No Good Word For That Alchemy by Paul Barach

Every time I stand beneath a Coastal Redwood my mouth hangs open as a thousand words try to escape from my chest all at once. 

Every time, the only one that makes it through is a confounded “How?” 

How can something grow so titanic?

I know the short answer: it’s a plant, a genetic byproduct of water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. Redwoods just get a little overzealous about it. 

I even know the long answer; a seed the size of a grain of sand falls hundreds of feet to the soil. With enough sunlight, water, luck, and time, a sentient monolith the width of a Boeing 747 soars into the sky, spreading out branches the size of tree trunks with twigs the size of saplings, tall enough to shade the Statue of Liberty’s torch. 

And still, “How?”

What other word fits when witnessing a miracle? 

 That was my first thought when an email from the Redwoods Comedy Festival popped unexpectedly into my inbox, offering $250 and a comped hotel room. 
My second thought was:

“A free trip to the Redwoods? There is no reason for you to know that I don’t do comedy anymore!” 

“Sounds great!” is what I said. 

Moments after accepting, I texted my new girlfriend to see if she could join me. 

“Yes!” Michelle replied. “Yay! I’ve never been!” 

This didn’t surprise me. So far, the Venn diagram of our lives had only a sliver of overlap. I hoped that the Redwoods would change that. 

With the car packed full of camping gear and the stars hidden behind a wet black sky, we merged onto I-5 South heading to California, joining the long haul truckers and whomever else had something so important it couldn’t wait until sunrise. 

The entire drive I kept glancing over at Michelle, wondering how we had even gotten this far together. 

We’d met through the Seattle comedy scene, long before we’d started dating. 

Back then I’d thought she was upbeat and well-adjusted, so I wondered why she was doing stand up. 

She thought I was smart but not a ray of sunshine, and did not wonder why I was there. 

A brief conversation outside of a bar before I moved to Denver and she left the states was the last we’d spoken until years later. 

By then she’d returned from backpacking through ten countries, and I’d just finished hiking 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada. 

Liking each other’s travel photos on Instagram soon became compliments over direct message until Michelle asked to meet up for a friendly beer to hear about the hike. 

Sounds great! I love talking about myself, is what I thought.

“Sounds great!” is what I said.

We hadn’t even spoken on the phone before I got to the bar. Minutes in, we were laughing. Her like a songbird, me like a former smoker. Hours in, after everyone but the staff had left, we realized that neither of us were stopping this friendly beer from turning into a date.

The more we got to know each other, the less we had in common. 

Even the paths that had brought us to that first night at the bar seldom parallelled. 

She’d quit comedy to pursue singing, which she was more passionate about. 

I’d quit comedy after my girlfriend killed herself in late 2015, because things weren’t as funny anymore. 

She’d quit her government job to travel the world on a university fellowship. 

I’d quit my pot shop job to hike the Pacific Crest Trail after another friend’s suicide in late 2016, because nothing mattered anymore.  

She’d gotten an apartment and a promotion when she returned.
I was living at home and unemployed.

She didn’t hike.

I was lost outside the wilderness. 

Inside the car we passed the headphone jack back and forth as we played bands the other had never heard of. Meanwhile, I tried not to build up our destination too much and failed miserably. The Redwoods are what synagogues and temples could never be: a place of awe. I hoped she’d feel the same once she saw them. With so little in common, we had to share something big.  

Ten hours later we arrived. An act of willpower stopped me from sprinting into the short educational trail just inside Redwoods State Park. Beneath the canopy my eyes closed at that first syrupy inhalation, which is what it must feel like if your lungs did heroin. It’s lush, but calling this forest “lush” was like calling a symphony “loud.” It was paradise.  

We passed beside living, breathing temple columns that grew their first rings as the Roman Empire fell and will grow their last long after we pass on. We stepped over roots as thick as under-sea cables, intertwining beneath us in every direction to keep 800 ton giants from crashing to the earth. Upon their shoulders lived entire ecosystems, generations that will never know the ground. 

