The Crest
Chapter 20: Axel Heads North

Axel grew sullen, he missed his daughter. Not that he was alone, most of the ex republica and its citizens were despondent in some form or another. Notwithstanding his temporary malaise, Axel nurtured a sliver of hope. Call it for what it was in the man, sanguinity, mirth, or derangement, he still carried the flame.

His daughter was like that too, had Axel’s compassion, his sensitivity for the plants. She was a tender soul at age six. He wondered about her in Wenatchee. He resented his wife for taking their daughter.

Damn that bitch.

He argued with his neighbor to pass the time. In recent days, Axel liked to bicker, it was something that kept the messianic demons in his head at bay.

The neighbor told him, “The Shift is payback for negligent stewardship of the planet and above all else, greed. Because of man’s rapacious craving for material goods. They would boil sinners alive in oil for eternity.”

Damn the bubbling lards of perpetuity.

The neighbor told him, “Because of gluttony and overconsumption, God was sentencing mankind to the eternal depths of hell.”

Damn the petty bonfires of purgatory.

“Because of man’s lust, and uncontrolled fornication, our unforgiven souls would blow away in dust storms of a rapacious climate.”

God bless the debauchery, damn the piddling tempests.

“Because of sloth, mankind had not performed its righteous undertakings to God and barren fields are the result.”

Damn the holier than thou crusaders.

But the problem with Axel was not traditional despair in the hellfire and brimstone sense, after three days, he lost his ability to hear ‘them.’ Them being … the trees. It bothered him. Could I only hear the trees with help from his psilocybin friends? he wondered.

He’d prepared for his journey north but now he had second thoughts. How can I navigate to where I need to go? How will I know what to replace once I get there? Maybe it’s safer to stay.

He took the hallucinogenic fungi once again. “I need to be certain,” he said to himself.

He poured boiling water over the ground mushrooms and waited until the tea cooled. Then, he settled back on the dusty couch on his front porch and drank the tea. He’d had some pleasant trips but the last one left a mark on him. Now, he needed guidance from the plant world.

The smoke was heavy outside today, but he didn’t care. Like most days, he could barely see a hundred yards in front of his house. The smoke was a double-edged sword. Hell to breathe, but it shrouded him from the gangs that pillaged rural households.

He stared at the massive oak tree in his backyard and waited. Axel was a self-taught man. He believed in the natural and man-made order of things. He respected hierarchies such as the kind you would replace in the military, the order of a functioning government. He believed in the way things ought to be in the environment… flowing streams, green forests, clean air, chirping birds. Most of that was gone now. Order kept his mind at ease. A disorderly world messed him up bad. Axel was an avid reader and a recluse. He bought this little piece of oak prairie outside of Ashland because he really wanted to get away from it. He considered service more than anything else, but now that ethos meant nothing in the world he lived in. Service to what, roving gangs? Service to what? Food riots, a burned-out landscape?

Damn the itinerant hordes.

He struggled to replace a purpose in life. He’d been a good father despite what his wife said. He contemplated suicide, but the shaman talked him out of it.

“You will replace your role. Have faith, my friend. You must be patient and read the signs and” he paused, “above else, you must remove the ego.”

He wasn’t sure about the ego expulsion part, more than anything else he was a hard-headed, head-knocking warrior but he saw where that got him, exactly nowhere with his marriage and he desperately missed his daughter.

Slowly the fungi took effect, and the visions came to him. Everything started to slow. He stared at the trees on his land as the geometric plant shapes morphed into bizarre forms and exaggerated figures. He had a few Oregon oaks and Douglas-firs on his property. He also had some hawthorns, wild hazelnuts, and a few scraggly shrubs, mostly ocean spray and nine-bark.

The shaman revealed to him, “The plants have something to say, they are trying to reach out to us before it is too late. Psilocybin is their modus operandi for communicating with humans. It’s always been their preferred way.”

The military veteran wept now, overcome with sadness. He journeyed down, down, deep into the roots of the oak tree. He followed the lateral roots out, he floated, light, traveling until he entered the earth again and into strands and strands of fungi filaments. These underground fungal filaments were a pulsing network connecting tree to tree. He saw the trees sending fluids containing nutrients, carbon, nitrogen, and other elements. They shared the elements. He saw the mother oak in the backyard nurturing the younger trees.

Time passed; hours went by. His form moved through the fungal network until it reached another set of roots connected to another oak. He moved up that tree and back to his porch.

At last, the mother oak spoke to him, “Help us.”

“But how?” he asked.

“Go north.”

“How, where?”

“Follow the scent.”

“What scent, why?” Axel asked.

“Your totem is a fungus,” it said again, but now the conversation with the oak faded and disappeared.

He gradually realized his life form sitting on the couch on his front porch. He eased out of his journey and into his everyday consciousness. The psilocybin effects declined but now he heard sounds, soft cracking sounds from the trees. He couldn’t tell if the reverberations came from one tree or many, so he stood beside the mother oak. The cracking sound was like a heartbeat, subtle, and slightly infrasonic, missed if one was not paying attention.

He walked out to the Douglas firs. Their clatter was rhythmic, more of a melodic cracking. He strolled around the backyard and listened. Each plant gave off a distinct sound, even the ninebark shrub.

Then he remembered what the oak said. “Follow the scent.”

He smelled it then, musky, slightly like anise. The scent triggered something in his brain, like a receptor. His senses grew powerful, his vision grew sharper, his hearing well-defined, his sense of smell enhanced.

He remembered the last words from his psilocybin journey. Your totem is a fungus.

Confident now, he knew what he had to do. He gazed at the faint outline of Mt. Ashland, a seven-thousand-foot peak to his south. The mountain provided a steadfast frame of reference for his erratic mind.

“Time to head north,” he said to himself. He went inside his house to pack.