The Crest

There were days on the Crest, when the fog rolled in in like whitecaps, thick and acidic, and mixed with the smoke, creating that unshakeable cocktail called smog. Bronchitis was your confidant up on the Crest, pneumonia your bosom buddy.

Beyond the Crest, and down the valley, sat the erstwhile city of Portland. Old Portland City, they called it, sitting at the confluence of two withered rivers, the Willamette and Columbia. The city was a shell, crumbling, hanging on by the thinnest of threads. Fires and flooding pushed the population eastward to Gresham, and all the way to Hood River, and then south to Government Camp. They called this 200 square mile triangle of land the Greater Portland Enclave. Many escaped the city into the bosom of the enclave but most could not. They were stuck, left behind in the old city, bitter. They made the best of the situation; they survived in the undefended muck of Old Portland.

Today, Dr. Danielle Fournier gazed out from her office in the massive research complex in the defunct Mt. Hood National Forest. She glimpsed Mt. Tabor to the west, a 600-foot extinct cinder cone rising above the smoke. Today, the wind scorched the landscape, blowing dust for miles, making visibility difficult. She grimaced as the 30 mph gusts battered her 25,000 acres of tree seedlings.

“Fernando, what are you reading today?”

Her nursery director, Fernando Roble, also with a doctorate degree, read off the numbers like they were cereal labels. “Particulate matter of 2.5 is 500, carbon monoxide is 40 ppm, sulfur dioxide is 811 ppb, nitrogen dioxide is 1650 ppb, and ozone–one hour reading is .505 ppm… off the charts.”

“How do they match with our youngsters’ tolerances?” She used the most endearing terms for the five million seedlings under her watch.

“Right at their limits, I’m afraid. Soil temperature is rising fast and soil moisture is at 5 kPa,” he said.

“Soil moisture is way low. Are they giving off any signals? Ethylene gas?”

“Ethylene gas readings are moderate at 20 ppm. Our boys and girls out there are unhappy and talking to each other.”

“What about aerosol terpenes?”

“Terpenes are at .05 nanograms per milliliter.”

“Keep your eye on terpene aerosols. They are important for cloud formation. Clouds, remember those? With luck, we might even see one, one of these months.”

“Okay, will do.”

Danielle thought about the ethylene gas. She knew plants emitted ethylene gas when stressed. The nursery had gas sensors placed throughout the five million seedlings. Ethylene was not liked by the researchers as far as plant hormones go. In large quantities, it usually meant a warning signal that a plant was under attack or stressed.

Fernando read off precise measurements of the other hormones: auxin for elongating stems, gibberellin for fruit development, cytokinins promoted shoots, and, of course, abscisic acid, another stress hormone.

A cadre of technicians bustled around the leadership team of Danielle, Fernando, and Karl as the trio talked. Outside, hundreds of nursery workers labored in the nursery, weeding, watering, laying pipe, taking measurements, and watching over the haut monde arbors of the plant kingdom.

“Is it the same readings for all the species?”

“Highest in the big leaf maples, definitely not happy campers, lowest in the ponderosa pines.”

Danielle brooded over their situation. Theirs became the most important tree growing operation in North America, the Forest Research Center or FORC. FORC was a massive complex composed of almost a hundred laboratories and two-thousand scientists and technicians scattered across a sprawling ground. The complex included the 25,000-acre nursery operation as well.

The scientists sweated under the smoke and the blistering sun even in the morning. Danielle heard the faint explosions and gunfire coming from the Crest, reminding her that her precious offspring—the seedlings, and research facilities were always under attack.

“What are we doing wrong, Fernando?”

“Nothing. We can only control our own environment the best we can. We can’t control air quality, and everything outside of here is on fire. Fires burn throughout the year and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.”

“Oh my God, those bloody fires.” She put her face in her hands in frustration. “Some days, the responsibility is too much,” she spoke in a rare moment of weakness.

Fernando noticed the rings under Danielle’s bloodshot eyes, her skin appeared ashen.

“FORC is a monumental undertaking Danielle, go easy on yourself,” Fernando said.

“Not going to happen, Fernando. Too much at risk. Our government, what’s left of it, wants results. We’ve got too much depending on the nursery,” she paused, “that is, if we want a habitable Pacific Northwest. Remember, everything we do here, we probably won’t live to see the results. That’s the downside of growing trees. We have to be conscious of that fact.”

“Yea, so you’re doing everything asked of you,” Karl spoke with a German accent. “Chill out a little. We’ve got the best staff and the best science available. Our plants can’t talk to us directly, but if they did, I’m sure they’d say thank you, Danielle.”

