The Crest

Totally bizarre, he thought. How could that be? The vision dumbfounded the military veteran named Axel Stevenson from Ashland, Oregon.

He recalled the psilocybin trip.

“They spoke to me. The plants spoke to me.”

“That’s not unusual, plants have a powerful voice. They’ve been around way longer than humans,” the shaman responded.

“I remember it well this time, one of many, but different. They gave me some kind of message, a warning.”

“And?”

“I saw the usual geometric patterns at first, there was a series of woven interlacing fibers it seemed to me.”

“Go on,” the shaman said.

“The visualizations hit and then I experienced an intense stream-of-consciousness. That was when I heard the trees speak, felt them with my senses, it frightened me.”

“The plant spirits are wise and you must heed their advice. Trees and wilderness are the psychiatric asylum for the human mind. They know that mankind cannot survive without them. You must take their words seriously if they speak to you,” he said.

“They did,” Axel said.

“The plant spirits have something to say, especially in the times we are living. I believe they are trying to reach out to the human world. Psilocybin is one of the few ways they can connect with us.”

“I remember smelling something coming from the ground. I saw a muti-colored gas, it smelled. It ended after that.”

“The natural world around us is collapsing,” the shaman said. “The trees know it. You need to find out what the smell means, that will help you on your path. I must go now, be well my brother.” The shaman left Axel’s front porch in a microsecond, like a disappearing shadow.

He left Axel wondering. He had PTSD, he’d been screwed up since Afghanistan and that was over ten years ago. He’d been a Lieutenant in a platoon in Kunar Province, never recovered. The Afghan government collapsed and now, his own government disintegrated, broke apart. He was 0 for 2 in fixing failed governments; c’est la vie, not much he could do in that department, anyway.

Damn those messy democracies.

No government meant no veterans service either. That sucked. He couldn’t get the meds he needed. He couldn’t connect with his army brothers.

Damn those indolent bureaucrats.

He’d tried everything, meditation, drugs, therapy, outdoor activities of every sort. Then the heat domes and forest fires came one after another and he saw his beautiful town dry up. The easterly dry winds sucked the town dry and the Rogue River became a trickle. The salmon and brook trout died on the banks, dried, shriveled, eaten by the turkey vultures that flew everywhere. That killed him.

Damn the Shift to hell.

He was 0 for 1 in marriages. His wife and only daughter left him years earlier when the Shift really kicked in. She couldn’t live in that house with him. “Deadbeat,” she called him. She even spelled it out.

“d-e-a-d-b-e-a-t”

“Is that clear enough for you?” she said.

He resented her belittling. She required things like nurturing and love — the nerve of her. No, Axel Stevenson was not the most intimate person in the world. His version of tenderness was a stringer of fish, an elk carcass, and a campfire. She demanded comfort — what impertinence. She wanted things like running water, but the municipal water system collapsed, and she couldn’t take a bath. So, no big deal right, he fetched her well water. She demanded electricity — such temerity. The power grid failed and she couldn’t vacuum the floor, or use the oven.

To hell with the coddled bitch.

They couldn’t buy food at the store. They ate wild game when he could find it. The daughter loved it. They lived off potatoes and pinto beans. His wife hated pinto beans.

Screw the frijoles.

She said he was uncontrollable; he’d gone into fits of rage. She said he didn’t understand even the rudimentary elements of being a father. She had a point about the rage, but he disagreed with her on the father part, in fact, he thought himself a damn good father. He spent his days with his six-year-old girl, hiking in the forest, swinging on the tire in the backyard, working in the garden, talking to the trees. Her comments about being a father hurt the worst; but he couldn’t out-argue her, he never could.

She said he’d lost his mind talking to those goddamn trees. He felt an inexplicable need to sit out in the backyard and stare at the trees. Trying to perceive a thing, an object, listening, waiting. She looked at her husband sitting in the backyard gazing into oblivion. Cocking his ear occasionally, trying to hear something. Was it a message from the beyond?

She said he was lazy. He knew he wasn’t lazy because he proved it when he was in the service. He’d kicked some Taliban ass. He’d been the first to volunteer for dangerous shit. It’s just that now, he couldn’t grasp the Shift, it was beyond him, he became despondent.

God bless the sluggards.

He agreed with her on most of her arguments about his character except for the father part. That hurt most of all. He’d shown his daughter how to snare a rabbit and skin the animal. He’d shown her how to find a camas and dig it up and boil it. He said he was teaching her how to survive the Shift. His wife said he needed to find work.

Damn the occupational drudgery.

The wife and daughter up and left for Washington state to her sister’s house in Wenatchee. That was the crusher. He moved deeper and deeper into despair, lost family sorrow, climate anguish, a feeling of helplessness in the world, a sense of dolefulness out there in good old Oeste Americano.

He thought it amazing how many words there were for depression, how many kinds of wretchedness there seemed to be. In fact, when he thought about it, there was a veritable melancholia horn of plenty out there. He could write a whole encyclopedia on despondency. Who said he lacked diversity in his life?

He didn’t possess a deep understanding of the ‘Shift’ as it was called. He only knew that the climate became harsh, drying up his one acre out in the sticks. He didn’t understand the bigger ecological picture, so he sought out a local shaman who recommended psilocybin mushrooms. They worked for him — too well.

Alone, he looked out on his dusty acre, a few oaks still clung to their leaves. The evergreens faded dry and brown. He stared at the trees in his backyard for the longest time and listened. He picked up the frequency of each tree. He stood there enthralled by the sounds. He smelled something coming out of the ground. The weird part was that he was no longer stoned.