Cascadia

by H W Buzz Bernard

  “What battle?” Still harboring trepidation, the young Indian again sat beside his grandfather.

  “When I was a boy,” the old man said, “there was a tale passed down from generations gone by, over seasons too numerous to number. It was a story that no one I knew had been witness to. Nor had my grandfather’s grandfather, or even the generations before them. But it was an account we knew to be true. It has now happened again. I will tell you why. But you must listen closely, so you can tell the story to your offspring.”

  “Yes, Chope.”

  “In the darkness, the mighty Thunderbird, the most powerful of all spirits, whose eyes shoot lightning and whose wings unleash thunder, snatched Whale from its home in the great water and bore it inland, soaring toward the lofty mountains where Thunderbird’s nest awaited. Whale, you see, would provide a fine and long-lasting feast.”

  The boy nodded.

  “But because of the size of Whale, Thunderbird tired and descended to earth several times to rest its wings. Each time it did, a fearful struggle ensued, Whale fighting for its life, Thunderbird battling to subdue it. A final skirmish, violent and prolonged, occurred near Thunderbird’s home. The earth shook and deformed, forests sank, masses of rocks tumbled from the mountains. The great water retreated but returned with fearful speed and fury, rising higher than ever before, washing away villages and turning rivers to salt. All this we have witnessed.”

  The boy nodded again.

  The grandfather shifted his position on the stump, blew into his hands to warm them, then continued his story. “The shaking we felt moments ago was Whale in its death throes. Thunderbird, as always, was the victor. Now the earth and great water will let us live in peace for many generations.”

  “But not forever?”

  “The spirit of Thunderbird controls our destinies. In times of tranquility, it is easy to forget that we live on a battleground; that we are at the mercy of earth that trembles and waters that inundate.” The elder paused and surveyed the devastation surrounding them.

  After a long while, he said, “No, the peacefulness will not endure. That is why you must repeat this tale to those who will follow you, for it is the unseen generations that will grow complacent, thinking all is well, that Thunderbird is sated and delivers only harmless thunder and lightning. But he will grow hungry again, a battle will ensue, and the land will convulse and flood once more. Villages will disappear and people will die.”

  The boy stared out at the water. “It was so beautiful here, Chope,” he said softly.

  “Yes. Long after we no longer walk this land, people will think that. But they, like so many of us, will not be aware of the danger that lurks. You must warn them with your story. It is yours to hand down now.”

  The boy stood, wrapping his arms around him for warmth, and turned toward the mountains. He wondered how many generations would pass before Thunderbird took flight once more in search of Whale.

  Chapter One

  The Ghost Forest

  The Copalis River

  90 Miles west of Seattle

  Monday, March 23 (Present Day)

  ROB ELWOOD NOSED the canoe into a muddy bank bordering a tidewater marsh. He turned to his son Timothy seated in the rear of the canoe. “Hand me the shovel.”

  While Timothy steadied the canoe, Rob chopped away at the bank of the marsh with the shovel. Overhead, seagulls orbited beneath a low-hanging gray overcast. Behind the marsh, bundles of mist, like flannel cotton candy, clung to the tops of a dense stand of Douglas fir and Sitka spruce. A chilly breeze snaked up the narrow, languid river, a reminder that spring had yet to arrive on the Washington coast. The fetor of mud and marine life, both living and dead, permeated the dull morning.

  Rob worked at a steady pace, hacking out a vertical cut that exposed layers of silt, mud, and peaty soil. He glanced back at his son. Tim, wool stocking cap pulled low over his brow, kept his paddle jammed into the mucky bottom of the river, stabilizing the small boat. His sullen facial expression conveyed his mood.

  “Hey,” Rob said, “it was your idea to see what your old man does when he goes to work. You were the guy who wanted to find out what a geologist does in the field.”

  “Yeah, well I guess I had kind of a different vision.”

  Rob stopped digging and placed the shovel in the bottom of the boat. “Like what?”