“Isn’t it incredible?” I smiled narcotically. 

“You were right. They’re pretty big trees.” She agreed.

My heart dipped. 

Fern Canyon will win her over, I clung to as we lay in the pitch black of our tent that night, rain pattering against the fly. 

The next morning we left the parking lot, crossing a slick wooden bridge onto the trail where the grey sky brushed the ground. Droplets fell from the needles, tapping the round leaves of huckleberry bushes and making the wide palms of sword ferns sway before tumbling into the streams pouring through the valley. 

“It’s so green out here.” She smiled.

I nodded. The color was deafening. 

The rain softened as we paused at a grove. Wooden ruins lay toppled in the carpet of ferns. Fog wrapped the valley, strung between the young, ramrod-straight trunks, centuries into their lives. I leaned against a rotting log the size of a mini-van, gazing out at a familiar place that now felt like someone else’s memory. 

The last time I was here was early 2015, on my way to the same comedy festival. It was months before that first suicide that dimmed the sun, before I’d moved to another state to start over, before I quit comedy, before the trauma of the second suicide, before I quit my job, before I spent half a year hiking through deserts, mountains, and forests. 

Before I met Michelle for that beer. 

Before I knew just how temporary everything can be. 

A golden band shone through the granite sky and Michelle’s fingers wove through mine.

“What are you thinking about?” She asked.

I’m still getting used to being okay again, is what I thought. 

“I’m still getting used to being okay again,” is what I said. “I didn’t think it was ever going to happen. I wasn’t prepared for this.”

She nodded, her hand squeezed mine. 

Neither of us had expected to fall in love again. Both in our thirties, we’d reached a peace with the idea. There’d be dating, sex, friendship, and freedom. We’d take care of our sibling’s children then hand them back and go forward with our lives. 

There’d be love, but it would be a lowercase kind. A word that covers affection, care, attraction, lust, and comfort. 

Love, with a capital L, deserves another word. Something that covers braving an uncertain future together. Something that doesn’t introduce itself or invite itself in. It’s simply there one day, expanding into a space whose capacity had seemed fixed, the shell cracking and repairing as it grows. 

And somehow we’d made it here, walking through the Redwoods together after spending years navigating different worlds. 

“Wow.” Michelle gasped as we descended into Fern Canyon.

My heart rose a little. 

From the mouth of the creek we sloshed through the dirt-brown runoff. A plumage of ferns sprouted from every square inch of the canyon walls, rustling in the breeze with a static hiss. The current gushed through a world so prehistoric that not seeing dinosaurs around the bend was absurd. 

We navigated through the rising creek until reaching an elbow bend where the wind-snapped lumber gathered in a massive tangle. I waded further in to explore. 

“Can we make it through?” Michelle asked when I returned. “Maybe we should turn back.”

“It’s incredible. You have to come see.”

A broken trunk the size of a RV was wedged into the canyon by a giant squid-like splay of branches. Diminished to elven proportions, we pulled ourselves up and over the polished burls that gleamed in stained-glass reds and browns. Hand in hand we splashed up the creek, weaving through a cage of branches until we were out.

On our way back to the parking lot we talked over my set for the festival that night and our plans for the weekend and in the months to come. Our laughter rebounded through the forest, punctuated by the drum of the last raindrops.

“That was really cool, but I can’t wait to get to the hotel room and shower.”  

I nodded, ready to abandon the festival and build a cabin here. 

If you’re lucky, it happens. You meet someone, you fall in love again. The kind where your chest jumps when your hands touch as a thousand words try to escape all at once. None of them capture it, so a smile has to. Nothing ever fully describes that feeling when they smile back. 

With the trailhead coming into view, we stopped one final time at the base of a redwood. 

Holding my hand, she looked up at a pretty big tree. 

Holding her hand, I stood awed beneath a miracle. 

A grain of sand falls hundreds of feet to the earth. With a little sunlight, water, luck, and time, something incredible can enter the world. 

There’s just no good word for that alchemy.