There’s a line of great big redwoods behind my tiny house in Portland that I think of as my grandfathers, and when the wind blows really hard as it does more and more often in the age of climate crisis branches, big branches, are prone to crack off and fall (in fact an entire tree broke in half and fell into the church parking lot behind me this winter, I see the three-story tall stump out my window every morning when I eat oatmeal, it has birds in it, and is growing new branches), and one of these redwoods spreads right above the skylight in the little loft where I sleep every night and so really it’s just a matter of time until one of the branches falls on the roof of my house in a storm and maybe it cracks the glass and maybe the cracked glass and the cracked branches will fall into the house and onto me soon, I don’t know, although I can tell you the storms are thrilling and I lay in bed and smile like a wizened ship’s captain as the wind buffets my house about, but what I do know is that the last time we were in the redwoods in California it was me and my parents – I had rented a van and driven there to camp with them, an echo of the trip we used to take every summer when we were kids, there were a whole bunch of families and children running around then but this summer it was just my parents (who still go every year for their anniversary, it will be their 50th when they go next year) and me, not yet out to them as a queerdo, but (I would later learn) giving it away to them loudly with my rented van and my overalls and my extremely short new hair – my mom still won’t stop talking about how surprised she is at the short showers I take these days when I took such long ones as a kid, and well, I don’t know what to tell you mom, there’s a lot of unnecessary labor I’ve given up on these days – but they were so happy and so proud to see me and so relaxed in that specific way they are when they’re camping in the redwoods, and so there I was in the redwoods with my parents and they took me on the walk we used to go on as kids, the walk that takes you to the very old trees, I mean they are some of the oldest redwoods that there are which makes them some of the oldest trees that there are and they’re just right there next to this state park campsite that I didn’t exactly take for granted as a kid, I mean I knew it was extremely special, but it was also a part of my normal life and it’s not now and often I won’t go with my parents on the summer trip because they don’t seem to mind breathing wildfire smoke and there’s usually wildfire smoke and I mind it a lot in both my mind and my lungs, but it wasn’t smoky this year and so I rented the van and came to the redwoods and I went with my parents on the walk on the way to the old trees in my overalls and my short short hair, and at one point they stopped, my 80 year old dad who still hikes every day and my 74 year old mom whose hair literally still isn’t gray, they stopped, and they pointed to a certain tree, and they said, “This is the tree that we want you to sprinkle our ashes under when we die” – and I nodded, and I looked down (sorel, sword ferns) and I looked up, and remembered the very old trees are so tall that the forest where they live contains three separate biomes, and there are creatures (flying squirrels, salamanders) that live in the upper story that we will never see in the understory and right then I felt very glad to know that there is room in the trees for the skylight and the wind and the smoke and the van and my hair and my parents and their ashes, all at once.
AJ O’Reilly (they/them) is a nonbinary writer, performer, and walk-taker living in Portland, OR. They hold a BA and an MA, and so far their work appears or is forthcoming in HAD and Door Is A Jar. Right now—like really right now, no matter what time it is where you are reading this—they are listening to The Mountain Goats.