  “It’s spring break, Dad. I thought we might go somewhere warm, like Hawaii, to study volcanoes. Or Southern Cal. You know, the San Andreas Fault. The Big One. Something like that. Exciting. Not digging in a frigging mud flat.”

  “It’s a tidal marsh.” Rob pulled his lightweight anorak tight around his neck, adjusted his wire-rim spectacles, and blew into his hands to keep them warm. “You think I wasn’t sixteen once, son?”

  Tim squinted at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I haven’t always been Doctor Elwood. It means I know about babes in bikinis on warm beaches during spring vacation. Believe it or not, I’ve been through the horny-adolescent-male stage.”

  “Daaad.” Tim’s cheeks turned the shade of a hearty Merlot. Using his free hand, he yanked his iPhone from his parka and punched at the virtual keyboard with his thumbs. “Hey, guess what? The Trail Blazers won last night.” He held up the phone so his dad could view the score.

  Rob sighed. “Let’s talk about another mystery then. Swing the canoe around so you can see what I’ve excavated.”

  Tim pocketed his phone, then pivoted the craft and brought it abeam of the tiny cliff his father had cut into the bank.

  “What do you see?” Rob asked.

  “Mud. Crap.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to be a scientist.”

  Tim shrugged. “Maybe I’ll be a writer.”

  “Maybe you should think about being something you can actually make a living at.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Come on, son. Look at the mud. Try to think analytically about what you see.”

  A ripple of water thunked against the canoe. The boat bobbed up and down.

  “Tide’s turning,” Rob said, “and we’ve still got stuff to look at on the marsh. So let’s step it up. Try doing a little detective work, okay?”

  Tim leaned closer to the excavation, making a show of examining it. “Sure,” he said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “There’re layers of mud, like different colors, different textures. Silt maybe.” He squinted. “And it looks like there’re little bits of plants and grass stuck in the mud.” Indifference etched on his face, he turned toward his father. “What a thrill.”

  Rob didn’t respond immediately. Partially out of frustration, partially in an attempt to come up with a way to engage his son, he paused. After a minute or so, he spoke. “Look again near the bottom of what I hacked out. There’s something different, something besides just typical salt-marsh deposits.”

  Tim moved his gaze back to the excavation. “Oh, yeah. Looks like there’re twigs and chunks of bark and stuff in the mud.”

  “Right. Those are the remains of a spruce forest, a forest that grows only on dry land. But it’s not dry here, is it? Kinda weird, huh? But there’s something else, too.” He extended his right arm, and with his index finger traced over a thin, grainy deposit layered on top of the mud harboring the spruce bits.

  Tim sighed, reached out, and took a pinch of the deposit between his thumb and forefinger. “Sand.” He looked at his father.

  In his son’s eyes, Rob detected a nascent question. “Good. So let’s think about this. Mud, mud, mud, then suddenly a layer of sand. Where’d that come from?”

  Tim shrugged.

  “Come on. Pretend you’re on CSI. Give it a shot. There’s a mystery here.”

  “The sand came in on a high tide.”

 
“Only once? And another thing, we’re probably three miles upstream from the mouth of the river. That would suggest something a hell of a lot bigger than a high tide carried this sand inland.”

  “A storm. A big storm.”

  “Good. That’s a possibility. Let’s pull the canoe up onto the grass and take a look around.”

  They maneuvered the craft onto the slightly raised hummock of the marsh. They secured the boat and clambered out into a field of soggy, tan grass. Beneath the ankle-high growth, thick mud, almost quicksand-like in its consistency, sucked at their boots.

  Several meandering tidal streams snaked through the marsh. A great blue heron stalked along the edge of one of the creeks, searching for breakfast. It paused to inspect Rob and Tim. Apparently deciding the slow-moving figures offered no threat, the bird continued its hunt.

  Rob watched as Tim surveyed the grassy slough. “Something seem a bit out of place here?” he asked.

  “Yeah, kinda. Those things.” Tim pointed at the scattered silvery stumps and spires of dead trees. The snags gave the marsh the appearance of a giant pin cushion.

