Torched by April Henry Page B

eyes slowly adjusted so that I could see beyond the light from my headlamp. We were on some kind of trail. Every now and then, Blue stopped to check a compass.
    “If we’re going where the logging is, couldn’t we just take a logging road in?” I complained after I had tripped over a stone or a root for the dozenth time.
    “Sorry!” Blue said. “We don’t want to take the chance of them stopping you before you even get up in the sit. Just be glad you’re not hauling in the pieces of plywood to make it.”
    When we got to a rise, I could see stars twinkling in one part of the ridgeline. There was a gap in the velvety fullness of the forest where a swath of trees was already gone. “Is that where they are cutting?” I pointed to the space.
    “Yeah. There’s nothing there now but stumps.” Her voice was bitter. “No way any lynx is going be able to hunt or den there.” After a long moment, we both turned and started walking again.
    We hiked for nearly two hours. We skirted rocks and roots, climbed over fallen trees. When Blue finally stopped, I almost ran into her.
    “Here we are,” she said. “That’s your tree.” She pointed to a tall tree about fifty feet away. A faint line of rope ran up the length of the trunk.
    Waiting for me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    I craned my neck, my eyes straining to see. Way, way up in the branches, I could make out a tiny blue square that caught the light of the moon. It looked like a broken kite.
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is that the sit? It’s so tiny.”
    Blue walked up to the tree and patted the trunk as if it were an animal. Next to her hand, the rope snaked up into the darkness. It was only about the width of my thumb. I couldn’t even see where it ended.
    “This tree has stood here for hundreds of years. We call it the Old Man.” Blue stroked the trunk with her palm again and said, “Give me your hands.”
    Obediently, I held them out. She took a roll of white first-aid tape and began to wrap my palms and fingers. In the light of my headlamp, the tape had a ghostly glow.
    “You’ll thank me for doing this,” Blue remarked as she finished my left hand and started in on my right. “Otherwise, your skin would get ripped to pieces. We call it tree-climber’s stigmata.” Finished, she stepped away from me and put the tape back in her backpack. “Okay, that should keep you from getting too banged up.”
    Next, Blue pulled a contraption of padded straps from her pack and handed it to me. Following her instructions, I awkwardly stepped into the harness and pulled it up around my hips. Shaped roughly like a figure eight, the harness had holes made of straps for my legs. The strap around my waist held two latching metal hooks that I knew were called carabiners, as well as a brass-colored piece ending in a long loop that Blue said was a belay device. It felt strange to have the straps between my legs, like wearing a giant diaper. But I welcomed the distraction of Blue pulling and tugging at me as she adjusted everything. It was the only thing that kept my mind off the climb I faced.
    She took two black loops of rope and threaded them through the carabiners on my harness. Then she tied one loop on the bottom of the rope and another about waist high. “Okay,” she said. “These are prussic slipknots. When one doesn’t have weight on it, you can slide it.” She demonstrated, pushing it up a couple of inches. “When you put weight on the prussic, it cinches onto the rope and holds you in place.” She jerked. The loop held firm. “Basically, what you’re doing is transferring your weight back and forth. With your right foot in the foot loop, you stand straight up and push the top loop up with your hands. Next you sit back in the harness, which is held in place by the top loop, and you slide the foot loop up until your right leg is straight out ahead of you. Then you pull both legs under you and stand up. It feels kind of like pumping your legs on a swing. And you