A few days after finishing grad school at the University of Montana in 2004, I headed south out of Missoula and eventually landed at the base of Colorado鈥檚 Front Range. Missoula was beautiful, but I was more interested in Colorado鈥檚 sunshine, accessible rock climbing, and hundreds of high-altitude summits close to my new home in Denver. For almost a decade and a half, I lived for the times I could spend above tree line: technical-climbing routes hundreds of feet high, where I tied into anchors and watched birds ride thermals directly across from me or above my head as I belayed my partner; ambling ridge traverses that looked over ocean waves of mountains that seemed to go on forever; and sitting on hundreds of summits, where I鈥檇 pause for just a few minutes before hiking, rappelling, or skiing down.

I wrote stories, always focusing on the adventure, action, or big picture鈥攚hat it all meant鈥攊nstead of on the details of the scenery around me. After thousands of hours of romping around the mountains and the desert, I can probably confidently name only about a dozen plants and a handful of birds. In the proofreading process for a guidebook I wrote on Rocky Mountain National Park, I scrolled through dozens of wildflower websites, trying to name the flowers on all the trails I鈥檇 covered. When an editor asked me to specify what types of evergreen trees were on a certain trail, looking back at my photos, I had to admit that I couldn鈥檛 100 percent say whether they were lodgepole pines or Douglas firs. I鈥檓 just not much of a plants guy, I told myself.

In August of 2020, 18 years after I鈥檇 left my childhood home to live out west, Iowans learned a new weather term when something called a derecho聽ripped through the central part of the state, causing $7.5 billion in damage. The Washington Post, in an effort to explain this fast-moving beeline of severe thunderstorms, 聽a definition of a derecho that said it 鈥渕ust produce 鈥榗ontinuous or intermittent鈥� damage along a path at least 60 miles wide and 400 miles long, with frequent gusts of at least 58 mph and several well-separated gusts of at least 75 mph.鈥�

My parents鈥� hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa, still recovering from a 2018 tornado that brought 99-mile-per-hour winds and took down the county courthouse鈥檚 dome and spire, was hammered by the derecho. One of the big trees in their backyard was felled, fortunately missing the house and their bedroom window, 20 feet away, though the wind ripped a section of siding clean off the south side. I talked to Mom and Dad on the phone, listening as they recounted their stories of the event and its aftermath鈥攖ree-removal crews were slowly making their way across the state, neighbors were helping cut up fallen branches and haul them to the curb, insurance companies couldn鈥檛 send someone to assess damages for weeks because they were so backed up. As the derecho was hitting the edge of town, Dad had decided to drive home from the golf course; he stopped at the end of the block to get out and walk up to the house, but then thought better of it and opted to wait out the violent winds that were toppling trees left and right back in the truck.

After the storm, Dad sounded down. Five months into having their retirement interrupted by a pandemic that kept them isolated at home, my parents lost half of the trees in their backyard. I suggested planting new ones in their聽place. Dad, not usually one to get philosophical or talk much about mortality, matter-of-factly pointed out that, at 69, he probably wouldn鈥檛 have time left to see a newly planted tree grow to maturity.

That summer of 2020, I returned to Missoula. And just weeks after the derecho, my wife and I closed on a house there. A listing real estate agent might have called it funky, but it might have more objectively been described as a tad neglected for a decade or two. A Florida developer had bought it previously, hoping to scrape it and build a fourplex, but then abandoned the idea, so we were able to snatch it up, to the relief of many neighbors on the block. The house itself was a bit ramshackle鈥攖he shop roof leaked, the house roof sagged a little, and the front door had been walled over, though the concrete front stoop remained, accented with moss. However, the property had five huge, mature oak trees, the kind only rich neighborhoods boasted in the city we鈥檇 left.

And also: one jack pine tree stood growing toward the southern sun, pushing the ancient back fence over since probably the late 1990s. My dad鈥檚 heartbreak over his lost trees fresh in my mind, I decided to save the pine instead of the fence, and ran a reciprocating saw sideways, halving the fence panel to allow the tree more room to grow. It wasn鈥檛 a classy move. But it felt like an opportunity to save a piece of nature rather than聽a piece of man-made architecture, so I righteously hacked away.

It took a few months of being back in Missoula for me to stop seeing everything as it related to a memory of when I was in grad school鈥�Oh, that used to be this place, or I knew someone who lived there, or I used to go there when it was a coffee shop. I was no longer an excited young man trying to climb every peak within a four-hour radius; I was now 41 and enamored with the trail systems that seemed to begin on every side of town and provide hours of wandering through evergreen forests. I still didn鈥檛 know the names of most of the trees, but I was happy to learn that we now lived among western larch trees, deciduous conifers whose needles turn gold and drop to the ground in the fall.

