Outview (31 page)

“Why is that allowed to happen?”

“Allowed? Such a strong word, as if
someone’s in charge.”

“Isn’t there someone in charge?”

“Everyone is.”

“How can that be?”

“How can it not be?”

I stared at her. She occupied my earliest
memories, and the feelings washed over me.

“Why did it take you so long to come back
and help me?”

“The day at the convenience store wasn’t
the first time. I stopped in many times through the years . . . your dad’s
funeral, the fourth-grade field trip when you were lost, whenever you were lost,
as a matter of fact, or really scared.”

“Like now.”

She started giggling and grabbed my hand.
“Come on, let’s play!”

“Shouldn’t you show me what you brought me
here for?”

“Yes but . . . I mean it’s extraordinary. It’s
just, you’ll never be the same again.”

She said it sweetly with a trace of
nostalgia, like when Mom talks about me riding my tricycle. Did I really want
to see something that was going to change me forever? Yes.

“Let’s go.”

She pointed up.

43

We made our way up to the crown of the tree;
the sky came into view, deep blue with a strong bright sun. Balancing on the
thin upper branches of Lost Monarch, thirty-two stories high, the breeze kept
us bobbing back and forth.

She pointed out other trees. “Do you see
how they make a sort of circle?”

“Yeah, Lost Monarch completes it.”

“Exactly. Now look down between them.”

There was a shimmering circle about fifty
feet down. It was translucent and would have been invisible except for the
subtle rainbow of colors radiating from it. I remembered Spencer’s description.

“A dimensional doorway?” I asked.

“Yes, but ‘portal’ is a much nicer way to
say it, don’t you think?”

“Where does it go?”

“Don’t you want to see for yourself?”

“How do I get into it?”

“You jump.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Quite.” She nodded smiling.

“You want me to dive off this tree into
thin air?”

“I don’t want you to jump, but if you want
to see what’s inside, it’s the only way.”

“I can’t do it.”

“You can do anything.”

We stood there shifting in the breeze as I
pondered my nerves.

“Isn’t there one of these on the ground
somewhere I could try?”

She laughed. “Not like this one.”

“When will I see you again?”

“I’ll be here when you come out.”

“So I do come out?”

She nodded, smiling.

“Talk about a leap of faith . . . ” I gave
her a glance that said you had better be right, then did my best imitation of a
professional cliff diver I’d once seen on TV.

It would have been impossible to miss even
if I tried. Some force pulled me into the center of the portal. The greenery,
brown branches, and trunks of the trees were blurred streaks that became a
light brighter than any known radiance, and yet it was not blinding. I soared
into warmth. Landing isn’t exactly what happened--I was all at once walking in
what I imagined a cloud would be like. My feet never really touched anything
solid, but I seemed to be moving forward. It was difficult to really know. Gold
light glowed all around. My mind unlocked, instantly recalling memories in
vivid details--soul memories.

After no more than thirty steps, I could
see an opening in the portal and before me was a green alpine meadow. I was on
the slope of an 18,000-foot mountain, at the top of a black cliff more than a
hundred feet above a rocky, moss-covered valley floor, encircled by snow-capped
peaks. Melting ice plummeted over the cliff into a tiny stream.

Somehow, I knew it was the Andes Mountains
of Peru, at the first few drops of the world’s largest river, the great Amazon.
The headwaters begin an epic 4,000-mile voyage to the Atlantic Ocean, one-fifth
of the world’s river flow. It’s no coincidence that this mighty river travels
through the largest rainforest on earth, producing twenty percent of our oxygen
and home to half of the planet’s species. The Amazon rainforest has existed for
more than fifty million years, but in just five decades, man has brought unprecedented
destruction and radically reduced its size.

Within the portal, I understood this to be
a crime against humanity. It became clear to me that trees protect the human
race, most often from ourselves. They guide and heal; without them we could not
breathe. Trees do have souls, and we are connected to them, but unlike us they
do not do bad things. The more trees we destroy the more difficulties we face,
as there is less pure energy in the astral. Clear-cutting forests weakens our
species and trouble follows because the balance is disturbed.

Rose had tried to explain about the souls
in other living things, but I think even she would be surprised by the
interdependency of all things. What would Rose think of this portal? It was a
million times more than what she told me about the astral. Did she know? Could
I use it to find her? I’d have to ask Gibi. Instead of learning about the trees,
I should have been looking for ways to save Rose and Dustin.

Before I could fully digest my thoughts, I
was on top of another mountain, this time in Nevada, where a grove of bristlecone
pines huddled against the wind as they had for thousands of years. It was the
site of the awful murder I’d told Linh and Kyle about. On August 6, 1964, the
death of Prometheus, the world’s oldest living thing took place, by chainsaw.
The portal opened above where the tree had lived for almost five thousand years;
its void was vast and desperate. A mere few days after it was cut down, the
U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, officially entering the
U.S. into a long and bloody war, resulting in more than 58,000 U.S. deaths and
as many as a quarter of a million Vietnamese fatalities. The U.S. military also
dumped millions of gallons of poisonous herbicide on the incredible forests of
Vietnam, causing thousands more Americans to eventually die of cancer and an
estimated four million Vietnamese civilians to become victims of dioxin poison.

What would Linh have thought if she could
have seen the sacred trees around the former home of Prometheus? More startling
would be Kyle and Bà’s reactions to the possibility that cutting down Prometheus
had started the U.S. to slide into the horrendous Vietnam War. How different
their lives would have been.

