The Ice Sings Back, page 15
The Forest Service driver lifted his head, trebled nervously at Ros. “Hi, I’m new, first day doing supply runs, got mail here for you.”
Ros barely glanced at him. “New, did you unload all the supplies?”
He shrugged sheepishly, shot a glance at Tove, then back at Ros. Looked at his boots.
“Anytime,” she barked, irritation pooling in her gut. Ros was aware of Tove standing quiet, watching.
This was not the Fellow Ros was expecting. Tove was decked out in bright blue tights, wore what looked like slippers on her feet, a full face of makeup, and enormous sapphire stud earrings. She looked as if she was dressed to go to a fancy party in Hollywood, not a research station in the Cascades.
The driver rapidly unloaded parcels from the back of the truck. Ros watched him silently. After the last bag, he raised the tailgate with a clank, turned to her. “I think everything’s there for you,” he said, uncertainty skimming across his face as he moved to the driver’s side door.
“Wait, New,” Ros commanded. “Let me look over this before you disappear.” She could feel Tove staring silently at her. She scanned the boxes, hoped for boots, assessed the regular bags and boxes, then registered the eight oddly shaped cases piled next to the supplies.
“Is that all you?” she asked, turning, addressing Tove.
The woman brightened, stepped forward, clearly taking Ros’s question as her cue. “Oh, everything! Two weeks of recording gear. Five microphones, including that really big one.” She pointed a long arm at a case that looked like one of the long PVC pipes Ros had lugged up several days previous, her voice smooth and burbling. “My array, amps, recorders, batteries. So many batteries! Tripod, wind pro, parabolic dish. That’s the thing in the round case. It’s light even though it’s big. In that stack are my computers, drives, and, in that case—”
“Okay, okay, I wasn’t asking for an inventory.” There was no way they were going to haul all the gear in a single trip. Ros slipped the external frame down off her shoulders, dropped it to the ground. “Did you bring a cart for all this?” She winced at her own caustic tone.
What was wrong with her? She went to great lengths to hide her snarking self that showed up when she was sleep deprived or stressed out. But she wasn’t hiding it now. And this wasn’t how she was supposed to greet a Fellow.
Tove coughed, raised her chin, planted her long legs into the pullout’s dust. “I’ll carry it,” she said, her smooth voice colder, flatter. “The cases are misleading. If I can jettison a few here in that supply box, I’ll condense this to a single load.”
“Fine.” Ros turned to the driver. “Did you see boots from Corvallis?”
He shook his head, confused, and Ros released him with a curt nod. Disappointment curdled in her stomach.
She busied herself filling her pack with the food and supplies stacked on the ground. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Tove elegantly shuffled gear. The woman was true to her word and had it reduced by a third after she’d repacked the cases into the re-supply box. They were plastic, hard sided, and Ros was certain they’d be fine in the big box for two weeks.
In less than ten minutes, they were ready to go.
Ros was reluctantly impressed. Her pack groaned with weight, and Tove’s gear was loaded up into a gigantic hump that dwarfed the woman. She’d also strapped on a smaller front pack over her chest and had two gear bags gripped tightly in her hands. Hands, Ros noted, painted with bright green nail polish.
“You’ve done this before,” Ros said, begrudgingly, facing her.
“That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me.” Tove grinned, a smile that dazzled and sent hot sparks down Ros’s legs. “Of course I’ve done this before.”
Ros eyed Tove, flats of lava fanning out in every direction. The woman had golden eyes, a richness that seemed melded from citrine and pine tree amber. She contemplated her responses. “I live alone,” she said eventually.
Tove lifted her arms, shoulders, the gear. She shrugged. “I’m easy.”
What did that mean? Ros felt irritation flare at the ambiguity. “It’s eight miles in,” she said, the only thing that came to mind.
“Where does the trail start?” Tone stubborn.
Ros gestured at the lava’s edge away from the road, and Tove took the lead. As her legs settled into Tove’s pace, Ros studied the other woman from behind. She guessed Tove was maybe in her late twenties, early thirties. She wasn’t tall, maybe five foot five, but to Ros, she seemed all legs and arms and hair. She had black hair; the kind Ros knew would swell as soon as humidity touched it. The strands were thick; Ros’s fingers tingled to touch them and see if they were soft.
