Love On A Limb: A Green Romance
an excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Deep in the Tongass National Forest
Yesterday, Today, or Tomorrow

“Miss Larkin? Excuse me, Miss Larkin? Would you mind coming down for a few moments so we can discuss this rationally?” Cutter McKade squinted up into the 275-year-old Sitka Spruce, trying to get a good look at the woman who had, for the past six weeks, become the bane of PacNorthern Timber Harvestry’s lumber business here in the Baranof Island region of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Through his binoculars, he thought he caught sight of some movement in the tree canopy twenty stories above, a flash of blond hair, but then it disappeared.

When he realized no reply was forthcoming, Cutter grumbled in disgust. “This is so not part of my job description…” he muttered, stalking back toward the bright orange bulldozer. It was a freaking mess. He was a forest management specialist, happy researching his trees for their various benefits to mankind.

Where people and trees mixed, drama was often the result. And Cutter didn’t like drama.

While he had foolishly agreed to help his old college buddy out of what he’d called a simple misunderstanding at the logging camp, Cutter had not anticipated that the onsite lumber crew would have terrorized the little tree-hugger until she wouldn’t even speak to them.

According to the bio PacNorthern’s Seattle office had faxed to him at his research camp earlier in the day, Meadow Larkin was a 28 year old graduate student from the University of California at Santa Cruz, studying rainforest ecology. She was up here in the Alaska Panhandle collecting data for her thesis paper on the Keystone status of the Chinook salmon in riparian forest ecosystems. Surely, Cutter would be able to relate to her, scientist to scientist. At least, that had been PacNorthern Executive Vice President Tyler Bellingham’s hope when he’d phoned Cutter earlier this morning.

The craggy-faced lumber camp foreman, Vasquez, sat behind the bulldozer controls, watching Cutter in bemusement. His sharp, piggy eyes were permanently red-rimmed and watery from the logging dust and ash.

“Did you really think you could just talk her down, Dr. McKade?” the foreman sneered, catching the bullhorn Cutter tossed his way.

“It was worth a shot. Once she knows we’re not the enemy, I’m sure we can come to an understanding. PacNorthern has a proven environmental track record and they want to keep it that way. She must have some goal in mind, something we can work with.” Not that it would be easy now that Vasquez and his team had been harassing the poor woman.

He didn’t blame Tyler for calling in a favor and bringing him on as a consultant. This whole matter had clearly been handled badly thus far. He felt certain he could broker a deal that left everyone content, provided no further maliciousness from the lumber camp occurred.

“Perhaps we should just cut her down,” suggested the foreman, making a show of examining his filthy nails.

Cutter shot him a look of contempt. “Surely, you’re not serious.”

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one…” Vasquez shrugged.

Cutter held up his hand, “Enough. I’m going to assume you’re joking. You’d better be joking. Tyler Bellingham didn’t ask me to come out here to cause a public relations nightmare. He asked me to come out and negotiate a truce with Alaskan Arbor Alliance so that PacNorthern’s legitimate logging practices here can resume without further delay. Now go grab me a sit harness and let me do my job.”

#

#

Twenty stories above on a makeshift wooden platform, Meadow sat with her back against the spruce tree that had been her home for the past week. The rough bark bit into her back and no amount of stretching seemed to alleviate the soreness of her muscles. When she’d agreed to help out Oscar, AKA the Pine Marten, from the Alaskan Arbor Alliance, she had thought she might be tree-sitting for a few days while he hiked out to get supplies, but she hadn’t heard from him in almost a week.

Meanwhile, the lumber operations had gotten close, too close. When she’d first arrived, they had been more than a mile away, but for the last two days they had been directly beneath her, literally. The workers from the lumber camp had not been the most friendly guys either, shouting nasty threats up at her until she’d finally just had to ignore them.

There had been a few moments there, though, when she would have seriously considered giving in and abandoning the tree. If she’d had the choice, which she hadn’t – partially because of her promise to Oscar, but more importantly, because of another, more pressing reason. That reason being the heavy iron chain that circled the thick trunk of the tree and was currently locked to her ankle.