I’d been away for a long time, and Kyle
would be searching. And I needed to get to Dustin. The portal was allowing me
to physically go to places, so there must be a way to get to him. I needed to
return to Gibi and find out how.

Back in the portal, another corridor, I
stumbled out into a tragically filthy and primitive slum somewhere in Africa. I
was standing on a sheet metal and tarp roof. The portal entrance was almost
five feet above me. Raw sewage ran everywhere. I saw malnourished children with
bloated bellies, vacant eyes, dying mothers, AIDS, malaria, contaminated water--a
perfect collection of the world’s miseries. They came begging: a naked and
exhausted child no more than six with a dirty orange plastic car in one hand
and a stick in the other that he used to dig through trash piles, sought any
crumb. I had nothing to give. Maybe two hundred more began climbing on the
shanty. I Skyclimbed into the portal, escaping dozens of reaching arms just as
the shack collapsed.

Would anyone believe how important trees
were if they hadn’t seen what I had? Could they see a correlation between war,
poverty, disease, despair, and the killing of trees? Not likely. They would
think I was crazy and lock me up like Dustin. How many misunderstood people
were wasting away in institutions? I needed Dustin. We had so much to do
together. The profound depth of what I had witnessed in the portal was crushing
and left me physically drained.

Coming out, the upper branches of Lost
Monarch were within reach, and I quickly moved to the top of the tree. More
stars than I’d ever seen were visible. I could easily tell differences in sizes
and colors that were impossible to see before, jewels of pink, pale-blue, and
gold. I realized it had been a suicide of sorts: the innocent earthly boy Nate
ended with the leap from the tree and my soul had emerged.

44

Where was Gibi, I wondered, and then she
was there. I took her into my arms, and we held each other floating on the
trees, drenched in stars.

“What do I do?” my words choked out.

She held me.

“Gibi, what am I supposed to do?”

She stroked my hair.

“What have we done?” I clung to her, dazed
and inconsolably grieved. Steadied in the branches of ancient treetops, high
above the ground, having just traveled ten thousand miles in a handful of
steps, I possessed the power of the universe in my mind, and yet I wept out of
total frustration and inadequacy.

“The slum you were at used to be part of a
great coastal African forest,” she whispered. “It was destroyed decades ago by
logging, oil exploration, agriculture, industrialization, development . . . the
usual reasons all belonging to greed.”

“Why did I see that? What am I supposed to
do?”

“It’s too soon to understand, but don’t you
feel the possibilities of what you can do?”

“All I feel is our whole planet heading for
a future right out of a dystopian novel.”

“That process was started more than a
hundred years ago.”

She went on to explain that this portal was
not the one for getting to Dustin or Rose. I pressed her for any information on
Rose, but she had none. Gibi told me of several other portals, but none was
more famous among seekers and mystics than the Calyndra Portal.

“Many have been lost that we may never find
again, but Calyndra is legendary. It’s somewhere along the Skyline-to-the-Sea
Trail, which descends from the ridge of the
Santa Cruz Mountains
to the
Pacific Ocean
. The
thirty-mile trail winds through two California state parks, Castle Rock and Big
Basin Redwoods, but it’s thought to be in Big Basin.”

“What’s special about it?”

“Supposedly, no one has been in Calyndra
for more than a hundred years, but they say it can transport you to any
specific time and place in the
past
.”

“Can you change things once you get there?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been but maybe.
Time’s a funny thing.” We talked for the remainder of the night about things
I’d seen in the portal and what they meant. The sun returned, clearing the
possibility that it was just a dream.

“It’s time to go. You must continue your
journey, but if you hide in towns they will find you. When you’re in trouble, the
only place you can possibly escape is in nature. You must get into the trees where
you can be concealed and protected.”

“I wish I could stay here.”

“Redwoods are truly mystical. Normally, it
would be best to remain here, but you cannot. You still need to do many things
out there.”

“Do you know what will happen? I mean will
Lightyear succeed in killing me?”

“I can’t tell.”

I searched her eyes and saw both sadness
and joy.

“In the meantime, you need to go back to
Crater Lake.”

“Is that why I haven’t been able to get it
out of my mind?”

“Yes, your soul knows. It’s a powerful
spot, like a supernatural confluence.”

“What do I do when I get there?”

“What do you most want right now?”

“To free Dustin.”

“That answer is waiting for you at the
lake. Before you go, I have something else to show you. Let’s get back on the
ground.”

What I’d seen in the portal, although
debilitating, put my personal problems into perspective. For the first time in
my life, I understood just what wisdom was and the texture of it expanded my
mind. Touching the forest floor again was an odd sensation, like the feeling of
coming off an extreme amusement park ride. The emotional baggage of my young
life returned with that first step, but it was muted and diminished. I was
stronger.

“Do you see that bridge over there?”

“It’s extraordinary!”

“Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand.

The bridge was narrow, two skinny people
could just walk side by side and we did. It was a beautiful arch carved out of
a fallen redwood. A thin strip of copper oxidized long ago to a soft green,
covered the outside of the railings. Midway, we stood above a swift shallow
stream, filled with colorful soft round rocks, parted lush ferns. It was all so
lovely, but none of it real. The bridge and the creek vanished, and we were
once again standing among the trees.