“What is this lava?” Tove asked after a mile or so, her pace a consistent three steps ahead.
“Aa,” Ros replied, slightly bemused. An obvious softball to get Ros talking. She accepted, continued explaining. “The type that flows really quick from the eruption site. This came from the Yapoah Crater off over there. I’ll take you up in a few days if you like.”
They maneuvered across more uneven lava, and Ros noted the burnt trees on the left that crowded up to the edge of the flow. Likely from the Milli Fire in 2017. That forest fire had burned over twenty-four thousand acres in the area, all from a single lightning strike. Lava flows acted as natural fire breaks, and many of the flows had helped contour where the fire could move. Ros considered pointing out the burned trees to Tove, but then thought better of it. She’d answer questions, but she wasn’t a cruise director.
After a few moments, Tove called back again. “Is the other pahoehoe? The super smooth stuff with the ropes on top?”
Ros smiled, felt a small laugh brimming. Tamped it down. “You know your lavas. Pahoehoe is easier to walk on. Not as rough as this stuff.”
“I read a bunch before I came up here,” Tove said, guileless. “Pahoehoe gets this leather top that cools before the insides do. It makes a gurgling sound as the wrinkles form.”
“I’ve never seen it in real life.” Ros wished she would. One day.
“I’d love to see it too. I think Hawaii’s the closest. Also, after reading, I’m hot to see an eruption with rhyolite or andesite. Did you know when they fall, it sounds like tinkling glass bells, as if rain turned to glass. Can you imagine?”
Ros could not imagine it, but it struck her as magnificent. She tried to picture a glass rain as the two hiked along the rough lava, stepping up blocks and down crumbles. The only thing she could hear were their footsteps, her soles sludging on the lava. If only she had those new boots.
Ros rolled her eyes at herself, took a breath. She tried to surmount her irritability. She cast around for a topic. “You’re at UO?”
The back of Tove’s head bobbed. “I’m a postdoc. In ecology.” Her voice traveled low. “I’m an acoustic field ecologist. I’ve been at the university the last few years, working on this project trying to assess how climatic changes are changing certain sonic signatures of the Oregon landscape.” She turned, flashed a bright red-lipsticked grin at Ros. “Lots of ‘C’ words.”
Ros’s mind lingered on the image of Tove glancing over her shoulder. Tove’s eyes seemed too large for her face, with dark, heavy drooping lids that almost gave her a sleepy look. In fact, they would have, Ros thought, if not for the fine black eyebrows that moved like coordinated tsunamis across the ocean of her face.
The lipstick wasn’t a true red, Ros suddenly realized. It was more plum-red. A plum that melded with violet quartz. Tove had coated her lips with a color Ros had never seen naturally in the field. Something inside her twitched, made her teeth ache. Maybe the lipstick was what was making her prickly. Ros hadn’t worn lipstick in donkey’s years.
“Ros? Did you hear my question?” Tove stopped, turned back towards her.
“Sorry, say again?” Jesus, she was distracted.
“I asked, how is it out here for you?”
Ros acknowledged the question but didn’t stop. Instead, she stepped around Tove on the trail. “It’s good,” she said, walking ahead now. “I get to do my own research, and then help people like you carry out your work, so it’s always interesting.”
Tove chirp-laughed, a sound that sent a ripple transiting the entire length of Ros’s spine. “Oh, it’ll be great to have help. Two weeks is not enough time!”
Ros sought clarification. “What do you need from me? What does your work look like?”
“God, you are kind and getting nicer by the moment. I was worried at first. Poor Newby.”
Ros snorted as Tove’s comment registered. “He’ll do,” she replied waspishly.
Tove walked around Ros, hitched her pack up higher. Ros couldn’t see her full face as she passed, but could make out the chin, the painted lips scrunching, smoothing. Whatever she was going to say she didn’t.
