Sitting together on the front steps of John Muir’s house in Martinez, where he tried so hard to live with his wife and daughters, aching until, because they loved him so much, they set him free to wander alone in the wilderness, his only true home.

Sean, Elliot, and me on a blanket at Ocean Beach, watching Kira surf wave after wave, the happiest I’d ever seen her, which made me the happiest I’d been.

And now, the best for last. The redwood grove Muir rescued from destruction, safe here beside the wild California coast.

Sean held my hand into the grove of trees towering nearly three hundred feet, most of them five hundred years old, the oldest over a thousand. We walked together in silence and near darkness, the giants obscuring weak, overcast sunlight. Mist collected in our hair, dripped from the ferns on the forest floor, and from the redwoods’ needle leaves and cones.

We came to a bend in the trail where a park ranger spoke to a group of enraptured tourists.

“The coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, may grow up to three hundred eighty feet tall, so you might assume its root system would be as deep as it is tall. In truth, the redwood’s roots are very shallow, which leaves them vulnerable. Alone, a sequoia may not survive to maturity. But together in thick groves, their roots spread and intertwine, even fuse together, giving them strength to withstand the forces of nature. Together they thrive in swift winds and floods, and grow taller than they ever could alone.”

The ranger led the tourists around and past us, still rooted on the trail, staring up into the redwoods, now alone together in silence. We stood in the cool air, this boy I love and my friends and I, beneath a sky warming gold as the sun found its way through the clouds.

“Are we ready?” Kira asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

Author’s Note

My daughter asked me to write this book. She was born into foster care and lived in three foster placements before we met. She’s too young to remember, but who she is now was shaped by how her life began and continued within the foster care system. She said she never read a book about a life she recognized, which, according to her, meant less “people being molested all day and setting the house on fire” and more “a person getting used to new houses and people and everyone isn’t perfect or evil but sometimes there’s happiness.” A wide pendulum swing, but I got her point.