks for your support.” I felt their eyes on me as I walked down the hallway and out the door.

  I spent the next couple of hours in my office and lab organizing field samples and finishing up paperwork. I could be in jail the same time next week. The reaction of the students to my outburst had left me embarrassed, feeling a fraud. It was almost dark by the time I left for home. I fumbled with my car keys. The student’s applause had thrown me off balance, their admiration undeserved. I’d stepped onto the logging road in a fit of rage, not virtue. A crossbow bolt flying through the air had carried me onto that road. I slid into the front seat and started the car. It was too late to go back to the hospital. Marcel would have dinner ready and Rainbow would be waiting. How had I accumulated all these responsibilities to other people? I drove out of the parking lot and headed for James Bay and home. I stopped at a light in the middle of downtown. I realized I was stroking my abdomen with my free hand. A baby grew inside me. Previously unknown to science. At least to this scientist. I stared through the windshield at the car ahead, at the red brake lights. The doctor had urged me to make a decision soon. I pulled my hand from my belly and planted it on the steering wheel. The light changed and I stepped on the gas. My chest filled with panic. What was I to do about this baby? Would it be extinct before I knew its name?

  21

  The first time I heard an old-growth tree fall in the forest was in the middle of the day in a windstorm during my graduate thesis project in the Carmanah Valley. The hurricane power of the storm couldn’t mask the roar of the ancient hemlock a kilometre away as it toppled and settled to earth with an impact that left a crater as deep as I was tall. The second happened years later in the dead of a windless night when the rotted roots of a fifty-metre cedar tore from the ground and the mammoth whistled through the air like a dynamited building. I later walked the length of their fallen bodies in the aftermath of broken branches, young trees snapped off in the path of the descent, crushed ferns and shrubs. Around me, light streamed in through an opened patch of sky to touch forest floor that hadn’t felt the sun in centuries.

  The fall of SS-1-3, a.k.a. Bruce the Spruce, did not go unobserved. The scream of a forty-inch chainsaw blade serenaded the laying of the giant to earth. The saw whined while the faller worked at the massive trunk. He wore caulk boots, Kevlar pants held up with red suspenders, and a helmet with ear protection. He cut a V-shaped slice on the east side of the tree called a Humboldt undercut. He paused, removed a heavy plastic wedge from his leather belt, and hammered it into the cut with an axe, to ensure the direction of fall. He climbed around on the hummock to the west side of the tree and set to work. The saw-toothed chain carved small windows into the inner core of the trunk, then tunnelled through the damp layer of sapwood into the hard, dead rot–resistant heartwood that gave the tree support. The upper branches trembled. It was dangerous work. The threat of falling limbs—widow-makers—ever present. The sixty-tonne giant might shift without warning and trap the saw blade; the bottom of the trunk could kick out and knock the faller flat. He could lose a limb or his life. But the logger who felled SS-1-3 k
new his job. The tree shivered and flexed with the final cut, and fell, as planned, away from the sea. Its top splintered on impact; the blast shot spears of fractured wood far into the forest.

  As SS-1-3 fell, I was describing to Judge Marlene Robson the layout of my research site. Judge Robson, known during the past two weeks of trials as the hanging judge, had little sympathy. Her instructions to the crowded courtroom and the twenty defendants: “No more talk about trees. I’m tired of hearing about trees.”

  No one complied. Esther, ushered into the courtroom in handcuffs, sang about trees; Billy brought in his drum and played his version of a tree’s song for thirty seconds before the judge silenced him; Mr. Kimori stood in shin rin yoku. Judge Robson issued an arrest warrant for Mary Cassidy and Tony Williams, alias Cougar, for failure to appear. Cougar was wanted in Oregon State on outstanding charges of wilful mischief and property damage in relation to anti-logging protests. He had blown up a skidder and a grapple yarder with dynamite. Throw in a few shoplifting and B&E charges and he had sufficient reason to avoid the contempt of court charges in Canada.