That September, I discovered a trail system in a canyon just a 15-minute drive from our house, with gentle trail grades perfect for our senior dog, Rowlf. In the spring, it became our regular destination for evening off-leash walks, cool, quiet, and calming when the sun streaked through the pines and painted everything in glowing hues. Slowing to the pace of my ten-year-old dog, I finally took the time to look around and take it all in. Every time I slid my hand into my pocket to grab my phone for yet another photo of the trees in the fading light, that small section of evergreens scored another point to secure its spot as my favorite forest. Which is to say, I guess, that I was finally old enough and calm enough to notice the trees and have a favorite forest.

The 2020 wildfire season was the worst in California鈥檚 history and the second worst in Oregon鈥檚. Smoke from the fires moved east into Missoula in mid-September, giving us several consecutive days of unhealthy air quality. A few hours south of Missoula, a Labor Day storm ripped down hundreds of trees in Wyoming鈥檚 Wind River Range. A thousand miles away in Iowa, my parents鈥� street was lined with branches and entire trees dragged out of backyards following the derecho, where they awaited pickup and transport to the county compost facility.

The signs of climate change have appeared more and more strikingly over my lifetime, first a murmur of聽鈥済lobal warming,鈥� then more stern warnings of 鈥渃limate change.鈥� I listened to聽Al Gore鈥檚 message in an Inconvenient Truth, and I heard people talk shit about him flying on planes or having a big house. I was pretty sure the聽former vice president wasn鈥檛 jerking our chain for fun. Climate change always seemed like a thing we should be dealing with, but of course weren鈥檛鈥攕o the real havoc would come later in my lifetime. I鈥檇 read news stories聽that started, 鈥淏y 2100, the world will鈥︹€� or 鈥淏y 2050鈥�,鈥� which felt like a long time away. If a doctor tells you that you have six months to live, you wake up right there. If a doctor tells you that you have 40 years to live, you shrug and go about your life as usual, probably changing nothing.

The summer of 2021 could not have been more different than my carefree tree-climbing summer of 1987 in Iowa. In Missoula, we experienced record heat all that July, with only one day in five weeks with a high temperature below 90 degrees. My parents, with the shade of their big backyard tree gone after the derecho, had to run the air conditioner more. In our weekly phone calls, I reported to my mother that I鈥檇 only been able to exercise outside when our air-quality index went down to moderate, and she鈥檇 tell me that she didn鈥檛 go for a walk in their Iowa neighborhood that day because the smoke was there, too. I鈥檇 read the news and find out that smoke from western wildfires was making it all the way to New York, that it was even visible from space. Our trees from the West travel now, blasted into bits by fire, turning into ash, and frequently聽blowing聽all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

A few months after I cut our back fence in half to accommodate the sprawling jack pine, I realized my error in judgment. The tree, given a few inches of leeway, had taken several feet and was back to pushing on the remaining fence, which was now bent into the alley. Every time I took out the trash, I looked at the pine and realized its upper branches had also grown into the alley, to the point where the garbage truck would probably soon start running into them as it passed on Monday mornings. Begrudgingly, and feeling like a complete traitor, I sawed down branches, destroying a third of the tree. For several weeks, it bled sap where I鈥檇 cut it, a visceral reminder of my betrayal. I couldn鈥檛 do anything but water it and hope it survived.

My wife, Hilary, and I talked about trees, about how even if you could afford to buy a brand-new house somewhere, you couldn鈥檛 just buy and plant mature trees around it. I don鈥檛 know who planted the maples in our yard, or how big they got before that person or family moved out, or died, or whatever. I鈥檓 just grateful that they planted trees, maybe not entirely for themselves but also for future residents of the house who would live there long after they were gone, people they would never know. Us.

So Hilary and I bought and planted a pine tree in the backyard. Like Dad, I don鈥檛 know if I鈥檒l still be here when it gets big enough to provide a significant amount of shade. I鈥檓 still not a plant guy, but lately, I鈥檓 starting to be a guy who appreciates a good, mature tree when he sees one.

In the late 1980s, right around the time I was climbing trees all summer in Iowa, R.E.M. recorded a song called 鈥淚t鈥檚 the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine),鈥� and Billy Joel recorded 鈥淲e Didn鈥檛 Start the Fire.鈥� Both are songs with rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness lyrics that include name-checking events and historical figures, capturing the frantic anxiety of the speeding up of the news cycle and the creeping dread of the then four-decades-long Cold War. Both songs used to give me a specific feeling鈥攖hat the world moved fast, and was going to move even faster, and not necessarily in a good direction, and all we could do was try to keep up. I haven鈥檛 pressed play on either one of those in a long, long time, because I get that same feeling nowadays every time I check news feeds or social media on my phone or laptop. It鈥檚 been a challenging time to hang on to hope, let alone make art, or feel justified in dreaming about going on a bike tour or skiing.

