Terminal

Thump, thump… Thump, thump…

Buck paused and looked up the steep trail. His heart hammered at his ribs with the exertion of hiking at nearly two miles above sea level. His shirt was soaked with sweat. Buck hadn’t expected this kind of heat in October. No one had. His eyes remained fixed on his daughter and grandson, fifty yards ahead on the trail. They walked past a gnarled old bristlecone pine that marked the beginning of the grove of ancient trees.

Buck could only hear the clamor of his own heartbeat. Just once before he died, he wanted to see something permanent, something enduring on this earth. What good was progress if it quickly faded away? He had to make it to the grove.

Buck took another step, feeling the heat of his pulse in his face and hands.

At 17, Buck had used a fake ID to join the army. He’d served his country in Vietnam. His best friend Vince had joined too. A year later, Vince died in his arms. Cut down by enemy fire.

One more step. Heart straining, Buck now relished the pulsing of his blood in his temples. Proof of life.

Buck’s wife had succumbed to lung cancer at age 31. She’d never smoked. “Complications from air pollution. The autopsy had made it sound so ordinary. Mundane. Unremarkable. She had been anything but ordinary. Air pollution as lethal as war.

Another step.

Then lung cancer took Jenny’s husband too. He’d been a wild land firefighter. He was 38. We were killing the planet and it wasn’t going quietly.

Left foot.

Now, Buck had his own death sentence. Liver cancer. “A buildup of forever chemicals” in his body, the doctor had said. A parting gift from the country Buck had served and the company for which he’d toiled his entire life. Why didn’t we know?

Right foot.

Buck sank to his knees and watched the gritty orange sky swallow the granite summit of Wheeler Peak above him. Smoke from wildfires across the West had obscured the skies for weeks now. Buck gasped for breath, the whirling clouds making him dizzy.

Buck’s daughter and grandson stumbled back down the trail toward him as fast as they could. “Dad? Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay.” Buck grumbled. “Little smoke won’t hurt me! I outlasted Agent Orange and thirty years of working the fabric coating line at the factory.”

“You know what I mean, Dad. The doctor said to take it easy. I don’t want you to over-exert yourself.”

“Or what? I’ll die?” Buck snorted. “That’s already happening. You heard the doctor.”

“Dad! Stop it.” Jenny jerked her head toward her son. She still wasn’t sure how to talk to Ryan about his grandfather’s sickness. Thankfully, Ryan was examining an iridescent beetle crawling on a rock and had not heard. “Besides, you retired to enjoy life. So you could be with us.”

“No.” Buck grunted. “I quit so I could see one thing that can survive in this screwed up world we’ve created before I go. Touch something lasting. Feel like we didn’t ruin everything.”

“Please, Dad. I want him to have good memories of his time with you.” Jenny hastily tried to brush a tear from her eye before her father or Ryan noticed.

Buck said nothing. His daughter and grandson were all he had left. The guilt of abandoning them to a broken planet overwhelmed him. Every year was hotter than the last. More wildfires. More species dying off. More chemicals causing illnesses and death. More people in denial despite clear signs of a sick planet. The ancient pines ahead of them on the trail knew what was happening. They were still here despite centuries of punishing changes. That had to count for something. Maybe there was hope for his family too.

“Dad?”

Buck studied his daughter, and then blinked slowly.

“You okay?” Jenny put a hand on her father’s shoulder.

Buck looked vacantly from Jenny to his grandson. His chest tightened. He labored to breathe in the thin, hazy air, doubled over, wracked by a coughing fit. The veins in his forehead throbbed.

Ryan now stared anxiously at his grandfather.

Buck wheezed and wiped perspiration from his forehead. “I think we’ll just go to that first tree up there. Then back to the campsite for a nice dinner together.” The last thing Buck wanted was his family worrying about him. They needed something steady in their lives. Something stable. That was supposed to be his role. He was failing that too.

“Okay, Dad.” Jenny smiled at him. “We’re right here with you.”

Twenty minutes later, they stood by a gnarled bristlecone pine with only one remaining live branch. The tree had sacrificed its other branches in the fight to endure the harsh mountain landscape for nearly four thousand years.

Buck leaned against the solid trunk. He ran his hands over the tight grain of the dead wood next to his face. Above the tree’s living branch, clouds of ash wafted over the ridge. Even when that branch surrendered, this tree would likely remain standing for another thousand years, a monument to resistance. His heart calmed in his chest. Not everything was ephemeral.

Jenny and Ryan stood a few feet away, deferential as Buck bonded with the tree. Two old soldiers commiserating over their struggles in a changing world. Jenny wrapped an arm around Ryan’s shoulder. She let a tear run down her cheek.

“Mom?” Ryan tugged at Jenny’s shirt-tail. “Something’s wrong with Grandpa Buck.”

“He’s sick, honey. The hike was really hard for him.”

“Mom, he’s not breathing anymore.”

Jenny looked down at her son and knelt beside her father, her fingers caressing his cheek. Her father’s cooling skin confirmed what she already knew.

Ryan kicked aside a beer can left by a careless hiker and dropped to his knees beside her. He placed one hand on her shoulder, the other on his grandfather’s inert chest. Ryan looked at his mother and nodded without a word.

The only sound was the whine of the wind wafting smoke across the sparse alpine landscape.