The World Was Ending Again

The world was ending again.

The announcement arrived between a weather advisory and an advertisement for shoes.

All three wanted immediate attention.

The weather advisory concerned a river that might flood. The advertisement promised a level of comfort previously unknown to human feet. The third item explained, in considerable detail, why civilization was entering its final chapter.

Civilization had apparently been doing this for some time.

Several previous endings remained underway. One had been postponed pending further evidence. Another had divided experts into opposing camps, each concerned that the other was dangerously underestimating the situation.

There were charts.

There were photographs.

There were people explaining the charts, other people correcting the explanations, and a third group demanding to know why nobody was discussing something else.

Occasionally, the warnings were right.

Rivers flooded. Diseases spread. Governments collapsed. People lost their homes, their livelihoods, and the people they loved. Civilization had no shortage of genuine emergencies, and an impressive number of people worked very hard to prevent them.

But there were other emergencies.

A famous person said something foolish. A less famous person noticed. The famous person apologized incorrectly, and by lunchtime several million people were discussing the implications.

The original remark was forgotten.

The discussion continued.

It had become a matter of principle.

Humanity was extraordinarily good at this sort of thing. It had learned to distribute information around the planet in seconds, an achievement that might have astonished every previous generation.

It used this ability to coordinate disaster relief, share scientific discoveries, maintain friendships across oceans, and argue about whether a photograph of a dress was blue.

The machinery didn't make much distinction.

A warning about contaminated drinking water and a disagreement between strangers could arrive in the same little rectangle, accompanied by similar requests to keep watching.

Determining which one deserved attention was left to the person holding the rectangle.

This was a substantial responsibility.

It was also a surprisingly popular way to spend an afternoon.

Several hundred miles from the nearest person having one of these discussions, rain moved through the branches of a western redcedar.

The tree stood in a narrow fold of Pacific Northwest forest, among hemlocks, Douglas-firs, moss, ferns, and the remains of other trees that had fallen long before.

It was a little over four hundred years old.

Its trunk was broad, its bark deeply furrowed. Some of its lower branches had died as neighboring trees grew. Others had broken during storms. In several places, living wood had grown around injuries that were older than the governments currently responsible for managing the surrounding land.

Rain collected along its flattened sprays of foliage.

A beetle moved beneath a loose strip of bark.

Inside a hollow several meters above the ground, something was scratching.

A northern flying squirrel was inspecting the place.

She squeezed through a narrow entrance, pressed her body against the interior wall, and turned around.

She emerged again.

She climbed partway down the trunk, gathered a few strands of dry fibrous material, and carried them inside.

There was a great deal to do.

She was going to have children.

The tree began sometime around 1610.

There was no announcement.

A western redcedar had produced a quantity of small seeds, most of which landed somewhere unsuitable, were consumed, or failed to survive their first growing season.

One fell into the softened wood of a decaying log.

It was damp there.

A little light reached the surface through an opening in the canopy. Fungi and other organisms had spent years breaking down the older tree, leaving material that could retain water around the new seed.

Under those conditions, the seed germinated.

A root emerged.

Then a shoot.

Neither was particularly impressive.

The shoot carried two tiny seed leaves into the light. The root entered the softened wood, following spaces created by decay.

A slug passed nearby.

Something disturbed the surface of the log, dislodging several fragments of bark.

The seedling remained upright.

It had achieved approximately everything a seedling could reasonably be expected to achieve.

Elsewhere, Galileo Galilei was pointing a telescope toward Jupiter.

On January 7, 1610, he observed several points of light near the planet. Over successive nights, their changing positions revealed something extraordinary.

They were not distant stars.

They were moons orbiting Jupiter.

For centuries, influential accounts of the heavens had treated Earth as the center around which celestial bodies moved. Galileo's observations provided powerful evidence against that arrangement.

The discovery was not universally welcomed.

Human beings had invested a considerable amount of intellectual effort in placing themselves at the center of things. Discovering that other arrangements were possible created some administrative difficulties.

The moons continued orbiting Jupiter.

Galileo continued observing them.

On the forest floor, the cedar grew another root.

That summer, the little tree survived several dry intervals and the attention of animals that fed on young vegetation.

In autumn, a falling branch struck the log nearby.

Winter followed.

Water froze in exposed places. Snow accumulated on the larger branches overhead. The seedling bent beneath a little of it and straightened when the weight disappeared.