And the padlock combination Oscar had given her hadn’t worked. Meadow wasn’t sure if that had been a mistake on his part or not. Testing it first before she had been shackled to the tree had certainly been a mistake on hers. Now she was resigned to waiting for Oscar to return so she could get back to her research.

Not for the first time since this whole disaster began, Meadow reflected on how apt it was that Oscar, AKA the Pine Marten, had chosen for his nickname a member of the weasel family.

Meadow had spent the last two summers up in the Tongass National Forest of Southeastern Alaska doing field research. Her work on the local Chinook salmon population and its disproportionate effects on the local ecosystem relative to other creatures living in the island forests of the Inside Passage was sure to have a positive influence on the conservation practices of the region.

Not to mention getting her doctorate would keep her in school for another few years so she wouldn’t have to “go out and get a real job”, a detail that her father was so fond of complaining about whenever her tuition was due. Not that he couldn’t afford it, but Meadow knew he wanted her to come work at his company and that was the last thing she wanted. She just couldn’t tell him so.

Fieldwork in Alaska had seemed the perfect way to avoid a summer internship at her father’s San Jose biotech firm. Still, it was lonely working out in the country’s largest national forest. After the first few weeks working alone in the forest, Meadow had been about to go a little crazy.

Okay, a lot crazy.

That was when she had met Oscar. It had been a happy coincidence when she’d caught him talking over the ham radio. They’d quickly become friends, chatting away the lonely evening hours in the land of the midnight sun.

Oscar spent his summers living in trees all over the Pacific Northwest in protest against the lumber industry’s cutting of old-growth forests. Each year he worked his way up the coast, picking a tree that would be his home for the summer – a giant sequoia in the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California, a coastal redwood in the fog belt on Oregon’s Lost Coast, and an excessively damp Western Hemlock just outside the Hoh Rainforest of Washington’s Olympic National Park.

For the past two years, Oscar had been living in old stands of Sitka Spruce with the support of the somewhat radical environmental organization the Alaskan Arbor Alliance. Sitka Spruce were ideal for tree-squatting, their height and the fact that some of them had been around since about four hundred years before the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock really appealed to Oscar.

Meadow generally liked to spend her time closer to the ground and never had she wished to more than at this moment, because now the guy with that bullhorn, who looked like little more than an ant when he had stood at the base of the tree, was climbing her tree. And there was nothing she could do about it.

Well, she could drop something on him, she supposed. Oscar’s useless radio, perhaps. But then, Meadow didn’t think jail time would be any more appealing than spending her life on this deathtrap of a tree platform.

When the lumber guys first showed up, Meadow had been somewhat relieved. After all, Oscar’s radio was dead and despite the long warm days of summer in Alaska, Meadow had a few moments of concern the first time she tried the padlock and found herself stuck in the woods with no means of escape on her own. Sure, she had enough food and it rained almost everyday so water was not a problem. Still, it was a dismal existence, reading Oscar’s worn copies of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring over and over again. They might be all true, but they were both quite depressing.

Meadow snuck a look over the side of the platform to gauge the climber’s ascent. He was still about forty feet below her, but climbing steadily, his head down. Soon she could hear his breathing and she mentally prepared for the argument to come. He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but after the harassment she had received from the lumber foreman thus far, she was not expecting this upcoming meeting to be pleasant.

#

Cutter stopped his ascent towards the forest canopy when he was just below the platform. He knew she was aware of his approach but he was wary of frightening her or causing either of them harm. At these heights, it took only one misstep and you’d six feet under.

In a word, mulch.

Today, Cutter didn’t much feel like being mulch. He had work to do back at the lab. He’d only agreed to come deal with this mess between the tree-hugger and the PacNorthern because Tyler had begged and made suitably flattering comments about Cutter’s latest findings.