“Oh, but they can talk, Karl, and in ways we still don’t understand. That is why you are here. The science is still unclear on this whole nursery. I mean, did we select the right progeny?”

“I think so,” Fernando chimed in. “Assisted migration has been around for a while, and we’ve selected the best of the best, remember that. Our babies are from over Oregon, Northern Nevada, and California. We selected them for their hardiness in extreme weather like these, to survive the Shift. Have faith, for Christ’s sake, we have seeds from 700 miles south of here, from Mendocino National Forest,” Fernando said.

“Yes, I was part of those collecting missions—with Dennis,” she said.

“We collected seed from 13 national forests down south. All those forests are gone now. Did you forget we camped out for months, scouting the forests for those very specific traits we needed? And then we collected the seed. Not an insignificant undertaking, especially in the wake of the forest fires. Fuck, we barely escaped some of those.”

“I remember, Fernando. Shame, some of our best stock is from Shasta-Trinity, and Lassen,” she said.

Fernando tried to comfort her. “Our plants are hardy, Danielle, don’t you worry. They’re culled from hundreds of phenotypes.”

“I realize that, it’s just… why me? How did I become the savior of mankind with this program? It boggles the mind.”

“You’re the best in the world at what you do, that’s why. Unsurpassed in climate change forestry, adept at managing these enormous projects.”

“Jesus, we’re not sure if it will even work, Fernando. I mean creating an inhabitable Pacific Northwest through a giant reforestation effort. Come on, we’re rolling the dice. Both you and I know it.”

“It’ll work. We have the most resilient seed available, Douglas-firs, western red cedars, big-leaf maples, Ponderosa pines, Oregon white oak, and the rest, even Bristlecone pine, the hardiest motherfucking tree known to man.”

They laughed at Fernando’s humor.

“All of which I remind you, we selected to survive the heat. We did the science, followed all the protocols, nothing new here except the scale.”

“In some weird way, I feel the trees sense something,” she said.

“Their final adieu?” Fernando joked.

“More like their swan song,” Danielle noted.

Karl, the commonsense person he was, couldn’t help but interject. “A swan song. The age-old belief that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death.”

“You might be right, Karl. If these trees don’t make it, nothing will, and it’s the end of us—humanity. We have no choice. We must make it work, God dammit,” she retorted spiritedly, returning to her cantankerous self.

“That’s the Executive Director we know and love,” Fernando noted sarcastically.

“You’re pushing it, Fernando.” She smirked.

“Mockery is my strong suit,” he replied.

“These plants are the cornerstone of our overall AM strategy, super drought-tolerant trees, the saviors of western Oregon and Washington. If these trees don’t make it, nothing will.”

“Yea, we followed the protocol. All of us selected, sorted, and carefully chose these from thousands of other seeds. Remember the criteria?” Karl noted.

“I wonder if we shouldn’t have looked for smoke tolerance as a characteristic. That’s what’s bothering them these days,” Fernando said.

“You got that right. I mean, you would think that trees evolved with smoke, but not this much. We don’t even know the smoke tolerances of our seedlings,” she said.

“Well, they photosynthesize well enough, but it’s just that the smoke particulate matter covers their stomata, and without rain that’s a concern,” Fernando said.

Danielle stared at the readings on the computer. She contemplated the beginning of the entire project —it was better during those times.

“Ten years ago, there was a sense of normalcy. We did our research, and we were content. Back then, we thought that yes, the Shift was coming, but we assumed western Oregon would always be green. We never contemplated western Oregon going up in smoke. We took clean air and water for granted. The ferns, mosses, and lichens would always be there. Remember the green tree on our license plates?”

“Sure do,” Fernando said.

Danielle reflected on the deeper issue. “What most people didn’t understand was that while Oregon had intact forests, the rest of the society had nothing left but dusty fields. We in Oregon had a much-diminished rainfall, but at least we had a rainfall. The other part of the west received none,” she told him.

“And your point?” Fernando asked.

“We thought we would have healthy forests forever, and that premise was wrong. Now, we are seeing it all wither and burn before our very eyes.”

“True, but now we’ve got a chance with the nursery.” Fernando tried to lighten the conversation.

“Think about it, Fernando, we give each cohort a fancy name and hope and pray that they’ll be super-arbors in the future. Big Leaf Maples from Lassen National Forest, BLM_Gen_type1_LNF, you are the winner! Ponderosa pines from Klamath National Forest, PP_Gen_type2_KNF, your time has come.

“Not the most romantic names, I’ll admit. But yes, it has come down to AM, assisted migration. As much as we bemoan the flaws in our plan, this is all we have and,” he paused, “there is no plan B.”