“Usually my work is up at dawn and dusk, setting up the recording gear, sprawling on the ground for hours, repeat, download, repeat, review the recordings, etc.” Tove laughed, a low tinkling that reminded Ros of spring streams. Or now, andesite eruptions. “I’d appreciate guidance from you on all the best places to get a taste of this landscape.”
“Taste?” Ros echoed, feet gliding over lava rock as she bent her ears, focused on Tove’s voice.
“Well,” Tove released a self-conscious laugh. “Taste. Word choice. I’m here to record everything. Leaves rustling. Hikers talking. Thunder. Snow. Plants hurting. Lava. Flowing water. Glaciers. Sneezing marmots. That’s the thing. In order to assess how the soundscape is changing, we need to first create a baseline for that soundscape. And we don’t have that. So that’s the bulk of what I’m doing, getting field recordings, trying to figure out the keynote sounds, the various soundmarks—what is there, what isn’t.”
Tove described work she’d done down along the Umpqua, around Coos Bay, out on the Warm Springs Reservation. Ros let her words flow over her as they walked, moving through lava drifts and warm forests and open grasslands and back out onto lava. Her back protested against the heavy load, but listening to Tove’s low chatter about sounds calmed her, distracted her from her aches and pains, her thoughts about Ash and Amelia Kane.
More quickly than expected, they turned onto the cabin spur and then, were in the clearing, looking at the research station. “Welcome to OHEWS.” Ros groaned as she lowered the pack onto the porch.
Ros showed Tove around, gave her explanations of the shower, latrine, radio protocol, cabin quirks, and then left her to settle into the Fellows Cabin. In the Main Cabin, she flipped on the radio and scanned for chatter.
On the police channel, there was a lot of back and forth up by the Collier Cone, and after a few minutes, Ros realized one of the voices must be a spotter in a helicopter. They’d had two to three helicopters in the air for the rest of the afternoon when Ros had hiked back down from Black Crater, and she’d heard rotors most of the morning when she went out to pick up Tove. Two days of expensive helicopter time. Something must be going on with the search. She hoped they’d found promising signs of Amelia.
She went out to her porch to listen but couldn’t hear any. They must be out by the cone. Ros went back in, sat back down at the desk.
Tove reappeared with two stacked cases in her arms. “Whatcha listening to?” she asked, gesturing to the radio.
“There’s a search going on out here for a missing child,” Ros explained. Kept her face still, language simple. Refused to get drawn in.
Tove’s golden eyes widened. “Really?”
Ros smiled. Noted that Tove had reapplied blue eyeshadow. “Yeah, it’s a shame. But,” she said, “I don’t think it should impact your recordings too much. We can work around where the search is.”
“Oh no,” Tove countered, waving her full arms. “I record everything.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon exploring. Ros made sure to pack the spare parts she’d meant to take up to Black Crater the previous day. She set out, first, to show Tove the area west of the Harlow Crater, full of mixed living and dead forests and waves of scabby lava. After that, they hiked around Millican Crater, Tove almost ecstatic at the gritty, red scoria blanketing the darker basalt. Bleached dead trees listed in every direction amidst the burnout, and live lodgepole pines with tippy bent tops accompanied their journey to the crater rim. Tove ran her hands up and down their trunks, and Ros had to prod her along.
Eventually, Ros guided them higher towards Black Crater, wending through the gnarl of trails on the flatlands before settling her feet on the familiar trail up to the summit. She wanted Tove to get a view of the area, to see the Three Sisters and all the Cascade peaks.
Conversation up the trail was spotty, especially on the steep sections when both women fell silent in exertion. But once over the more treacherous terrain, Ros ventured a question that had been floating in her mind.
“Tove,” she asked, choosing her words as carefully as she selected a chisel from her bag to split a rock sample, “I don’t know all that much about ‘acoustic ecology.’ However did you get into that field?”
“She asks, politely, but skeptically.” Tove laughed behind her. More glass rain tinkling.
Ros flushed. “No, not that. I meant—”
“No, no, I shouldn’t tease you, we’ve just met.”
