Simon’s family lives up a long, dirt road that winds through pasture and woods, so they get few uninvited visitors.
Once a guy knocked and tried to sell a subscription for “educational comic books,” but Simon’s mother exaggerated her boys’ ages by five years and insinuated they read Proust for fun. The salesman retreated, never to return.
Occasionally, pairs of upbeat evangelists appear, but when Simon’s father admits to stubborn Catholic faith rooted in glory days as an angelic altar server, they back off, their still-friendly smiles mitigating the sting of eternal damnation.
But the pipeline woman with the clipboard was persistent. She showed up every few weeks, urging Simon’s parents to sign papers to allow a pipeline through their wooded property to speed fuel to the East Coast. Simon has nothing against the East Coast—his uncle lives in Boston, and his Scout troop went whale-watching off New Jersey’s shoreline—but he wishes the people there would try smaller cars and windmills for a few years, and see how that goes, before destroying the forest behind his house. It doesn’t seem fair to the local raccoons and foxes, let alone his family.
And it seems particularly unfair to the trees, which can’t run from a bulldozer. When Simon hikes in the woods, nearly every day after school he regards the trees as old friends. First, he checks on his spruce trees. Each tree started as a grocery-store seedlings decorating Simon’s dresser. Every March, he transplanted them outside. The largest one is now almost 5 feet high, and the others are catching up; he feels proud of his grove and vividly imagines its towering, seed-coned future. He’s well acquainted with silver-barked beech trees, maples that blaze in autumn, tattered sycamores with clownishly large yellow leaves, and grooved walnut trees that drop crisp-scented green fruit onto the forest floor for eager squirrels to claim, like kids under a birthday pinata.
But Simon’s favorite tree is an enormous oak deep in the woods, which has generously cranked out oxygen for at least 200 years and provided acorns and shelter for as many generations of birds and squirrels and insects. The tree doesn’t have a personality, exactly, but it has a calming presence; through its rough bark Simon can feel a strength earned over so many changing seasons and wild storms. When Simon is troubled by the day-to-day—a pop quiz that went horribly wrong, a party invitation that didn’t arrive—the oak puts it in perspective: “And yet we survive,” the sturdy tree promises him.
No way is that clip-board lady going to uproot Simon’s trees. He takes the threat personally.
His parents promise that they won’t sign her papers, but they warn him of something called “eminent domain.” With the state’s approval, a big oil company can put a pipeline wherever it wants, really; especially if neighbors who share their woods don’t fight it.
“But there has to be a way to stop it!”
Simon is sure of that.
His younger brother, Frankie, starts drawing pictures of intricate booby traps, à la Swiss Family Robinson, until Simon points out that it’s surely against the law to lure construction equipment into deep holes, and, besides, someone might get hurt—a backhoe guy, say, or a deer.
“Well,” their father suggests, “the law might be on your side if you discovered an endangered species on our land. There are laws protecting their habitats.”
So, the boys print a list of Pennsylvania’s endangered animals and scour the fields and woods, searching all week for short-eared owls and yellow-bellied flycatchers and northern flying squirrels. Failing to turn up any such threatened animals, they photograph more common fauna, then examine the pictures for oddities that might indicate an emerging or recovering species. What about that extraordinarily fat squirrel with one black ear: Could it be a mutant? Or that groundhog who prefers leaves from high branches to the readily accessible clover in their yard. Has he evolved into a treehog? And doesn’t the bill of that pileated woodpecker look suspiciously pale—halfway to ivory?
Their parents are skeptical, so the boys hatch Plan B: Spotting a Sasquatch.
Simon knows that scientists won’t fall for a mythical beast, but some neighbors, who would never embrace animal protections that restrict their off-roading, might warm to the idea of a resident Sasquatch. A few years back, one of them shot an albino buck in his back yard and charged admission to view it; if he could sell Sasquatch souvenirs, he might consider the woods worth protecting.
Fortunately, last Halloween Simon overestimated the length of Gandalf’s beard. He had enough synthetic fur to glue strips to Frankie’s gray sweatsuit and wrap around his head to transform him into a small, shaggy creature. The boys watch You Tube clips of purported Sasquatches so Frankie can rehearse the signature shamble. His costume is not 100% convincing in daylight, so the boys wait for dusk.
“Sasquatches are crepuscular, anyway,” Simon contends as they head outdoors.
Simon films his little brother scurrying along the edge of the woods for ten minutes before Frankie starts to ham it up, flexing his biceps and rhyming, “Whose woods these are, I thinks I knows, his footprint has, the biggest toes…” Decidedly unhelpful, so Simon wraps filming.
Inside, they review their footage; with light editing and strategic muting, Simon gets twenty seconds of persuasive material. When he shows his parents the clip, though, they murmur, “Interesting….”
Simon’s heart sinks. But his father jabs at the screen. “Look there: you’ve done it.”
Peering from a low shrub where pasture meets woods is a short-eared owl, its flame-patterned feathers hinting a recent rise from the ashes. Its dark-circled, yellow eyes fix curiously on two young humans attempting to defend the woods.
Such odd creatures, a vanishing species.