Plenty of days, when daily life has to include considerations of wildfire smoke, record heat, a pandemic, a drought, and continued violence, I have to remind myself that people have gone through hard shit before and that, in other parts of the world, people are going through hard shit that鈥檚 different than mine, and likely way harder. The flu pandemic happened during a five-year World War. I read psychiatrist Viktor Frankl鈥檚 memoir Man鈥檚 Search for Meaning, and other books on the Holocaust, and imagine what it must have been like to survive Auschwitz, not knowing how long it would go on for鈥攎onths or years鈥攌nowing that any day a Nazi soldier could take your life on a whim, and that even if you survived the camp, Nazis might rule the world. I know you鈥檙e not supposed to minimize your problems by comparing them to someone else鈥檚, but some days, remembering that perspective helps me a bit.

I used to wonder how people could have kids at a time like this, and then I would wonder how long people had been saying things like 鈥淗ow could people have kids at a time like this?鈥� It seems like society, essentially, has always been Going Through Some Shit. Maybe in the past, when news traveled at a much slower pace, it was easier to blissfully forget about everything for a while and focus on what was right in front of you. For a couple years, I had my favorite forest near town, where I didn鈥檛 get a cell signal and my dog slowed my pace and lowered my blood pressure when I watched his tail wag, nose shoved into a bush, sniffing hard. When we lost Rowlf in late June, it took a few weeks for me to go back to my favorite forest without him, and even longer to not be sad as I walked the paths there. But it still beat the shit out of scrolling through Twitter.

When Hilary started talking about maybe having a child, or at least 鈥渢rying,鈥� as people say, and seeing what would happen, sort of putting it in the hands of the universe, or biology, or whatever, I had lots of thoughts about it: how it would change my daily life, how I would manage the balance of being a dad along with everything else I was doing, how I could mess it up pretty much every hour of every day for the rest of my life, the fact that I didn鈥檛 exactly gravitate toward kids (or ever even really try to hold babies). It was the boldest thing I could imagine doing, and I felt underqualified for the job and maybe unjustified in applying for it. But if I turned off the worrying part of my brain, the idea of assembling a library of kids鈥� books, introducing a tiny person to the music I love, and walking around in the woods at less than a mile per hour with a dawdling kid sounded like a kind of fun I didn鈥檛 necessarily want to miss out on.

Lately, I鈥檇 been feeling like I might be starting many people experience in their forties, whether that was from two-plus years of a pandemic, midlife, a feeling of Is this all there is? or something else. I wondered if my parents, in the late 1970s, had worried about having kids at A Time Like This. I wondered if, after you have a child, you just wring your hands about it less because you鈥檙e too busy trying to keep a kid alive鈥攐r maybe you become less pessimistic about the future, because you have some not-so-metaphorical skin in the game and you have no choice but to hope for the best. The kid has no choice about coming into the world, after all. I wonder how in, say, 2045, a hypothetical child of mine and Hilary鈥檚 would feel about our decision to create them. What would the forests look like when the kid was my age? Would there be any trees left? Or was I thinking about it the wrong way and the kid would be a metaphorical tree we planted, in hopes that it would make the world a little bit better?

When I emailed my friend Devin that Hilary and I were expecting a baby boy in mid-2022, he replied with enthusiastic congratulations and wrote, 鈥淚 think having a child is the most optimistic thing a person can do鈥攁t least it was for me.鈥�

Thirty-some years later, all of my tree-climbing memories from that summer in Red Oak are limited to a couple flashes of visuals鈥攁 pattern of branches, looking down at the ground from high up in the canopy, my grandpa鈥檚 rough rope wrapped around a limb. But I do clearly remember how my dad walked into the house that day,聽leaving me to figure it out on my own. I鈥檝e long been aware of the obvious metaphor about parenting in this memory. I鈥檓 also aware of the fact that my dad knew all of our neighbors, and he probably knew which neighbors had a tall ladder that he could have walked over and borrowed to get me out of the tree. But the lasagna was a few minutes from coming out of the oven, and he likely looked at the distance between me and the ground and figured I had a pretty low chance of getting injured.

I don鈥檛 remember how I landed鈥攎aybe with a tuck and roll, or on my feet and then staggering a few running steps before sliding to a stop, or like a cat. But after my dad walked into the house, I took another minute or two, or five, and I jumped, limbs flailing, hoping for the best.