River’s End

tolerance of the rain forest. The give and take, the nurturing of life by the dead.
    It was the trees that always caught the attention first, the sheer height of them. Out of habit, Olivia took the time to let her audience crane their necks, murmur in awe, snap their pictures while she talked of the significance and purpose of the overstory. It always took a while before people began to notice the smaller things. Her talks were never carved in stone. She was good at gauging the pace and rhythm of her group and gearing a talk to suit it. She moved along to point out the deep grooves that identified the bark of the Douglas fir, the faint purple cast of the cones of the western hemlock.
    Every tree had a purpose, even if it was to die and become a breeding ground for saplings, for fungi, for lichen. If it was to fall, striking others down, it would leave a tear in the overstory so that busy annuals could thrive in the swath of sunlight. It always amused her when they moved deeper and the light became dimmer, greener, that her groups would become hushed. As if they’d just stepped into a church.
    As she lectured, she followed the familiar pattern, scanning faces to see who was listening, who was simply there because their parents or spouse had nagged them into it. She liked to play to those especially, to find something to intrigue them so that when they stepped out into the light again, they took something of her world with them.
    A man caught her eye. He was tall, broad at the shoulders, with a fresh sunburn on his face that indicated someone unused to or unwise in the sun. He wore a hat and a long-sleeved shirt with jeans so obviously new they could have stood on their own. Despite the soft light, he kept his sunglasses in place. She couldn’t see his eyes through the black lenses but sensed they were on her face. That he was listening. She smiled at him, an automatic response to his atten-tiveness. And her gaze had already moved on when his body jerked in reaction.
    She had an avid amateur photographer in the group who was crouched by a nurse log, lens to fungi. She used his interest as a segue, identifying the oyster mushroom he was trying to capture on film.
    She shifted over, pointed out a ring of lovely pure white caps. “These are called Destroying Angels and while rare here are deadly.”
    “They’re so beautiful,” someone commented.
    “Yes. Beauty is often deadly.”
    Her gaze was drawn back to the man in the sunglasses. He’d moved closer, and while most of the others were hunting up other groups of mushroom and chattering, he stood still and silent. As if waiting.
    “Any of you who go on unguided hikes or camp in the area, please exercise caution. However appealing nature may be, however lovely, it has its own defenses. Don’t think that if you see an animal has nibbled on a mushroom or a berry patch, that makes it safe. It’s wiser, and your experience in the forest will be more enjoyable, if you simply look.”
    There was a peculiar tightness in her chest, a sensation that made her w ant to rub the heel of her hand between her breasts to loosen it. She recognized it—an early warning of a panic attack.
    Stupid, she told herself, taking steady breaths as she took the group on a winding trail around nurse logs and ferns. She was perfectly safe. There was nothing here but the forest she knew and a handful of tourists.
    The man had moved closer yet, close enough so that she could see a light sheen of sweat on his face. She felt cold and vaguely queasy.
    “The cool dampness—” Why was he sweating? she wondered. “The cool dampness,” she began again, “in the Olympic rain forest provides the perfect environment for the exuberant growth you see around you. It supports the greatest weight of living matter, per acre, in the world. All the ferns, mosses and lichens you see live here epiphytically. Meaning they make their life on another plant, whether in the overstory of the forest, on the trunks of living trees or in the corpse of a dead one.’’
    The image of her mother’s body flashed into her mind. “While many of the plants we see here grow elsewhere, it’s only in this area that many of the species reach true perfection. Here on the west side of the Olympic Mountains, in the valleys of Ho, Quinault and Queets, there is the ideal blend of saturation, mild temperatures and topography in perfect proportions to support this prime-temperate rain forest.”
    The routine of lecture steadied