by Cai Emmons
49
They visit Walden Pond on a bracing fall day, the temperature in the mid-forties, the sky pristine, cloudless and azure. A slight breeze flutes the water. Matt proposed this activity to alleviate the anxiety that has been bouncing among the four of them since Bronwyn’s unexpected arrival yesterday. Or perhaps it’s only three who are anxious—Joe seems immune.
The wide path follows the pond’s perimeter through woods of mostly deciduous trees, a few pines. The leaves—red, green, orange, yellow—are brightened by the sun so they appear almost fake. It is a salesman’s toothy smile of a day. The conversation, mostly powered by Diane, is intermittent chit-chat; the crunching and cracking of twigs and leaves underfoot exposes and amplifies the silences. Bronwyn remembers learning in elementary school about Native Americans traversing such landscapes silently, leaving no imprint, their presence invisible. Invisibility, she thinks, is a lost art, a skill she should cultivate.
It already feels as if she shouldn’t have come here. She didn’t think it through. She came because Joe called and invited her. “Your friend Matt is here,” he said, and then he went on to explain how Matt had lunched with Diane, and his car had broken down, and he was waiting for an ordered part to come in. “So why don’t you join us. It’s been much too long since Diane and I have seen you.” His voice was almost begging, bolstering, flattering, just what her bruised ego needed. She was curious about Matt and Diane, of course, but most of all she came because she was lonely. Then, as soon as she arrived, it became clear she would be the focus of this gathering and would be pressured in ways she cannot bear.
So here they are, hiking to the remains of Thoreau’s famous cabin, and no one is discussing anything of personal significance, which is only a partial relief, because while they’re feigning interest in Thoreau and transcendentalism and the history of Concord, they’re all being overly solicitous to her, waiting for her to explain herself and speak of the future.
They walk single file through the winking sunlight—Diane in the lead, then Matt, then Joe, Bronwyn bringing up the rear. Diane has not said word one about their last encounter. Is it Diane who wanted her here? Of course it must be. It suddenly seems so obvious. Diane has heard about what Matt observed, and now she wants to be an eye witness herself. Diane is never going to believe someone else’s observations, she always needs to witness and judge herself.
The thought makes Bronwyn shudder. She has sworn off tampering with natural forces. She will not be coerced. She needs to talk to Matt privately about what he said to Diane. She’ll take him aside later, when they can find some time alone, although things with him have been pretty strange too. All evening he was unusually quiet and awkward, and he has kept out of her way, avoiding eye contact. Diane gave them a choice of rooms, together or separate, acting as if she didn’t care at all, and Matt made it quickly known he wished to sleep alone. He’s been hurt, she knows, and now she is hurt too.
Her attention drifts from the company to the world around her, the eye-popping leaves and the dark pond ruffled by wind. A turtle slides from a rock to the water, disappearing with a quiet splash, reminding her of all the creatures who inhabit this pond, some living in the mud beneath, frogs and turtles, eels and worms; it’s a chamber of seething activity, concealed by the water’s pocked surface. The pond is stream-fed, reputedly clean and very cold.
“I have to pee,” she says when Joe notices her lagging. “Go ahead.”
“Carry on!” he calls out to the others. “Nature calls. She’ll catch up.”
She waits for the bend in the path to take them out of view then she makes her way to the water’s edge and takes off her shoes and socks and lays them on a rock. She wades in. Beneath the frigid water mud covers her feet. Squeamish, she hops back out. Then, wanting more, she wades in again and allows her feet to sink into the mud a few inches until they settle. This time it feels good, soft and friendly. It’s only mud, silt and water, cold but harmless.
She closes her eyes, feels the mud’s chill travel up her legs. Far below, beneath the mud and water, the Earth’s crust shrugs, though no one notices but she. All the discipline she has mustered in recent days evaporates. She cannot help herself. She sifts the molecules of air overhead, envisions a parcel of air. Her pores dilate, heat sparks in her gut and travels a steady path to her head before exploding.