In spring, new growth appeared at its tip.

Then another spring came.

And another.

The seedling was fortunate to have found a workable place to begin. It would need considerably more luck to remain there.

Humanity spent the following centuries becoming extremely important.

Kings established dynasties. Empires claimed territories. Generals won battles that altered borders, which gave later generals something to fight over.

People built monuments to preserve their names.

Other people destroyed the monuments.

Occasionally, someone built a new monument using pieces of the old one.

Forever was a popular word in those days.

It remained popular in the centuries that followed, despite a rather disappointing record.

The cedar grew.

Its first decades were spent beneath taller neighbors. Sunlight arrived in fragments, shifting across the ground as branches moved overhead.

Then a storm brought down a nearby tree.

The fallen trunk struck the forest floor hard enough to throw soil into the air and tear several smaller plants from the ground. Its crown opened a space in the canopy.

The cedar received more light.

Its growth increased.

Several young hemlocks also took advantage of the opening. One grew rapidly beside it, extending branches into the same space.

The two trees competed for light and water without developing a political disagreement about the arrangement.

A few decades later, the hemlock was struck by another falling tree.

The cedar remained.

This was not evidence of superior character.

By then, people had begun carrying printed newspapers across cities and between countries.

News traveled faster than it once had. A person could learn about distant wars, political decisions, disasters, and scientific advances without ever leaving home.

This was an extraordinary improvement.

It also meant a person could become furious with someone living a thousand miles away, an opportunity that had previously required a great deal of travel.

As communications improved, entire populations could direct their attention toward the same event.

Sometimes they organized to stop suffering.

Sometimes they organized to cause it.

Sometimes they simply watched.

The cedar was now tall enough to reach the surrounding canopy.

Its trunk had thickened. Its lower branches were becoming shaded, and some had stopped producing enough foliage to remain alive.

A winter storm tore away a substantial branch.

The break exposed wood.

For years, the injury remained mostly solid. Over time, decay developed in vulnerable portions of the damaged tissue.

Fungi entered.

Insects used the changing wood.

Living tissue continued growing around the affected area.

The process was slow, irregular, and not especially picturesque.

Much of the exposed wood remained resistant to decay. Elsewhere, softer material gradually disappeared, leaving a cavity around part of the old branch attachment.

The opening was too small for a person.

A small animal could fit.

This turned out to be sufficient.

In July 1969, three human beings reached the Moon.

It is difficult to overstate what was required.

Thousands of people had spent years designing, constructing, testing, calculating, repairing, and occasionally arguing over the machines and procedures that would make the journey possible.

Two astronauts descended to the lunar surface.

They stepped onto another world.

Behind them, Earth hung in the blackness.

People watched from living rooms, public spaces, workplaces, and wherever television signals could reach them.

For once, an enormous number of human beings were paying attention to something that deserved every bit of it.

A species that had once struggled to understand the arrangement of the planets had learned to travel between them.

On the Olympic Peninsula, the cedar was approaching its fourth century.

A moth entered a spider's web among its lower branches.

The moth struggled.

The spider approached.

A few thousand miles above, astronauts had left footprints in lunar dust.

The moth stopped moving.

The astronauts returned home.

In 1999, humanity encountered a different problem.

Many computer systems represented years using only two digits. This had saved storage and simplified programming, but the approaching change of century created the possibility that some systems would interpret the year 2000 as 1900.

The consequences could be serious.

Engineers found problems, repaired software, tested equipment, and developed contingency plans. Governments and businesses spent substantial sums trying to prevent failures.

Other people predicted widespread chaos.

Some bought emergency supplies.

Some prepared for systems to stop operating.

Some announced that modern civilization had finally made itself too complicated to survive.

Midnight arrived.

Most essential systems continued functioning. There were errors and disruptions, but not the general collapse some had predicted.

A substantial amount of prevention had worked.

This created a familiar problem: the more successfully people prevent a disaster, the easier it becomes for everyone else to believe the danger was imaginary.

The engineers had little time to enjoy the distinction.

There were other things to fix.

In the forest, the cedar entered another winter.

Water moved along its roots.

A branch failed beneath the weight of wet snow.

The hollow in its trunk sheltered something small.

Neither the century nor its transition had altered the arrangement of these particular lives.

But the forest was not beyond the reach of human activity.