“I wasn’t—” Ros stopped on the trail, turned, towered over Tove on the lower slope. “I didn’t mean to…”
Tove smiled up at her, a brilliant flash of white teeth that momentarily blinded Ros, the type of smile only years in braces could produce. “You’re fine, really. I’ve got a raspy tongue. I was joking. I know you’re crusty, but I can tell you’ve got a core of melted delicious butter.”
Ros blinked, startled, unsure what to say. The woman licked her lips, and Ros felt unmoored.
“Do you, by chance, know my adviser at Oregon, Dr. Enohor Anifowose?”
Ros shook her head, flustered at the turn of conversation.
“Ah, you should meet her, she’s a kick. You remind me of her.” Tove laughed. “Anyway, you’re fine to ask. You study rocks, right? Well, I study sounds. But, that’s not my full training. Wait for it.” Tove licked her lips a second time, and Ros had to look away.
“I was a plant ecologist first. In grad school, I studied how specific plants communicate. I started to focus on sound only when I realized the field was wide open and I’d be first author on pubs and grants. Fame and glory. But the more I delved into it, the more I realized, sound is everywhere, so why wouldn’t plants, or all life, take advantage of it? And down the academic rabbit hole I went, Ros.”
Tove released her chirp-laugh again, completely unselfconscious.
Tove just kept talking. “I found that plants do make and respond to sounds, which we’ve known scientifically since like the sixties, but, for whatever reason, hadn’t ever asked why. I suspected that plants made sounds to communicate, to each other, to the wider world around them. And that opened the door for me to start wondering about what else makes sounds. I mean, we know, theoretically, that everything signals with sounds, and have data that bacteria, insects, plants, the planet, do. But what else?”
Ros refocused, took a swing at a question. “But plants, planets, the sun, bacteria, they don’t have the mechanisms, sensory organs, ears, vocal cords, right? How, then, do they perceive sounds? Mechanical vibrations? Cosmic waves?”
“Everyone asks this, Ros! Great question!” Tove paused for a minute, breathed heavily. “I’m out of shape, good god!” Her chest heaved, the shirt fabric around her neck fluttering.
Ros stopped too, turned, looked down trail at Tove, at the woman’s wide, panting face. The lipstick on her top lip had faded. Ros tried not to stare.
Tove shook herself, started moving again. “Humans, terrestrial mammals, we’ve all got external auditory structures like ears. Frogs, birds? No external ears, but they have internal ear drums. Snakes detect vibrations through their jawbones. Caterpillars, through their sphincters. Plants? Their leaves, flowers, and roots have all been shown to emit, detect, and respond to sounds. And this is cross-species. We’ve got data showing that bark beetles can actually hear trees experiencing drought stress, that they know which trees are vulnerable to attack. How, what different things in the landscape use to make, respond to sound, that’s the question!”
They were nearing the summit. Ros slipped in one more question. “But, soil? Rocks? Glaciers? Things not alive?”
“I know, I know,” Tove laugh-panted. “But even our planet makes sounds. I think a space agency or two has called it ‘Earth Song.’ Certain rocks sing, emit low-frequency sounds. Lava roars, yawns. I just keep surprising myself with what I find emitting noises. If the sun can make sounds, and the planet, and the plants, and the animals, and us, why not everything else?”
“Ice?” Ros gestured at the Collier Glacier as they crested the crater’s edge and the full view of the Cascade volcanoes rose dramatically in front of them.
“Good god!” Tove exclaimed at the newly visible horizon, and Ros felt a surge of pride that overrode her sore feet and aching shoulders.
“What are we, like five hundred thousand feet above the world?”
Ros glowed, shook her head, and led Tove off-trail towards the tower. Told her to grab a seat on the rock bench while she fiddled with the winterizing.
“Keep an eye on me, Ros? I suffer from congenital clumsiness.” Tove shed her pack and stretched like a cat near the edge. Ros looked, then looked away. Focused on the popped battery box and inspected the seams, looked for weaknesses in the plastic siding. She’d brought up a specialized caulk to ensure no water could seep into the data storage box. Focus.
Fifteen minutes later, she joined Tove on the basalt. “It’ll take about ten minutes or so to download the station data,” she explained. “So we sit here.”