That, and Tyler had offered him a lot of money. PacNorthern Timber Harvestry had promised to fund Cutter’s research for a further decade, including expanding his team to include a full-time phytologist. It had been an opportunity he could not afford to pass up.

Except now he was having second thoughts. Had he, like those greedy scientists in Jurassic Park, overlooked the ethics of the situation in pursuit of grant funding? He hoped not. Hopefully Meadow Larkin – what kind of name was that, anyway? – was one of those environmental nutcases that operated so far outside reality he would have no qualms about his part in this whole affair.

He had to admit, though, whoever she was, she had good taste. This was one beautiful specimen of Picea sitchensis. You didn’t see too many Sitka Spruce this old nowadays around the islands, not to mention in such pristine condition. Cutter didn’t blame her for wanting to protect it. He’d been careful to choose his least-invasive gear to climb the tree. Even if PacNorthern had gotten a permit to cut it down, Cutter wasn’t going to be the one to harm it.

Also, he expected Ms. Larkin would appreciate the gesture. Perhaps she wouldn’t bean him on the head when he reached her platform, or drop anything unpleasant on his head before he reached her.

Still, just in case, perhaps he should approach this conversation with his tried and true method for not startling a bear in the woods and getting himself killed.

#
Much to Meadow’s amusement, when the lumberman got within a few meters of the platform he started singing The Lumberjack Song, straight out of Monty Python. He had just finished the line about how he liked to wear high heels when he knocked on the bottom of the platform.

“Knock, knock.”

Meadow could not resist asking, “Who’s there?”

“Cutter McKade.”

“Cutter… the Lumberjack.”

There was a pause.

“Yes.” The man sighed. “But not for the reason you think.”

“Oh? Do tell.” Meadow settled back for a nice long discussion through the wooden planks of her tree prison. After all the grief she’d gotten, the least she could do was make the man uncomfortable.

“I used an excessive amount of mosquito repellent when I was working down in the Amazon as an intern in college. I was a little freaked out about the malaria.”

“You think telling me that you cut down trees in the Amazon is going to ingratiate yourself with me and gain you access to my tree fort?” Meadow shook her head. This guy sounded like a real winner.

“I don’t cut down trees.”

“Right. And I’m a Republican.”

“Look. I don’t cut down trees, generally speaking. I study them, I study their uses. I was down in the Amazon Basin studying how clearcutting is not the most efficient or effective timber harvesting method. Yes, I am working for PacNorthern, but I am also working to conserve forestland. Now will you please let me up?”

Meadow considered her options. “Are you armed?”

“Only with my convictions. And lunch.”

“You won’t hurt me or try to move me?” Meadow was still unsure.

“No, I give you my word.”

Well, he sounded sincere enough. Still, who knew if he could be trusted?

“What did you bring for lunch?” Meadow asked, curious. She had been living off Oscar’s disgusting energy bars, ramen noodles and some funky organic decaffeinated red tea all week long. Admittedly the energy bars had attracted some interesting birds to keep her company.

“Didn’t know if you were vegetarian or vegan or what have you so I brought a bunch of stuff. Roast beef sandwiches, some pasta salad, cheddar cheese and crackers. Oh, and some chocolate. And a thermos of coffee.”

She needed to know only one last thing. “Real coffee?”

“Ground it myself.”

“Alright, I’ll let you in, but no funny stuff.”

“You call all the shots, Ms. Larkin.”

Maddie flipped open the hatch leading down the tree and slid back to her spot against the trunk.

Cutter’s head popped up through the hatch and he glanced around. Finding her huddling against the tree.

“The chocolate. I’d like to say it’s organic fair trade chocolate made from happy cows, but it’s just a Snickers. Can I still come up?” He smiled. It was a nice smile, for a lumberjack.

In truth, at this very moment, Meadow would sell her beloved Toyota Prius for a Snickers bar. “I suppose I’ll have to manage.”

#

Cutter could tell immediately that his edible peace offering had been the right decision.