“You’re a natural. Should we go sometime? Backpacking? The sky is so black in the wilderness, so many stars that it’s like dust.”

“I don’t know if I’m allowed. I could ask Francine.”

“We’ll take her with us.”

“Then Terry Johnson has to come, too,” I said.

“As long as he packs his own bed and food.”

“I’ll carry him,” I said. “He is a delicate creature.” Sean took my paper yogurt cup from me and set it beside his on the sand at our feet. We watched the water in the bay turn pink, the moon rise above the trees, and lights blink on in the houses and cabins on the water.

“Like a necklace, all the lights in a row,” he said.

“It’d be prettier without them.”

“People need to live somewhere.”

“I just mean trees are prettier than houses,” I said.

He smiled. “Spoken like a Muir.”

“Are you baiting me?”

“Just stating facts.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. We’re doing this now? This is where we get this over with?” I moved over to my own space on the rocks and faced him.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I took a deep breath of salty sea air. “John Muir saved your life. You said so yourself.”

“Wait, what? He did not, when did I say that?”

“His trail. You hiked his trail; he saved you. And you can put a pin in this for another day, but he saved me, too, and above all else, you were raised by two national park rangers! So I would like you to explain to me how Pinchot gets any play in this at all.”

“Reality,” he said, loving this entire situation. “Pinchot understood people have to use natural resources—”

“Destroy them.”

“It’s management!”

Nothing like getting worked up about nature preservation with a boy I liked so much, and on a moonlit night, but, God, it was exhilarating! I felt like I’d been waiting to have this fight all my life.

I moved in for the kill.

“Hetch Hetchy,” I nearly growled.

Sean’s shoulders dropped.

In California, the Hetch Hetchy valley’s beauty—photographs and Muir’s words demonstrate—was rivaled only by Yosemite. A magnificent place of natural wonder, Muir nearly gave his life fighting to save it. But Pinchot fought for and eventually won the construction of a dam that would flood the valley to feed the water needs of nearby San Francisco. There were alternative water sources, but Pinchot, being the dick that he was, would not yield. The valley, its unfathomable Yosemite-worthy glory, was flooded and washed away. Destroyed forever.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed—chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides.

“Okay,” Sean said quietly. “I may need to rethink some things.”