  “Good catch, kid. What stood here a long time ago looked just like the thick forest behind it. Spruce, fir, cedar. Now all that remains are grass, some huckleberry bushes, and these dead trees from another age. We call it ‘The Ghost Forest.’”

  “Ghost Forest?” Tim’s voice betrayed a spark of interest.

  “These old stumps and trunks are Western red cedar—strong, rot resistant, insect resistant. They remained here long after the rest of the forest died and decayed. Remember the spruce bits in the mud?”

  Tim nodded.

  “So here’s the crux of the puzzle. What killed the trees?”

  Tim’s face brightened. Engagement. A mystery to be solved. “I like my big storm theory. A saltwater flood from the sea.”

  “Except seawater would have drained back out to the ocean. The trees would have survived. Try again.”

  A bald eagle soared above the marsh, working its wings like trim tabs, probably running an armed reconnaissance in search of a mouse or vole.

  Tim furrowed his brow, staring at the Ghost Forest. “Hey, I know,” he said. “Fire, a forest fire.”

  Rob motioned him forward, toward the naked snags. They squished across the marsh, in spots brushing through the leathery, serrated leaves of salal bushes. They reached a place where several of the bone-colored spires stood in close proximity to one another.

  “See any evidence of fire? Blackened wood? Burn marks?”

  Tim walked around the trees. Squish, squish, squish. “Not really,” he said finally, sounding a bit dejected.

  “So?”

  Tim closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the slate-colored cloud deck. He remained in the reflective pose for a moment, then opened his eyes and pivoted toward his dad. “Sink hole,” he said decidedly. “A big sink hole formed and allowed salt water to rush in.”

  “Well, that’s not totally correct, but you’re close. Good thinking. Here’s the deal. Remember the layer of sand covering the mud that contained the spruce forest debris?”

  Tim nodded.

  “The same thing from about the same time—we know that because of radiocarbon dating—has been discovered all along the coasts of Washington and Oregon. That means something catastrophic happened in the Pacific Northwest a little over three hundred years ago. Something that caused certain areas to subside, or sink, thus allowing tidal marshes to become blanketed in sand.”

  “Something catastrophic?” Tim eyes widened. “What?”

  “A massive earthquake, what’s known as a megaquake. It caused some spots to suddenly sink, like where we’re standing, and unleashed a huge tsunami that swept beach sand inland and permanently flooded those places that had, so to speak, caved in.”

  “Really?”

  Rob could see he had Tim’s interest now. “Trouble is, we’re not talking something of just historical significance. It’s an event, a disaster, that’s going to happen again.”

  Tim stared at his father.

  “Remember that movie The Impossible that came out a few years ago, the one about the big tsunami in Sumatra?”

  “Yeah. That was pretty scary.”

  “Here,” Rob said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, “it’ll happen here. In the Northwest. Just like Sumatra. And I don’t mean just here,” he stamped his foot on the soft earth, “I mean everywhere from Vancouver Island to northern California.”

  Tim smiled. “Come on, Dad, you’re yanking my chain.”

  “Wrong. It’s easy to pass off what once happened here as ‘ancient’ geologic history, something that happened many years before white men reached the western edge of the continent. But it’s not. The Earth is restless and sometimes violent.

  “Mount St. Helens, for instance. The restlessness didn’t cease just because we settled the region and built freeways and skyscrapers and dams. The threat of violent upheavals persists. Just ask the people of Sumatra or Japan. Or if you could, even the Indians who used to live along coasts here.”

  Tim kept his gaze fixed on his father.

  Rob went on. “Earlier you mentioned The Big One on the San Andreas fault. Forget it.” He shook his head in slow motion denial.

  Tim narrowed his eyes. Skepticism.

  “Oh, L. A. will still get a Big One,” Rob said, “but—and this is something we didn’t realize even thirty years ago—it’s really Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland that are Ground Zero for The Big One, the eight-hundred-pound-gorilla quake.”