She reels, hears a tone, passes beyond her own epidermis, and rises as pure intention, corralling moisture, directing the heat. The vapor molecules supercool and aggregate as hexagonal crystals with dendritic branches. The sky bulges with snow, sags toward the earth like a soaked diaper. She exists in the spinning maelstrom, her boundaries dissolved into the nimbus cloud, into the whirling snowflakes, reworked to pure consciousness, unbound by the flesh that bears her name.
When she returns to herself the sky is white. Her consciousness ratchets slowly back into place. Walden Pond. Concord, Massachusetts. She steps out of the water, her feet stiff and red. Snow no longer falls. An inch has come down, maybe less, enough to powder the forest floor, but not completely cover it. The pond is not frozen.
They materialize on the path before her, gaping. “There you are,” Joe says. “You—” He smiles oddly.
Matt leaps toward her. “Your feet must be freezing.” He takes off his hooded gray sweatshirt and hands it to her. “Dry them with this.” He brings his face to hers, lowers his voice. “That was your doing, right?”
She doesn’t answer, watches Diane, whose broad face is stern, the familiar expression of consternation she wears when problem-solving. Years ago Bronwyn used to think it meant Diane was angry, and it made Bronwyn doubt herself. And now, again, she doubts herself. She shouldn’t have done this so spontaneously and haphazardly. What a dope she is. She was overcome, yes, but it doesn’t prove a thing to anyone. And she doesn’t seek to prove herself anyway—at least she didn’t think she did. But here is Diane before her, not saying a word and looking at her with that furious stare. How can Bronwyn let this moment pass without taking up the challenge? Purely a matter of self-respect.
She drops the sweatshirt, steps back from Matt, and looks up. The sky has returned to blue again. She wiggles her frozen, still-bare toes, situates them firmly in the dirt, and directs her pores to do their work. Out in center of the pond snapping turtles burrow into the mud; deeper, the mantle throbs; at the Earth’s core, fire burns. She borrows the diverse pulses of these things and corrals the communal energy into a single song.
Snow falls. The world grows silent and white. Each flake is a tiny miracle of symmetry, and she whirls among them, a dance she has come to know. When she returns this time, heaving a little, shivering, slowly recognizing the faces before her, their stunned silence tells her she has passed a point of no return.
“We have to talk,” Diane says.
50
Diane is surprised by herself. Not in a good way. She has always confronted things head on and asked the questions that demanded to be asked. It isn’t her habit to shy away from difficult things. But now, as they turn onto Route 2, heading from Concord back to Cambridge, Diane remains silent at the wheel, feigning immersion in the act of driving. Everyone else, taking her lead, is silent too. Ordinarily Joe would take up the conversational slack, but even he, sitting next to Bronwyn, in the back seat, has been stunned into speechlessness.
Diane hasn’t stopped working the problem. Questions whip through her mind. What is Bronwyn’s skill exactly? How does it work? What are the conditions under which she can do what she does? Where does a human being locate the energy to rearrange natural forces at the molecular level? What is the rule here upon which future predictions can be made? What might be the practical application of such a skill? Can others learn to do what Bronwyn does? How could an experimental situation possibly be structured?
A tsunami of feeling washed through her watching Bronwyn’s tiny body “performing.” Legs spread, gaze fixed skyward, her expression was neutral though there was no mistaking her iron-clad co
ncentration. You could almost see her transforming herself into an instrument, receiving and transmitting. Watching, Diane teared up. Her own body tensed in sympathy and anticipation and worry, and at the same time she felt so close to the girl, closer than she has ever felt over the years, as if they were both engaged in the activity together, both invested in the outcome. And then—this is the strange part—when it started to snow (the second time that day), Diane did not doubt for a second that it was Bronwyn’s doing. She knew, she simply felt it, just as she knew, a long time ago, that the Mexican man had lifted that van.
