Leon led the way up a formed path through wet, moss-covered forest. The track wound among giant trees with thick, riven bark, past slick fallen logs, scattered carpets of ferns, rough clumps of wire grass, tree ferns with spreading fronds. At the top of the path, a steel walkway projected out into air. They stepped onto it, their boots scraping on wire. Beneath them, the ground fell away quickly, and they were up among the mid-storey tree crowns, looking down into fans of ferns below, the lower layers of the forest and beds of rotting leaves.

Miki had never been so high before, and she was dizzy and had to cling to the rail. The transparency of the wire gave her vertigo, the ground looming below. For a moment she felt she might fall, but she forced herself to look up and out, breathing in the views and the air that nipped her ears and nose and hung in vapour puffs in front of her.

The vista was magnificent: rolling waves of forest and hills where caterpillars of mist clung and shifted slowly with the breeze. The stark silver trunks of old trees protruded from the canopy and bristled against the sky. Miki had a sense of what it must be like to be a bird flying over the landscape, an idea of what they would see—such a different perspective on the world.

The trees grew close to the walkway, and she was amazed at their height. There was a stillness in them that spoke to her, a timelessness that hinted at endurance and longevity. Her lifetime made up only a few centimetres of their girth, and they would remain long after she died. There was something reassuring about that.

Leon paused to point out a flowering sassafras tree almost within reach. Miki could smell the white bellflowers, like daphne or jasmine, surprisingly sweet. She followed Leon along the walkway as it traversed layers of forest. Ahead, she could see flashes of silver between trees, hints of light reflecting from the river. Slowly, she gained enough confidence to lean over the edge and peer down to the forest floor, so far below, and then up the straight trunks into the canopy, so much closer now but still unattainable.

The final elevated viewing platform swayed as Miki stepped onto it. The movement was only slight but the way it bounced took her breath away, and made her pause and grasp the handrail, trying to block out the dizzying height. They were now walking towards the dark river that swept in a wide arc below. Further away, she could see where two rivers joined to form this broad torrent.