The Crest

The remnants of the Sandy River trickled through a watercourse in the heart of the enclave. The rivulet began, once upon a time, on a glacier high on the volcano called Wy’east by some and Hood to others. In the old days, the Sandy flowed 57 miles to the Columbia River; now it withered somewhere in between.

Today, Fernando Roble gathered his thoughts as he gazed out on the barren waterway. Beside him was his dog Suerte, a trusted companion. She pranced around even though she’d lost her front leg in a rabbit snare, one of many set by people trying to survive after the Shift. The dog functioned well enough, in fact, seemed immune to the disability, she climbed and dashed like a normal dog. We can learn from dogs, he thought.

“Go get it, girl.” The man threw the stick at his dog.

The border collie returned with the stick, lay down, eager to go again, completely focused on the stick in her master’s hand.

“Good girl.”

Fernando came to this river location often to clear his mind. To the east, enormous dust devils towered above the desiccated forests and meadows. The vortexes sucked dust and debris a thousand feet high. The whirlwind swayed the trees. Fernando stared at the massive whirlwind.

Out on a hillside clearing, he could see some of the few climate survivors, the oaks. He knew these beings would endure long after he departed this life. Evolution rolled the dice and it came up lady luck for the oaks. He reflected on their kind, those multi-branched methuselahs. They saw it all, witnessed the extremes and persevered. He asked himself, what did they possess that his species didn’t? Resilience? Equanimity in the face of insurmountable odds? The man gazed at the old arbors and wondered what had gone wrong.

Fernando walked along the bank. The vista and the flow of water, albeit minuscule, consoled him and allowed him to contemplate the upcoming day’s activities in the nursery. The simple act of pacing kept the nefarious thoughts in his head at bay. Like Danielle and Karl, he’d suffered from anxiety; mental health, the first casualty of the Shift.

As he walked, Suerte pranced behind him, oblivious to her master’s unease. He thought about the seedlings in the nursery. They were to be the saviors in the Pacific Northwest — and all his responsibility. He shuddered at the thought of keeping them alive. He didn’t sleep much, at nights he lay in bed and worried: plant health readings, sensors, sonic signals, hundreds of nursery workers, water supply, sprinklers, all of it too much.

The walk along the Sandy eased his mind but it was not the panacea. On those early mornings when sleep did not come, and those anxiety attacks hit him like a freight train, he walked outside with Suerte. There, he played with his dog, comforted to know that the dog didn’t care about the Shift; the dog reassured of its master’s undying love. On countless mornings, he awakened and spoke to Suerte. Eccentric, yes, but the act of conversing with this canine eased the melancholy that clung to his soul. He felt lighter after the exchange.

Fernando was the only one of the three directors of FORC to still have a family. He and his wife Paula lived in the enclave. She’d put up with a lot during the shift. He’d gone to work in the tree science lab at Corvallis. He created genetically engineered Douglas Firs. Ones that could survive the Shift — he thought.

He knew that planting and taking care of the millions of trees on public lands was difficult to do. Humans were like that; they liked big solutions but didn’t follow up on the upkeep. He didn’t like big reforestation schemes, still, the pressure was on the government to reforest on a massive scale and with his photosynthesis-enhanced trees.

Fernando created trees that could be planted and left alone, maintenance free. A breakthrough. He’d spliced genes from the invasive weed, scotch broom, into Doug Firs. Scotch broom possessed drought tolerance and could be planted on scablands and other burnt-out areas. He matched Oregon’s premier timber species with its most noxious weed. Most importantly, the scotch broom had photosynthetic tissue in its stems that allowed it to grow year-round. Thus, the perfect weed traits found their way into a key reforestation species.

Fernando knew the research on photosynthesis. Highly inefficient. Only a small amount of sunlight was captured by the leaves. With his research, he spliced genes into the firs and they became super-efficient, sucking in more carbon, a photosynthesis behemoth. His weren’t the only genetically engineered trees either. By this time, other researchers had created beetle resistant pines, asexual eucalyptus, disease-resistant plums, and fungus resistant chestnuts.

They called his trees “frankentrees.” A badge of honor really. Every plant geneticist who created genetically-altered trees embraced the “frankentree” label. It meant that their work was being taken seriously by the public, and the patents could earn them huge royalties.

The government back then embraced Fernando’s altered trees. They planted millions of these in the Willamette Valley. Truly, Fernando became a science celebrity in the Pacific Northwest. The new trees grew well too. They photosynthesized at phenomenal rates. By year four, the trees were twelve feet tall. They planted 100,000 acres in the valley. But then things went weird-ways. The trees sucked all the moisture from the surrounding soil and created an allelopathic environment for other plants. Nothing else would grow around the seedlings.

Fernando got brutally hammered in the media; his reputation sank. By year five, the trees withered out and died. Millions of dollars wasted. He traced the problem back to a metabolic pathway in the trees. The trees grew big with all that carbon but they couldn’t metabolize it. Like an obese person that couldn’t burn the calories he was taking in.

The failed reforestation effort released all that carbon back into the air, right at the time the shift really kicked in. Fernando lost his tenure opportunity at the university and his research was abandoned.

He thought about those bitter times. Never again, never again. His wife Paula stuck with him. He drank to excess.

Then, a year later, Danielle contacted him. She needed a nursery manager for the last large nursery operation in the Pacific Northwest.

“It’s a hail Mary,” she said. “We either succeed or it’s the end for all of us. I need your expertise.”

“No way,” he told her. “You know what I went through. Not going to do it.”

“Fernando, you’re the only one that can pull this off with me. Really, and besides, we’re using assisted migration species, not genetically engineered.”

“Still no way,” he said. These massive reforestation schemes are fabulously risky. I’m not going to be your fall guy. The press and the government hung me out to dry, destroyed my reputation.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, we no longer have a press or a government to speak of, so you don’t have to worry about that. We have a sponsor too. Fernando, things are going downhill fast and I need you.”

Eventually he agreed to manage the FORC nursery. Now in the present day, he regretted that decision. He feared failure and the stakes were literally life or death for the Pacific Northwest.

As he walked along the Sandy River with Suerte, he gazed up at Wy’east. Once glaciers covered the mountain. The Reid Glacier was the source of the Sandy. Now the peak lay naked, with bare, baked rock.

How quickly things changed. The dust devils returned. A massive whirlwind the size of a football field closed in on Fernando’s location. The monster carried debris, including barbed wire and wood posts. Birds and small mammals were sucked up into the vortex. Fernando and Suerte dove behind a rock. They were pelted with fragments.

“That was close,” he said to his dog.

Suerte went back to her prancing.