“Come on,” she said. “It’s a long way to go for just a few hours. If we find somewhere to crash for the night, we can spend a lot more time with the trees.”

I didn’t want to be responsible for making a decision like this. On the one hand it seemed like a horrible idea for us to go away together overnight; on the other hand there was nothing I wanted more than to spend the night in the middle of an ancient redwood forest with her.

She touched my arm and said, “It’ll be fine. We’re friends, remember? Friends do this kind of stuff. Don’t worry.”

I wasn’t worried. I was terrified. And weak.

“We can get separate rooms if that makes you feel better. However, if I’m still tripping when I go to sleep, I’m going to need you to sit by my bed and make sure I don’t die.”

I laughed. “You’re not going to die.”

She laughed too. But then she got serious. “Really though, if you don’t feel comfortable with this, I understand. I can ask Rae to go with me.”

I scoffed. “You cannot do mushrooms with Rae.”

Her megawatt smile returned. “OK. What I’m hearing you say is that it’s cool and you’ll take me?” She raised her phone. “Blink once for no and twice for text Rae about the dog.”

My conscience wrestled with all the other parts of me and lost, because as much as I believed no was the correct answer, I blinked twice, and the words that came out of my mouth were “It’s cool. Text away.”

“Thank you! I promise it will be fun!”

Fun was not what concerned me.

She pushed “Send,” and we waited for a response. Less than two minutes later, Rae wrote back and told October she would be at Casa Diez by seven.

The next morning I walked down to Equator before Rae got to the house—I didn’t want her to see me leave with October.

October picked me up at the cafe a little after seven, asked if I minded driving, and then climbed over the middle console to the passenger’s side of the car.

As we headed north on US 101, she propped her feet up on the dashboard and reclined her seat as if she were relaxing on a beach lounger. She had my redwoods book in her lap and was reading facts aloud—facts I already knew—but I let her go on because her reverence for the trees made me feel closer to her.

“Redwoods have been around for 240 million years!” she gasped. “That’s before humans.”

“Yup. Before birds and spiders, even.”

“They can live to be two thousand years old? Jesus. It doesn’t seem fair that a tree gets to live for centuries and all we get is a handful of measly decades.”