  While I nervously waited my turn to address the judge who had dismissed the arguments of my friends one by one with a flick of her hand, the faller took a lunch break on the stump of SS-1-3: ham and cheese on brown and a Thermos of coffee.

  “Faye Pearson,” called the court clerk and I took my place in front of the judge’s bench. The magistrate leaned over the front edge of the desktop to peer down at the infamous dwarf professor. The clerk read the charges. “How do you plead on the charge of criminal contempt of court?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Are you representing yourself?”

  “Yes, your honour,” I said and began my argument. I spouted science and its imperatives to society, the plight of a tiny seabird, and the significance of a blue paint mark on the trunk of a tree. Two more trees fell before I presented my evidence and while the video footage of the marbled murrelet played to the crowded courtroom, a faller cut into the cross point of the blue X at the base of the murrelet tree; the chainsaw blade sliced through centuries-old wood like butter. The ancient fir thundered to earth as the judge addressed me. “I don’t know why you’re showing me all this. Were you on the road?”

  “Yes”

  “Were you arrested for defying the injunction?”

  “Yes.”

  “I find you guilty.”

  Judge Robson sentenced me to a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine and a month of house arrest on electronic monitoring beginning immediately.

  Marcel was called next and when he rose from his seat in the back of the courtroom to come forward, the judge muttered “circus show” under her breath. In spite of his eloquent philosophical dissertation about cod, he was sentenced to sixty days, the lengthy jail time on account of his lack of residence.

  • • •

  I squeezed a clump of moss and green-tinged water dripped out into the Petri dish, the air in my makeshift basement lab fragrant with its earthy smell. I positioned the glass bowl under the dissecting microscope, flipped on the light, and adjusted the magnification to forty times. My back ached from four hours of cataloguing arthropods and I suffered a bout of nausea that hadn’t eased for days.

  A simmering fury smouldered under my skin and I struggled to keep it at bay. My trees were gone. With them years of research and untold species we might never find anywhere else. Lost along with the functions they performed that benefitted the forest, the world. The company had acted with impunity, the courts complicit. Marcel was still locked in jail, Paul unconscious in hospital. I wanted to gather them to me, rescue them, protect them from the pain of an uncertain future, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how. My fledgling efforts at political activism had ended in disaster.

  Swirling the dish in a slow circle, I concentrated on the tiny creatures that floated, twirled, and zigzagged through the field of view: rotifers, worms, protozoa, algae. About to discard the sample for another, I spotted a pear-shaped body a third of a millimetre in length lumber into view propelled by three pairs of legs. Instead of toes, the tips of its feet bore suction discs. Tardigrada. Water bear. The tiny aquatic animal resembled a caterpillar more than a bear. Il Tardigrado, slow-stepper. I checked my watch. Rainbow would be home soon from a craft class with a home-schooling group. Grace had discovered the loose association of families who got together for activities, people who didn’t ask probing questions. Rainbow and I spent mornings doing “school.” Three afternoons a week, a family from the group whisked her away for lessons. She never failed to return happy, dancing in the door full of enthusiasm. “I can float and paddle like a dog,” she crowed one day after a swimming class. Rainbow would love the water bear.

  I turned my attention back to the specimen. The discovery of water bears in forest canopies surprised scientists, the creature previously associated with ground soil, ponds, or the ocean: found between grains of beach sand, in leaf litter and algae, in sea-bed sediments. Now canopy researchers found them wherever they looked, at the top of old-growth trees, in water droplets trapped between the leaves of mosses and the thalli of lichen, in greater abundance and number of species the higher in the canopy they searched.

  Rainbow rattled down the stairs, out of breath. She held a clump of blue dough in her hand. “We got to make play dough today.” She spied the microscope. “Can I see? Can I?”

  She pushed a stool over beside me and climbed up. Dropping the dough on the table, she peered through the paired lenses. “It’s like a caterpillar,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “What’s its name?”

