The Intervention
Gardena, CA
2021, Senior, Creative Writing
I’m dying. It’s a pity I won’t live to see my hundredth year. Most of my leaves have disappeared during the last few seasons, when flooding became especially fierce. I suppose humans could compare losing foliage to losing their hair or teeth or nice skin. I’m only 98, but I know fellow oaks who have gone on for three centuries.
Privileged logs. They don’t live in a coastal town, stuck in a park next door to the ocean. Their soil isn’t poisoned with salt from the seawater that floods the town. They still have the energy to be strong and obedient to the laws of nature. I’m not interested in obeying the law that says you can’t talk to a human. In the past I was foolish enough to heed the rule that had silenced plants for millennia. But no more. Yesterday, I experienced the worst flood yet, and I’d be a fool if I didn’t say something about it.
In a bitter mood, I watched Camila Johnson make her way across the playground, the soggy grass squelching every time she lifted a booted foot. I’d watched her grow up, from an annoying toddler who ran in front of kids on swings to scare them, to a quiet teenager and treasurer of ASB who had much to say about Ron Matthews, a boy in her math class.
Ever since Camila had grown to the height of a young sapling, she’d visited me after school every day. She’d sit among my roots and write in her journal if the grass was dry, or stand and lean against my trunk when the grass was wet. Sometimes she’d climb up to sit on my lower branches and admire the ocean as it slapped against the seawall below the park. I didn’t see the beauty in it, but she did, and she spent hours watching the waves. Today I’d have to interrupt the peace she’d come for.
Camila leaned against me, her jacket brushing over my bark. She flipped open her notebook, patting her pocket for a pencil.
“Hello,” I snapped. “We need to talk.”
She shrieked and dropped her journal into the mud. I assured her, over her gasps and jumps and exclamations, that she wasn’t mad, dreaming, or going into cardiac arrest. Still panting, she finally pulled herself together.
“I’m dying,” I announced. “Young as I am. And it’s your fault.”
Camila stared, clutching her wet journal. “What?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, it’s not your fault yet. After I explain, and you choose to do nothing, then it will be your fault. Hear me out.”
So I explained everything, and although she knew some stuff, I made her hear it again. I explained how surface temperatures were rising, in part due to humans burning fossil fuels and chopping down forests (I tried to keep the anger out of my voice at that part but didn’t quite succeed). I told her how global warming led to melting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. How water expands when it warms. How that led to rising sea levels. How that led to flooding in coastal towns. How cities in New York, South Carolina, and Texas could be underwater by 2100. How we should start seeking solutions now before this town turned into Atlantis 2.0 and barnacles encrusted my branches.
Camila interrupted me, pointing at the ocean below us. The park was originally built on a low cliff, with a cement wall erected at the base of it. “We’ve tried to fix flooding. My dad oversaw a project to build that seawall over there.”
“Well, obviously it’s not working, because I still got wet last night!” I yelled. I took a breath to calm down. My trunk felt soggier and colder with every bitter gust of wind, and salt from last night’s flooding bled into my roots. “Look, your town still has water in the streets, parks—everywhere. The seawall needs to be replaced with something smarter. Something more effective.”
Camila crossed her arms. “Like what?”
“Like salt marshes. Oyster reefs. Rocks. Mangroves. Seagrass. It’s called natural infrastructure—look it up. These plants and organisms will help absorb the wave energy and stem the flow of water into the town. The seawall doesn’t work because the waves rebound against it and come back larger than ever. So. Visit City Hall, start an Ocean Conservation Club at your school, go tell your dad everything I just told you. I want to see salt marshes on the shore by the end of this week. And maybe have him replace all the soil in the park while you’re at it.”
Camila suddenly wouldn’t look at me. She toed at a patch of grass. “I’d like to,” she said slowly. “But my family’s thinking about moving.”
“You’re running away?” I asked, aghast.
“My family’s tired of the flooding,” Camila admitted. “We’re thinking of relocating our house further inland.”
“How fortunate you are,” I said sourly. “And what am I supposed to do? Pull up my roots, call an Uber, and move to a park in Kansas? No. Other families here don’t have that sort of option, to flee. Besides, what would Ron Matthews say if he knew you were leaving?”
Camila gasped indignantly, her face redder than crab. “You read my journal?”
I continued, “The community needs you to inform them of the situation and help set things right. You’re going to stay until that seawall is supplemented with natural infrastructure. I don’t care if the moving truck is in front of your house and your parents are calling you to get in the car. You dig in your heels and say no, I’m not leaving. Pretend you’re a tree.”
“I can’t do that,” Camila protested.
I huffed. I couldn’t stand the word “can’t.” There was not a human alive that couldn’t do more to improve the environment. They could send satellites into space, people to the moon, rovers to Mars, and yet they couldn’t find it in themselves to care about the state of their own planet.
“Fine, then. Leave me here to die. A poor old grump, sitting abandoned in salt-infested soil until my branches become empty and I’m chopped into lumber.” My voice sounded mournful. “Maybe they’ll turn my wood into paper and make more journals.”
Camila laughed. “Oh, come on.”
“Go,” I urged. “Go talk to your parents. I don’t care that the whole thing isn’t in your control. At least make an effort. If everyone made the effort to understand the situation and act on it, towns like ours wouldn’t be flooded so badly and, more importantly, I wouldn’t be dying.”
“Okay, I’ll try.” Camila wrapped her arms around me in an embrace that warmed my old, stiff trunk. I tolerated it for a generous five seconds.
“Oh, go already,” I said, not unkindly. “Go, before people start looking at you funny.”
As Camila turned and left the park, looking back every five steps, I felt peace expand in my trunk. Change was in the air.
I’m a centenarian now.
Camila’s father agreed to implement natural infrastructure. Camila encouraged the town to pitch in. As the years passed, flooding decreased significantly. Camila continued to visit me every day—sometimes she even brought Ron—and at one point had my soil replaced. When we met, we’d talk about school or the news. Sometimes she’d just sit among my branches, and we’d look out at the ocean.
I had to agree that, from a safe distance, it was beautiful.
Reflection
Time makes us complacent. Sea level rise is a growing problem, but hey, at least we’ve got 30 years until flooding turns disastrous. No! We need to stop making a few decades our excuse for not acting now. We’ve got to stop procrastinating, to put it simply. I understand why we are this way—we don’t feel threatened. After all, for many of us, our lives aren’t being visibly affected, and our houses and properties aren’t in immediate danger. That means it’s not our problem, right? Wrong. It is our problem, because we helped create it. Everyone has a carbon footprint. It’s our responsibility, as the inhabitants of this planet, to care for the environment and reverse the damage we’ve done. We need to act now, because every minute we waste, problems worsen. Every year that goes by with us not doing anything, the sea rises by millimeters. The time to research, to recycle, to clean up beaches and spread awareness, is now. Right now. Not tomorrow, not next week—now. I wrote this story from the perspective of an old oak tree who lives right next to the ocean. Unlike many of us, he doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring the problem of sea level rise. The urgency with which he compels Camila to act is the attitude we need to have if we are going to reduce global warming and slow sea level rise. It’s not too late. Let’s take advantage of the time we have, before it’s gone.