The world beyond the mountains was changing. Industry had altered the composition of the atmosphere. Average temperatures were rising, and patterns of heat and moisture were changing with them.

In some recent summers, dry periods had persisted longer.

A few of the cedar's upper branches had begun losing foliage.

The tree remained enormous.

It remained alive.

The hollow was still there.

In spring, a flying squirrel found it.

She was not the first squirrel to use the opening.

Nor was she especially concerned about the previous tenants.

The cavity contained old nesting material, dry fragments of vegetation, and the remains of whatever had occupied the space before her arrival.

She examined it thoroughly.

Over several nights, she added moss and fibrous material, sometimes carrying pieces back out and depositing them elsewhere.

A few strands became caught around the entrance.

One persisted there for several days, moving whenever wind reached the opening.

The interior was reasonably protected from rain, and the surrounding branches offered access to several neighboring trees.

The squirrel had other shelters available within her range. This one would do for the immediate purpose.

She was pregnant.

A few weeks later, three young lay against her body in the darkness.

They were pink, nearly hairless, and scarcely capable of moving except in the small, determined ways that brought them toward warmth and milk.

Their eyes were closed.

Their ears had not yet developed their full function.

They depended on her for nearly everything.

The arrangement was common throughout the animal kingdom and generally rather demanding for the party providing the milk.

The mother spent much of her time in the hollow.

When she left, she traveled after dark.

She descended partway along the cedar's trunk, moved onto a branch, and launched toward a neighboring hemlock.

The skin between her front and hind limbs spread into a gliding membrane.

Her tail helped control her movement.

As she approached the hemlock, she raised the front of her body, changed the angle of descent, and landed against the trunk.

Her claws caught the bark.

She climbed.

The flight had cost her height. Climbing would restore it.

She traveled between trees, feeding on available fungi, lichens, and other foods.

Some of the fungi she ate developed underground, associated with the roots of hemlocks, Douglas-firs, and other trees.

After eating, she could carry viable fungal spores elsewhere in her digestive tract, depositing them as she moved through the forest.

She had no particular interest in fungal reproduction.

She was hungry.

The fungi had no particular interest in squirrels, either. Their reproductive structures were available to be eaten, and their spores could travel with the animals that consumed them.

Neither participant had designed the arrangement.

It worked anyway.

Back in the hollow, the young slept against one another.

They woke to feed.

They slept again.

Their bodies developed.

Fine hair appeared along their backs.

Their limbs became stronger.

They began to crawl through the nesting material, sometimes climbing over one another and disturbing whatever their mother had arranged.

One repeatedly wedged itself beneath a folded piece of moss.

Another tended to climb over the mother's foreleg when she entered.

The third occasionally pushed its head between the other two and remained there, whether or not space had been available.

These were not grand distinctions.

But there was enough variation to make three young squirrels more troublesome than one.

By the time their eyes opened, their bodies were covered in fur.

The hollow had acquired corners, surfaces, and small obstacles that had previously meant little to them.

One young squirrel worked its way toward the entrance and pressed its front feet against the pale wood bordering the opening.

Another followed.

For a moment, both occupied the same narrow section of trunk.

They pushed against each other.

One lost its grip and slid back into the bedding.

It climbed up again.

Outside, rain moved through the branches.

The young squirrels could see the opening, the bark beyond it, and the irregular shapes of nearby vegetation.

The forest was beginning to become available to them.

The summer was warmer than usual.

For several weeks, rain came less often.

The ground beneath openings in the canopy dried between brief showers. Some mosses contracted as they lost moisture. In exposed places, the upper surfaces of fallen logs became less hospitable to the small organisms that required persistent dampness.

The cedar continued taking up water through its roots.

High in the crown, a few branches had already lost substantial portions of their green foliage. One of them extended above the hollow.

Its remaining sprays dried and began to break apart.

A patch of morning sunlight that had once been intercepted by the branch reached the trunk below it.

The hollow's entrance became warmer and brighter during part of the day.

The mother squirrel shifted nesting material farther into the sheltered interior.

On another day, she moved one of the young to a different den in a nearby tree, returning afterward for the others.

The alternate shelter was less spacious and did not offer quite the same protection from wind.

She used it for several days.

Later, when conditions were cooler, she returned the young to the cedar.

There had been no announcement of these changes.

No single summer could explain the condition of the tree, and no one was present to measure its response.

