It’s ninety minutes from San Jose to Mill Valley. It was a long, quiet drive, and I was beginning to worry that bringing Owen here was a huge miscalculation. But the trees have won, as I hoped they would.

Redwoods are some of the coolest trees around. They’re practically impossible to kill. They’re protected by a chemical that makes them bug-resistant, fire-resistant and rot-resistant. If you cut one down, or if it falls, a ring of baby redwoods springs up around the stump, and little branches grow from the fallen trunk and eventually become real trees.

Also, they’re majestic and beautiful and totally awe-inspiring to look at. You can’t stay angry for long when you’re walking through a forest like Muir Woods. The trees pretty much enchant you into a better mood.

Owen takes a few running steps ahead of me on the trail and calls over his shoulder, “Fun fact: Muir Woods is where they filmed the Ewok forest scenes in Return of the Jedi.”

We come upon a clearing just off the main trail. A ring of ancient trees surrounds an even more ancient boulder splotched with pale green and rusty orange lichen. “Come on,” he says. He jogs down the narrow path through the ferns and beckons me to follow.

The space is magical. Rays of sunlight pour onto the boulder and sparkle through the filter of the trees. The forest around us seems to fade away. Owen is standing next to the boulder, his face turned to the sky as he looks up at the canopy.

“Whoa, this is so trippy, Ceej! You gotta try it.” He starts turning in a slow circle, still facing upward. Then he loses his balance and stumbles, and for a second I’m terrified that he’s going to bash his head into the boulder, but he recovers. “Come on, try it Ceej.”

I look up and am immediately overcome with vertigo. Is it the trees swaying, or is it me? “No.”

“Dizzy?”

I nod.

“Come here, then. Come lean on the rock with me.”

I walk over and lean against the boulder, and Owen moves next to me so that we’re standing shoulder to shoulder with our arms touching. I look up and see the trees like spires, reaching for the white-blue sky, impossibly tall. I hear the rustle and creak of the branches and needles. And as the dizziness starts to lap at the edges of my brain, I feel the rock, sun-soaked and solid against my back, and the heat of Owen’s arm against mine, and the ground firm beneath my feet. I close my eyes.

“I overreacted about voting Brynn off the committee,” says Owen quietly. “I should have trusted us all to be okay without her. Talk about getting sucked into the white narrative. I’m sorry about that. That was fucked up.”