Simon’s family lives up a long, dirt road that winds through pasture and woods, so they get few uninvited visitors.
Once a guy knocked and tried to sell a subscription for “educational comic books,” but Simon’s mother exaggerated her boys’ ages by five years and insinuated they read Proust for fun. The salesman retreated, never to return.
Occasionally, pairs of upbeat evangelists appear, but when Simon’s father admits to stubborn Catholic faith rooted in glory days as an angelic altar server, they back off, their still-friendly smiles mitigating the sting of eternal damnation.
But the pipeline woman with the clipboard was persistent. She showed up every few weeks, urging Simon’s parents to sign papers to allow a pipeline through their wooded property to speed fuel to the East Coast. Simon has nothing against the East Coast—his uncle lives in Boston, and his Scout troop went whale-watching off New Jersey’s shoreline—but he wishes the people there would try smaller cars and windmills for a few years, and see how that goes, before destroying the forest behind his house. It doesn’t seem fair to the local raccoons and foxes, let alone his family.
And it seems particularly unfair to the trees, which can’t run from a bulldozer. When Simon hikes in the woods, nearly every day after school he regards the trees as old friends. First, he checks on his spruce trees. Each tree started as a grocery-store seedlings decorating Simon’s dresser. Every March, he transplanted them outside. The largest one is now almost 5 feet high, and the others are catching up; he feels proud of his grove and vividly imagines its towering, seed-coned future. He’s well acquainted with silver-barked beech trees, maples that blaze in autumn, tattered sycamores with clownishly large yellow leaves, and grooved walnut trees that drop crisp-scented green fruit onto the forest floor for eager squirrels to claim, like kids under a birthday pinata.
But Simon’s favorite tree is an enormous oak deep in the woods, which has generously cranked out oxygen for at least 200 years and provided acorns and shelter for as many generations of birds and squirrels and insects. The tree doesn’t have a personality, exactly, but it has a calming presence; through its rough bark Simon can feel a strength earned over so many changing seasons and wild storms. When Simon is troubled by the day-to-day—a pop quiz that went horribly wrong, a party invitation that didn’t arrive—the oak puts it in perspective: “And yet we survive,” the sturdy tree promises him.
No way is that clip-board lady going to uproot Simon’s trees. He takes the threat personally.
His parents promise that they won’t sign her papers, but they warn him of something called “eminent domain.” With the state’s approval, a big oil company can put a pipeline wherever it wants, really; especially if neighbors who share their woods don’t fight it.
“But there has to be a way to stop it!”
Simon is sure of that.
His younger brother, Frankie, starts drawing pictures of intricate booby traps, à la Swiss Family Robinson, until Simon points out that it’s surely against the law to lure construction equipment into deep holes, and, besides, someone might get hurt—a backhoe guy, say, or a deer.
“Well,” their father suggests, “the law might be on your side if you discovered an endangered species on our land. There are laws protecting their habitats.”
So, the boys print a list of Pennsylvania’s endangered animals and scour the fields and woods, searching all week for short-eared owls and yellow-bellied flycatchers and northern flying squirrels. Failing to turn up any such threatened animals, they photograph more common fauna, then examine the pictures for oddities that might indicate an emerging or recovering species. What about that extraordinarily fat squirrel with one black ear: Could it be a mutant? Or that groundhog who prefers leaves from high branches to the readily accessible clover in their yard. Has he evolved into a treehog? And doesn’t the bill of that pileated woodpecker look suspiciously pale—halfway to ivory?
Their parents are skeptical, so the boys hatch Plan B: Spotting a Sasquatch.
Simon knows that scientists won’t fall for a mythical beast, but some neighbors, who would never embrace animal protections that restrict their off-roading, might warm to the idea of a resident Sasquatch. A few years back, one of them shot an albino buck in his back yard and charged admission to view it; if he could sell Sasquatch souvenirs, he might consider the woods worth protecting.
Fortunately, last Halloween Simon overestimated the length of Gandalf’s beard. He had enough synthetic fur to glue strips to Frankie’s gray sweatsuit and wrap around his head to transform him into a small, shaggy creature. The boys watch You Tube clips of purported Sasquatches so Frankie can rehearse the signature shamble. His costume is not 100% convincing in daylight, so the boys wait for dusk.
“Sasquatches are crepuscular, anyway,” Simon contends as they head outdoors.
Simon films his little brother scurrying along the edge of the woods for ten minutes before Frankie starts to ham it up, flexing his biceps and rhyming, “Whose woods these are, I thinks I knows, his footprint has, the biggest toes…” Decidedly unhelpful, so Simon wraps filming.
Inside, they review their footage; with light editing and strategic muting, Simon gets twenty seconds of persuasive material. When he shows his parents the clip, though, they murmur, “Interesting….”
Simon’s heart sinks. But his father jabs at the screen. “Look there: you’ve done it.”
Peering from a low shrub where pasture meets woods is a short-eared owl, its flame-patterned feathers hinting a recent rise from the ashes. Its dark-circled, yellow eyes fix curiously on two young humans attempting to defend the woods.
Such odd creatures, a vanishing species.