“You’re right about there being no plan B. We make it work or we’re goners, but tell me, what is special about our seedlings? Be honest.”

“I’ll tell you,” Karl said. “Our tree seedlings communicate better than anything I have seen in my life. It’s eerie in a way, as if these plants know they are the last survivors of their kind. I’ve noticed the sensors are off the chart, the hertz readings are across the board. We’re getting a lot of good communication research from the labs. The sound frequency experiments, the electrical signals, and the mycorrhiza tests are getting interesting.”

“Someday we might have regular back and forth conversations, humans to trees and vice-versa,” she said.

“Danielle, we already do that in the lab. We are sending them frequencies and the plants are receiving them and sending back their own frequencies, at least that is what we hypothesize at this point and of course we can’t understand them,” Karl said.

“What about the electric pulses?” she asked.

“The same goes for electric transference in the air. They can cross gaps from tree to tree and they respond in kind, we surmise,” Karl said.

“And the mycorrhiza networks?” she asked.

“That’s the most interesting of all. Trees send signals underground through their fungal network. We can trace those signals with isotopes but we’re still in our infancy as to how far and by what mechanisms.”

“Well Karl, we have five million seedlings communicating in the nursery,” she said.

“That’s what makes me nervous. What if they’re saying something that we can’t figure out?” he said with worry in his voice. Danielle, the seedlings in FORC sense what is happening. In a convoluted way, they demand certain guarantees for their participation in our grand science project. I know this is more unscientific weirdness, but it’s the truth. These are unprecedented times. Foremost, the plants want to be protected,” Karl said.

“Plants demand? You’re injecting your anthropomorphic qualities into the equation, aren’t you, Karl?”

“You understand what I mean and besides, you brought it up. Sure, we know it’s unempirical but believe me, it’s like the seedlings are listening to us, watching us. And if we don’t take care of them, well then, we’ll find that out soon enough. I’m around them every day, Danielle. They’re communicating at an unparalleled level,” Karl said.

“We know this, Karl — hormones, VOCs, infrasonic, clicks, electricity, underground mycelial networks, the whole damn lot, these are old evolutionary traits, nothing new here.”

“Evolutionary, yes, but they are relatively new to science. We are just beginning to figure out their strategies, and now, they’ve taken it to another level. Like I said, these were no ordinary plants, they have a level of sophistication that I can’t describe. For years, humans couldn’t hear them or wouldn’t acknowledge them. But sensors don’t lie, Danielle and all of this expensive scientific machinery in our lab is definitely picking up a lot of signaling.”

Danielle grew uneasy with the subject. Even supposing she agreed with Karl, she could never abandon her scientific training. Even if the plants were actively communicating, she demanded documentation, she wanted empirical evidence.

“Let me show you guys something,” Fernando interrupted the pair.

They walked over to the computer screen and Fernando pulled up the vital signs for the Douglas-fir seedlings, the standard bearer for Oregon forestry in the old days.

“So, across a large swath of Western Oregon, the Doug-firs are dying out in huge numbers, mostly on south-facing slopes, but not in our nursery,” he said.

“God forbid, I hope not,” Danielle said.

“That’s not what I meant. What I wanted to say is that our Douglas fir vital signs are doing fine: hormones fine, nutrient levels fine, soil moisture is low but the trees are not too stressed. The other concentrations are low too, even ethylene gas is low at 0.5 ppm. For photosynthesis we have good carbon dioxide uptake at 40 micromoles per meter squared per second. Oxygen production is solid at around 10 micromoles per meter per second and volumetric soil moisture is .4 percent, extreme, but they are doing well.”

“And your main point?” Danielle said.

“Yes, the Medocino stock are the best. Good choice on that one. Here is the read-out on the big-leaf maples. Also, okay but not as good as the Doug-firs. As we speak, the California big-leaf maples are extirpated from California. It’s too hot there and these are traditionally a cool, moist forest species. Here in the nursery, they don’t like the heat or the smoke but we’re trying to keep the temperatures down, and they’re surviving.”

“So, what’s your point, Fernando?” Danielle asked, now getting annoyed.

“The funny thing about these AM plants is that, like Karl, I have never seen so much communication. I know it sounds funny but perhaps the trees sense we are in a time of extinction and are trying to reach out to humans.”

Danielle grew exasperated. “Don’t you fucking start too, Fernando. Your job is to keep these trees alive and Karl, you manage the god-damn research. Let’s drop the plant consciousness talk for now and get back to work.” She stalked out of the building, irritated.

Karl looked at Fernando and shrugged his shoulders.

“Better luck next time, man.”