There is a place, not far from here, where the sand and water boil up from the deep and I am thinking of using it to join the aquifer. Youths like to splash around there because the upward current floats them, no matter how they dive. But I know that, if I ask, the aquifer will admit me. She will reverse the current and overcome my buoyancy and I will slip through the silt like a chute and I will join the aquifer beneath. I am too shy to ask if this is the purpose of the many land-borne things she has reclaimed—whether she has been readying a place for me.
The trees began vanishing the night I promised myself to the aquifer. They were gone acres at a time. No stumps, no burn marks. It was a slow romance with the aquifer. I had been a ranger for two years. She took me for being the same as the other rangers, at first. But I kept my distance from them. I had no use for ATVs or electric hookups. They kept their distance from me, as well. I was the first woman ranger at Halsey National Forest. I don’t know what they began censoring out when I arrived, but I recognized the catches in their speech, their almost-slip-ups. I bore no qualms about telling them I understood this place better than they did, its long history in my blood, blood they only thought of historically. That probably didn’t bring us closer together, either.
When the trees began to go, the Forest Service crawled all over these hills. I didn’t know 90,000 acres could feel so claustrophobic. I didn’t think I could get away from their voices, their instruments. As 90,000 became 83,000 became 74,000 they tried to figure it out. They tried to name what was happening. There was no keeping the panic out of their voices, panic at the loss of the trees or at not knowing where they were going. I didn’t panic. It was not wasteland, where the trees had been. Tallgrasses and cacti flourished where the blocked sun could not reach them before. When I asked the aquifer whether she took those first trees, it was the first time I heard her bubbling laugh.
I don’t know when the aquifer took notice, but I know when it began for me. Back before the trees went this was a popular place to camp. A national forest in the middle of treeless Nebraska. One of our main jobs, us rangers, was making sure the campers didn’t burn the whole thing down. We updated the Smokey Bear sign on the highway with the degree of fire risk. We took fees for RV spots. The Forest Service trained us to fear fire so much that water grew distant to us. One day I checked a campsite. I knew the RV had left, and I went to see how they’d left the place. The usual trash littered about: chip bags, cans of bug spray, a broken bottle. But the splash of water blinded me to all of this. The campers had done some last-minute washing before taking off. They’d pulled away from the site with the red water spigot still rushing. Water flooded the site, muddy and brackish. I turned off the spigot. Then I stomped to our toolshed and back. I took the heavy mallet to the pipe. I struck over and over until the spigot stood sideways, the metal pipe sealed off to any more waste. And though the water had stopped flowing, and my ears rang with the effort of my blows, I heard her then as near as an ancient whisper, primordial in my ear.
I stopped running taps. I snuck to the river to fill water bottles and to wash dishes and to wash myself. I did not drink from the pond. I knew where the water to fill the pond was taken from. I also knew that, like the trees, it had been planted in stubborn soil by stubborner hands. Then one night, on my way to wash in the river, the aquifer asked me into the pond. I stepped in and felt the cool water eddy around me. The pond was too small for currents, but I felt the aquifer inhale and exhale all around me. My skin tingled and every hair stood on end. The water seemed viscous, like it was trying to stick to me. I reached my limbs out, trying to increase my surface area. I could swear the water filtered in and out of my pores. When I spoke, I surprised myself by saying things I had been too bashful to admit to the aquifer before. I gushed. I waited for her response. The water enveloped me. The first of the trees vanished that night.
The Forest Service officially abandoned the forest. They decided there was too much danger of a ranger being lost in one of the disappearances. They surrounded the remaining 27,000 acres in a tall fence. My job officially ceased to exist. But when the last trucks drove out, I hid myself. I ate berries and trapped squirrels. I left the door to every structure open. I slept in the open air of the fire lookout tower, where I could see the strange moonlit patterns of trees being swallowed beneath the earth. Each night quieter than the last.
I woke this morning to an expanse of prairie. The aquifer had taken the last trees in the night. I asked her what came next. I felt the dry heat crisping the lookout tower and I did not need to wait for her response. I didn’t take anything with me when I descended the many stairs.
I began walking. I am still walking. I follow the river west. I hear the aquifer’s murmurings urging me on. I know where she is leading me. The newly bare sandhills fold all around me. If I squint when I look at them, I can see past the years. I can see the long furrowed rows carved into them, the seeds and saplings, the beginnings of something renowned for flourishing where flourishing was an act of force.
The boiling sand pit is more turbulent than I remember it. It sits astride the river, the water bubbling up joining the water running away. I sit at the edge of this otherworldly quicksand. I test a foot in the pool and feel the pressure. The boiling sand and water try to push my foot out. Though the silt hides it from view, I know this channel goes straight down well over a hundred feet. I try to picture how deep that is. I try to picture the aquifer whose voice I can hear so clearly.
I ask the aquifer if she is sure this is what she wants. Her answer is the sound of water always finding the most viable crevice out of whatever tries to contain it. I watch as the bubbles stop and the pool goes still. I wade in. I walk waist-deep on the suspended pressure of the water. I imagine the bottoms of my feet seen from a hundred feet below. I imagine the aquifer seeing me for the first time. I stretch out my limbs. I let my mind float. I feel the water in my pores again. I hear her below. I take the deepest breath I can.
Sean Theodore Stewart's stories have appeared or are forthcoming at The Arkansas International, Epiphany, december, Guesthouse, Salt Hill, The New Territory, and Bayou. He holds an MFA from the University of Idaho, where he served as the fiction editor of Fugue. He is originally from the Sandhills of Nebraska and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Samantha, and their pups, Ramona and Molly. TW: @sean_theodore
Image credit: Daniel Sinoca