  Tim stood silent for a few moments, perhaps trying to come to grips with the consequences of what his father had just told him. The wind picked up, sighing through the crown of the living evergreens and rattling through the dry bones of the Ghost Forest. Overhead, a squadron of gulls, calling to one another in piercing cries, rode the freshly invigorated wind.

  Tim broke out of his reverie. “Hey, there’s another canoe.” He pointed at the river.

  Rob turned. A canoe with single paddler pushed upstream, riding the incoming tide. Not a fisherman. Someone fishing would use a drift boat or cast a line from the shore. A recreational paddler? Maybe, but the boat appeared to be making directly for the marsh.

  Rob continued watching. The canoe eased into the bank and stopped. Its single occupant exited, secured the craft, and glided toward Rob and Tim. Glided seemed the correct word. The new arrival, decked out in a University of Washington ball cap, Pendleton jacket, and L. L. Bean footwear, moved effortlessly over the boggy land in long, smooth strides and, in a matter of seconds, stood in front of Rob and Tim.

  “Hi,” she said, and extended her hand. “I’m Cassie.”

  “Hello,” Rob said, shaking hands with her. “I’m Robert Elwood, Rob. And this is my son, Timothy.” He nodded at Tim.

  “I hope you don’t mind me intruding,” she said. “But I’ve read so much about the Ghost Forest I decided I wanted to come see it for myself.”

  Rob took stock of Cassie. Her slight build seemed the reason she’d been able to move over the marsh with such ease. Beyond that, in a word, she appeared entrancing. Not necessarily beautiful, but beguiling. A ponytail the shade of sugar maple leaves in a New England autumn spilled out from beneath the back of her cap. If eyes, as is often said, are the windows to one’s soul, then Cassie’s virescent irises suggested something timeless and wise resided deep within her.

  To complement that implication, she appeared, well, ageless. Rob had no clue whether she might be in her early thirties or late sixties. Perhaps it depended on how the light hit her, at least what little of it managed to squeeze through the leaden overcast.

  “What’s your interest in the Ghost Forest?” Rob asked.

  “I’ve been doing research on Native American legends along the north Pacific Coast
. Most recently with the Makah and Huu-ay-aht people.” She gestured northward. “Before that, with the Snoqualmie, Quileutes, and Duwamish. Within each tribe, oral histories of a ‘great shaking of the earth’ and a ‘massive flood from the ocean’ have been handed down over many generations.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Rob said.

  “Originally, researchers categorized the tales as folklore and mythical sagas. For one thing, the timeframes of the stories were impossible to pin down. There were a lot of vague references like ‘shortly before the white man’s time’ or ‘four generations before my grandfather’s time.’ That left a lot of room for interpretation. Maybe the 1700s, maybe the 1600s, if at all. Then, with the discovery of the Ghost Forest, we—”

  “And a lot of other research discoveries, too,” Rob interjected.

  “I’m sure,” she said, “but the Ghost Forest was the most high-profile. Anyhow, it was an important part of the evidence that there had indeed once been a ‘great shaking of the earth’ and ‘massive flood’ along the coast.”

  She paused, seeming to allow her thoughts to drift into the past, or maybe the future, then continued. “So, the Native American tales it turns out aren’t mythology, they’re history.”

  A gust of wind riffled the dark waters of the Copalis.

  “More than that,” Rob said. “They’re a warning.”

  Chapter Two

  Here be Dragons

  The Ghost Forest

  90 Miles WSW Of Seattle

  Monday, March 23

  “A WARNING?” Cassie asked, moving her gaze over the skeletal Ghost Forest. “How so?”

  “Because we now know there’s a long history of great earthquakes along the Pacific Coast, and that there are more to come.”

  “We?”

  “I’m a geologist,” Rob said. “My interest is in earthquakes and tsunamis.”

  “That seems a strange passion,” she said. It sounded like a statement that begged a response. Her gaze fell on him with the intensity of an investigator, yet he felt no discomfort. Her curiosity seemed born of genuine intellectual interest.