  “Water bear. Its scientific name is tardigrade.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  I showed her the moss. “I found it at the top of Bruce the Spruce last year.”

  Rainbow frowned. “But he’s dead.”

  I smoothed the hair on the back of her head. “Yes, but isn’t it nice to have one of his friends. The water bear dried up to a flake of dust in the sample bag with the moss. I added a drop of water and brought it to life again.”

  Rainbow lifted her head from the microscope, eyes wide. “You made it alive from dead?”

  “It was dry, not dead,” I explained. “Water bears can dry out for a hundred years and still come back to life in water.”

  “A hundred years?”

  “It’s called cryptobiosis,” I said. “And that’s not all. They can live in cold to absolute zero, temperatures up to one hundred and thirty degrees Celsius, six thousand atmospheres of pressure, X-ray radiation one hundred times the human lethal dose, and vacuum.”

  I had expected Rainbow to be impressed, or at least curious, but she turned back to the sample, hands gripped around the barrels of the eyepieces.

  “They travel all around the world on the wind. Scientists call it tardigrade rain.” I don’t know why I continued on. She wasn’t listening. In an odd way I felt like I owed it to the water bear to let Rainbow know how amazing it was. To impress on her that there were creatures in the world that could recover from almost anything. “We find them on mountaintops, in the deserts, and the tops of the tallest trees. They’re the most resilient of species.”

  Rainbow slid from the stool and stood in front of me, her body vibrating, face bright with desire. “Could we?”

  “Could we what?”

  “Do the same to Paul? Bring him back to life?”

  My throat tightened at the suggestion. “I wish we could, sweets.”

  “Let’s try.”

  I pointed to my leg. Rainbow’s shoulders sagged. I was trapped at home. I hadn’t seen Paul since my trial, when a sheriff fitted my left ankle with a transmitter and my home phone with an electronic receiver that notified the corrections branch if I left the house without permission twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I had signed a form agreeing to keep the peace and be on upright behaviour. I wondered if ranting and kicking furniture fell into the category of upright. Grace drove from Qualicum once a week to bring grocerie
s and take Rainbow on an outing. We missed our walks along the water and through the park. Two more weeks to go.

  Rainbow turned and plodded to the bottom of the stairs, her feet scuffing across the unpainted concrete floor.

  “Don’t you want to find more water bears?” I swivelled around on the stool.

  “No.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Homework.” Rainbow spent hours writing up sheets of made-up math questions and answering them herself. Inventing stories about trees for Cedar. I worried at each ring of the phone, each knock on the door, in fear of a visit from social services, the return of Mary.

  “Would you like to bake cookies?”

  She whirled around. “Chocolate chip? For Marcel?”

  “You and Grace can visit him on Saturday.”

  Rainbow ran back and hugged me with an energy that nearly unseated me. “I love you, Dr. Faye,” she said. A warm beam of sunshine wrapped itself around my heart.

  While we slept that night, the water bear dried out in the Petri dish and slipped back into cryptobiosis. Paul lay in a white-sheeted hospital bed on the other side of the city. The latest prognosis was discouraging. The longer the coma, the less chance of recovery. The doctors used terms like persistent vegetative state, locked-in syndrome, brain death. Talked of transferring him out of ICU and into the neuroward for supportive care. Daniel kept me informed by phone; his calm voice always ended with the same line, “Don’t give up hope. Miracles happen in this place.”

  A few minutes after four AM, a miracle did happen. Daniel walked by Paul’s bed and said to his patient, “Hey, buddy, want a brewski?” Expecting no answer, he carried on with his work, recording readings from the monitors. When he turned again to Paul’s passive body, what he saw made his heart race. Paul didn’t open his eyes, pupils working to focus on the machines, the lack of green, the weakness in his limbs. He didn’t smile or whisper a name, Daniel’s head dipping close to hear. Paul’s resurrection from his personal cryptobiosis— initiated by beer, not water—was as subtle as the movement of tardigrade rain on atmospheric winds.