The living wood around the cavity continued growing.

Insects remained active in damaged parts of the trunk.

The cedar was not dying.

It was also not immune to its surroundings.

As the young squirrels developed, the hollow became increasingly crowded.

They began climbing along the bark outside.

At first, they remained close to the entrance, gripping the fibrous surface with their claws.

One climbed toward a branch and then backed down, stopping twice to adjust its feet.

Another emerged carrying a small fragment of nesting material in its mouth. It climbed several inches, dropped the fragment, and watched it fall.

The fragment caught on a lower projection.

The squirrel descended, retrieved it, and brought it back toward the entrance.

A few minutes later, it dropped it again.

This continued long enough that the fragment's eventual disappearance could reasonably be considered an improvement.

The mother continued foraging at night.

Her routes had become familiar.

She crossed toward the hemlock, climbed through its branches, and traveled farther downslope toward a Douglas-fir.

Sometimes she disappeared into the darkness for a long interval.

Sometimes she returned sooner.

The young began following her for short distances.

They climbed along the cedar's branches, investigated rough places in the bark, and tested their increasingly capable bodies against the awkward geometry of the forest.

Moving from one tree to another required more than enthusiasm.

Flying squirrels do not fly.

They glide.

To cross an opening, they must find a suitable launching position, spread their membranes, control their descent, and land against a surface that provides enough purchase to stop.

A successful crossing may require climbing again to recover height.

A failed one can end considerably farther below than intended.

The young practiced on short routes before attempting longer ones.

Occasionally, an attempted glide became little more than an untidy drop onto a lower surface.

The young animals climbed back.

Their mother had already mastered these movements.

They had not.

The forest was full of arrangements that mattered greatly to a creature of their size.

A broken branch could remove a useful launching point.

An unfamiliar gap could require a different route.

An exposed landing surface could leave an animal vulnerable while it climbed.

The cedar's rough bark was useful.

The narrow hollow was useful.

The neighboring hemlock was useful.

None of these features had been assembled for the squirrels.

The animals used what existed.

A northern spotted owl hunted in the same forest.

Its territory included the cedar, the neighboring trees, and stretches of older forest beyond the ravine.

During the day, the owl could remain motionless on a sheltered perch, its mottled plumage blending with the surrounding wood.

At night, it hunted.

It listened.

It watched.

It moved between perches, sometimes remaining in one place for long periods before changing position.

Flying squirrels were among the animals it captured.

The owl was well adapted to this work.

Its broad wings allowed controlled movement among trees. Its hearing and vision helped it detect animals that would have been difficult for many other predators to locate.

But hunting was not always successful.

On one night, a small mammal disappeared into a crevice before the owl reached it.

On another, the owl caught a vole near a fallen log.

It carried the vole away and fed.

The following evening, it returned to another part of the forest.

Its activity was governed by hunger, opportunity, and the availability of prey.

The young squirrels remained near the cedar.

They were growing quickly.

Their movements were becoming more efficient, their landings more controlled.

One ventured toward the hemlock using a route the mother had crossed many times.

The gap was not unusually wide.

The launching branch offered a workable position.

The juvenile spread its limbs and crossed.

It struck the hemlock lower than its mother usually did, clung to the bark, and climbed.

Later, it returned.

Another juvenile took a different route through the cedar and stopped at the end of a branch, where it remained for several seconds before retreating toward the trunk.

The third stayed closer to the hollow that night.

There was no fixed order in which the young explored.

Sometimes one went farther.

Sometimes another.

Their bodies were developing at slightly different rates, and their movements reflected the experience they had accumulated.

The mother fed them less frequently as they became more independent.

The hollow still offered shelter.

It no longer contained nearly everything they needed.

By late summer, all three had made short glides between trees.

The surrounding forest now included places none of them had been able to reach a few weeks earlier.

The owl continued hunting.

The cedar continued growing.

One evening, the last light faded from the upper branches, leaving the ravine in shadow.

The mother squirrel departed.

The young followed at different intervals.

Two moved into the branches above the hollow.

The third climbed toward a lateral branch extending in the direction of the hemlock.

It had crossed to that tree before.

The squirrel reached the launching point.

It adjusted its feet.

Then it jumped.

The gliding membrane spread between its limbs.

The animal began descending toward the neighboring trunk.

From a perch above the crossing, the spotted owl moved.