Afterwards, not knowing what else to do, they all made their way to Thoreau’s cabin and stared at the rock remains, hardly seeing a thing. Dutifully Joe read the plaque aloud: “I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived.” Beyond a few stones that marked the cabin’s former footprint, there wasn’t much to see. A replica of the cabin had been built elsewhere, across the road, leaving the original location untouched, as Thoreau would have wished. Diane supposes this historic place was a fitting location for Bronwyn’s startling demonstration to take place, though Thoreau himself might have been dismayed.
A few other tourists were pacing the perimeter of the clearing, an American couple, apparently local, with guests who were Japanese and spoke only rudimentary English. The American woman wanted to chat. “Can you believe the weird weather today?” she said to Diane. “Snow in September!”
Diane smiled and shrugged, hoping the woman might think she was also not a native English speaker. The sun was out again and most of the snow had melted. Diane’s group hurried away, back along the path through the woods to the car. Bronwyn and Matt walked together, arm in arm. Diane didn’t hear them talking, and she and Joe didn’t talk either, though they were going to have a lollapalooza of a conversation once they got time alone.
Back at the house Matt gets a call from the repair shop so he and Joe go out together.
“You said you wanted to talk?” Bronwyn says when the boys have left. Her attitude has changed since this morning. She appears calm and available, no longer nervous and distant. Her statement has been made. Strongly.
They take seats in the living room, Diane trembling a little, wishing she’d written her questions down, wanting to take notes, but realizing that might feel too formal. As soon as they sit Diane realizes she can’t possibly stay still. She suggests a walk and they head out to the river which used to be their ritual and which she always finds soothing.
“You must be tired?” Diane says.
“Not too tired. Just a little cold.”
Only then does Diane notice that Bronwyn is wearing two sweaters, a jacket, a skull cap, and she’s keeping her hands jammed in her pockets. “You’re okay being outside?”
“Fine.”
The wind has come up since this morning, and sailboats have gathered at the boathouse for a regatta. They loll on the riverbank, turned into the wind, sails flapping. Bronwyn’s hair spins and twirls like Maypole streamers. Starlings swoop by in low noisy flocks, their wings slicing the air aggressively. It seems to Diane that everything is in rapid flux. Nothing wants to be nailed down.
So it is with Bronwyn, who appears to be open to answering Diane’s questions, but cannot answer them to Diane’s satisfaction. There is so much she claims not to know. How she does what she does. What else she might be capable of doing. She is able to enumerate the things she has done this past summer, but when Diane asks how she knows it’s she who has done these things, how she can be sure it’s not mere coincidence, Bronwyn turns to her, a little miffed. “You were there this morning—couldn’t you tell?”
Diane has to concede—yes, she definitely could tell.
At the Weeks Footbridge they turn around. “You don’t have to be so freaked out,” Bronwyn says. “I’m not going to yell at you like I did last time.” She grins in a kind of apology.
“Freaking out—is that what I’m doing?” Diane tries not to feel defensive. “It’s not often I see something I can’t begin to process.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. I can’t process it either. Not in the usual ways.”
They table this discussion by mutual accord, and they end up at the Harvard Coop as they have so often in the past. Eschewing her usual routes to the periodical and science sections, Diane follows Bronwyn. They browse through coffee table books with full-page color photographs of apes and insects and photos of the Earth taken from space.
Only part of Diane’s attention is on the photographs themselves, most of it is on Bronwyn. She has always known Bronwyn to be remarkable, but until today Diane has completely misunderstood her remarkable nature. Who would suspect, looking at her now, so small and retiring, what Bronwyn can do. There is nothing about her appearance that makes her stand out. She is pretty, yes, but pretty girls abound here in Cambridge. Her red hair is unusual enough to occasion second looks, but other than that she falls quickly from most people’s radar. Diane always assumed it was the quality of Bronwyn’s mind that set her apart, something few people, beyond she, were privileged to see. But now she thinks it’s something else. It’s another kind of acuity that has something to do with spirit, an awareness of the natural world that goes far beyond the norm. She can’t help searching for some physical marker of this rare talent. Maybe Diane is imagining it and maybe not, but it suddenly seems, gazing at Bronwyn who is gazing at a photograph of a tiger’s head, that there is something noticeably different about her. A force field. A subtle aura. She leans into Bronwyn and whispers. “You could do a lot, couldn’t you?”
