I swear there’s something about biomass that affects the human spirit. Maybe it’s the thousands of specific smells combined. Maybe it’s the humidity and oxygen exhaust from the plants. But a greenless city is a sick place, and when you travel from that environment into a rainforest, you feel it in every cell.

The water tastes better, I can tell you that. Especially when it only traveled ten miles from the glacier it came from.

We scrounged through the walk-in fridge for something to eat. It was packed, but they eat very healthy up there- all-natural, all-organic, mostly vegan. Plenty of fruits and vegetables on hand, which are tasty. Not too much greasy stuff to be found… I think if I lived there I’d have logs of lamb shipped up and keep em revolving in my room so I could sneak a gyro whenever I needed. Which isn’t much. I’ve quit meat before and it felt great, but there’s not much on this planet more delicious than the stuff, so I would always have some now and then. I crave it.

But most of what they ate was vegan slop- you know, that casserole of miscellany that vegans choke down and pretend that its not like eating puke. Why is vegan food either sparse (like wheat-germ-and-banana-chips), or slop, or a nasty soybean simulacrum (tofurkey, fakin’ bacon, etc)? Answer: Because if it’s not, it’s not called vegan food- it’s just called “spaghetti” or whatever. The best meatless food is food you don’t even notice is meatless. Having meat with every meal is an American thing, and because of it, the stuff singled out as meatless is usually a deliberate substitution, which is how we get a fake soybean tube simulating a hot dog- which considering its makeup is not something one would expect to be duplicated.

So why, living in this valley of organic produce and having plenty of ingredients at their disposal, were the folks there eating vegan slop? I was to find out after my first day at work.

But it was Sunday morning, and we ventured up the forest service roads in search of a few waterfalls. The roads were officially closed, and so we ended up backtracking and trying different routes like a mouse in a maze. We’d drive way up the mountain, the snow would get too deep, and we’d turn around and come back. Saw a grouse up there, though. Eventually we made it to a trail head and went for a hike.

Moss hung everywhere, and on top of that, snow, so the woods were a calico of green and white. We passed giant boulders in their eons-long strolls downhill and the stumps of trees of unimaginable girth. We sat on a rocky butte and looked out over the river gorge, and we lingered by waterfalls and tried to listen to what they had to say. We managed to make it to the Big Tree, an old-growth behemoth that was probably there when the only white people this continent knew were Vikings. There aren’t that many really old things in America, so when you find one, it stands out.

Returning to camp, my sisters took a break while my brother and I suited up in the full-body raingear that he and his coworkers work in when the weather is particularly nasty. We trekked into the woods behind his dorm, sloshing through the rain and the melting snow until we reached a large sinkhole with a roof built over it and a ladder descending into the darkness. A lava tube had collapsed here, and the ladder set us down on the pile of debris that had fallen. From there it was another 30 ft to the base of the tube.

The size and smoothness of it was breathtaking. It appeared as though a worm thirty feet across had burrowed through the earth for a mile, leaving the walls and ceiling almost featureless. At one end the ground rose to meet the ceiling, and at the other, it opened into a gigantic cavern, easily 70 feet high. In this cavern, a steel staircase led up to a hole in the ceiling where we could see the bottom of a house. From the staircase led the remains of a walkway and set of shelves that had been used to make cheese. I thought the homeowners were pretty brave, trusting that cave not to collapse. It was such a big cavern that up there on the staircase I trembled from the height. I’d never been afraid of heights while underground before.

Doobie and Green’s coworkers had held a drum circle in there at the equinox. I can’t imagine how much fun that must have been. We clicked off our lights for a while, enjoyed a brewski and watched the phosphenes dance.

My brother doesn’t talk much, and eventually, I stopped too. We sat in absolute darkness with only trickling water and cool stone as stimulation. What a lonely place to be, underground in the woods. I realized that in the city, I’m probably no more than 20 feet from another person, all the time. “Alone” is a false concept for the city dweller. But out there in the woods, it becomes a very real concept. Some people spend their whole lives trying to get away, and some people spend their whole lives trying not to be alone.

I prefer the company of my fellow humans. All I have to do to feel alone is look up at the vastness of the stars.