Tree Fever. Karen Hood-Caddy

embers and the blackness of the night swooped down around us. We sat in the dark without speaking for a long time. Slowly, the dim light of day crept around us.

      “Scared?” Harley finally asked. I nodded. “You know what my grandfather used to say about fear?” He lifted his open hand to face me and parodied, “Fear, big horse. Learn ride, go anywhere.”

      I smiled. Words were beyond me now and in the gathering quiet, the situation I was about to face loomed over me. Shortly, I was going to be arrested. Arrested. Put in jail like a common criminal. I, who had never even had a speeding violation. How had all this happened? Suddenly I felt completely hopeless.

      “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I whispered.

      Harley looked at me with calm understanding. His face was broad and open, as though it had room for many things. It made me feel peaceful just looking into it.

      “Life is more sudden than we think sometimes,” he said softly. “Changes grow underground and we don’t know they’re there until they burst out.”

      “I just wish there was some other way. Something not so public. Like a petition.” I was trying to convince myself of other options.

      Harley scowled. “You’d keep your hands clean that way, sure. But there’s nothing wrong with digging into the dirt. These trees of yours have as much of themselves in the dirt as in the sky.”

      “But being arrested is so humiliating.”

      He shrugged. “Some of the world’s greatest people have spent time in the clinker. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and who was that woman who fought for the vote, Pank—”

      “Pankhurst. Emmeline Pankhurst.”

      “I’ve spent a few days in there myself. Probably will spend more too, before I’m done. Sometimes you’ve got to put your body where your heart is and say no’.” Seeing the worry on my face, he added, “Trust yourself. Don’t let that mind of yours analyse everything upside-down and sideways. A person’s thinking can make anything right. Or anything wrong. You can’t think your way through this one. The point is, you did something. Even if nothing happens, you took action. That’s better than what the rest of this town is doing right now.”

      “Will you stay with me when the police come?”