The sequoia's secret is a sharp story

and this is the human side of what we write.

The skunk cabbages are knocked down, their season over. A giant mushroom is felled by the path, entirely wet: I kick it gently and it falls apart. For the rest of the day it haunts me: “I kicked a mushroom,” I say again and again, and this human side of me aches in the rain with the memory of leading a girl smaller than me into an old bougainvillea tree…