It dropped toward the opening between the trees.

The squirrel changed its body position.

The owl reached it before it reached the hemlock.

For an instant, the two animals moved together through the air.

Then the owl's feet closed around the squirrel.

The small membrane folded.

The owl carried its prey into the branches beyond the crossing.

A loose flake of bark fell from the cedar.

It landed on a fern below.

The owl settled on a branch farther into the forest and fed.

Before dawn, the mother squirrel returned to the hollow.

Two young were inside.

They shifted against her as she entered.

She moved across the nest, adjusted her body, and settled.

Outside, the night continued.

Rain had begun falling lightly in the upper branches.

It collected on the cedar's foliage and ran down its bark.

Water entered small cracks in the wood, reached the edges of the hollow, and moved past the entrance.

One of the young stirred.

The other remained asleep.

By morning, the rain had stopped.

The following night, the two young emerged from the hollow.

One climbed toward the hemlock.

The other remained on the cedar for several minutes before moving into the branches above.

Both used routes they had traveled before.

The mother left to feed.

The hollow remained available.

The crossing remained possible.

Beyond the hemlock, the owl hunted in another part of its territory.

The summer continued.

Days became shorter.

Rain returned more frequently, though the earlier dry weather had left its effects.

High in the cedar, some damaged foliage would not recover. A smaller branch had died, and its needles and twigs continued to fall as weather loosened them.

A nearby hemlock had lost a few small branches during a windstorm.

The opening they left allowed more light to reach the forest floor.

Seeds already present in the soil encountered different conditions.

Some germinated.

Others did not.

Insects occupied exposed wood.

Fungi spread through decaying material, releasing nutrients that other organisms could use.

The squirrel family occupied less of the hollow as the young grew independent.

The mother continued using several shelters.

The two juveniles spent more time away from her.

One began visiting a narrow cavity in the neighboring hemlock.

It was a different sort of shelter from the cedar's hollow: smaller, with a tighter entrance and less room to turn around.

The juvenile investigated it repeatedly.

On one night, it carried a few strands of dry moss inside.

The next evening, some of the material lay outside again.

The squirrel brought in more.

The young animal's movements now extended across a larger part of the forest than they had during its first weeks.

It crossed branches, descended trunks, landed after glides, and found food.

Sometimes a route proved awkward.

Sometimes a landing was poor.

A few times, it abandoned a movement and tried another way.

The tree was still standing.

Its bark held the marks of growth, damage, and weather. Its roots extended through soil containing the remains of organisms that had lived before it germinated.

The old hollow had formed over decades around a damaged branch attachment.

By now, it had sheltered more individual animals than anyone would ever count.

Some had remained for a single night.

Others had used it through a season.

Some had died there.

Some had left it and died elsewhere.

The tree would continue changing.

Its living wood would grow around old injuries where conditions permitted. Decay would advance in other places. Storms would remove branches, and the fallen wood would support organisms in the forest below.

It might survive another century.

It might not survive another decade.

The lives moving through its branches would continue according to their own needs, for as long as conditions allowed.

Humanity was still making announcements.

A government had declared a new policy essential to the survival of the nation.

An inventor had promised to change the world forever.

A television personality had said something that required an apology.

An expert had warned about a genuine and growing danger.

Another had disagreed about the appropriate response.

Somewhere, a child was learning to walk.

Somewhere else, a person was dying.

An enormous number of things were happening at once.

Most would never become news.

In the forest, autumn rain settled into a more regular pattern.

The cedar's bark darkened where the water reached it.

Beneath the branches, moss absorbed moisture and expanded.

Water accumulated in the shallow depressions of fallen wood. Small invertebrates moved through the damp material.

A thin stream began running along the bottom of the ravine again.

The young squirrel using the hemlock cavity emerged shortly after sunset.

It climbed along the trunk and onto a branch reaching toward the cedar.

Near the end, it stopped to investigate a pale tuft of lichen attached to the wood.

The material resisted when pulled.

The squirrel changed its grip, tugged again, and tore part of the tuft free.

It carried the strands back along the branch.

At the trunk, it climbed several feet before reaching the narrow cavity.

The opening was barely wider than its body.

It entered with the lichen in its mouth.

Several strands caught on the rough edge and remained outside.

For a little while, nothing moved.

Then the strands were pulled inward, one after another, until the last disappeared into the hollow.