Bronwyn looks up, blinking, dazed.
“Maybe you could do something to significantly influence the climate?”
Bronwyn is about to laugh. She glances around the bookstore, which is packed as usual, then leans back toward Diane, whispering. “You really want to discuss this here?”
A text arrives from Joe. When will you guys be home? Should we get stuff for dinner? It’s getting dark. Dinner needs to be made—Diane had forgotten dinner. It occurs to her they never had lunch. As they hurry out of the bookstore they run into Jim. They are all equally startled.
“Haven’t seen you for a while,” Jim says to Bronwyn, smirking a little. “How’s the meteorology biz?”
Bronwyn shakes her head obtusely and smiles with closed lips, a masterfully guarded and dismissive smile, as if she’s never seen him before and never will again. If he means anything to her, it certainly doesn’t show. Diane is strangely distracted by Jim’s active Adam’s apple. She tells him they’re in a hurry, she’ll see him at school on Monday. If only he knew what they have been through today—but he never will, certainly not if Diane can help it.
Diane and Bronwyn push out into the harum-scarum, trafficky twilight of Harvard Square. They turn to each other simultaneously and screw up their faces, and with sudden and welcome abandon, they laugh.
PART THREE
The Arctic
51
Bronwyn stares out the window of the small plane to the lonely Siberian wilderness that stretches below them for miles, a subarctic peat bog patched with snow and freckled with strangely circular lakes, round as the art of a dutiful kindergartner. There hasn’t been a sign of human habitation since they set out from Yakutsk over two hours ago. She’s never laid eyes on such deep wilderness. She tries to open herself to its beauty, the colossal untamed emptiness, but there’s something eerie down there, something almost demonic in the austere flatness.
From this distance the land’s tipping point status—the huge quantities of methane it is about to release—is impossible to observe. She knows, as all devotees of climate science know, that this landscape is holding onto a grudge—bubbles of methane, seething for years, are creeping up through the lakes and the permafrost’s fissures, and even offshore beneath the ocean. Methane emissions from Siberia have risen over thirty percent in the pas
t four or five years, and the release is increasing geometrically, frightening news since methane is a greenhouse gas roughly thirty times more destructive than carbon dioxide. Recently scientists have been surprised to see pockets of spongy land all over Siberia bulging into methane-filled bulgunyakh, poised to explode at any moment. People aren’t as scared as they should be.
Can she solidify the permafrost to seal in its methane stores as Diane wants her to do? If she were to pull that off, she could forestall the Earth’s warming a little, and buy its human inhabitants more time to come to their senses. Could she do this without inflicting harm? She and Diane have been discussing this for days. Their conversations run like tangled tickertape through Bronwyn’s mind. First Diane wanted to know if Bronwyn could rebalance levels of carbon dioxide throughout the Earth’s atmosphere, a grandiose plan. It’s highly doubtful Bronwyn could do that. Her range is not global. But have you tried? Diane pressed. One minute Diane was skeptical, the next moment she was a fervent believer in Bronwyn’s talent. Bronwyn has never witnessed this mercurial side of her mentor. Back and forth they went until one of them got testy. Diane desperately wanted Bronwyn to do more demonstrations like the one at Walden Pond, but Bronwyn refused, not wanting to exhaust herself or be scrutinized by Diane, and mindful of the potential hazards inherent in intervention, the dead woman in LA a case in point. I promise you, Diane said, no one could possibly be harmed by refreezing the melting permafrost, or refreezing the Greenland ice sheet, for that matter. Then Bronwyn became the skeptical one—how could Diane possibly know? Diane also suggested Bronwyn have a brain scan, but Bronwyn refused that too. What point would that serve? When Diane proposed this trip to Siberia, they came to détente and, eventually, a plan. Bronwyn has promised to size up the situation, and do what she can; Diane has promised not to pressure her.
