Cascade

“Water Globe” by Katie Hughbanks

All along the drive up to the basecamp, Ella sat with her shoulder against the passenger door of the car. Geoff had gotten in the driver side as they left, and neither of them said anything about it. She braced her feet in the footwell as the car skipped out of a rut.

Last year’s dusty expedition had found the mountains parched for snow, and little runoff to nourish the grassland and marshes of the valley. During that trip, Ella had made a paltry discovery among the yellow stalks: a lone frog, dead and dried, frozen solid during its winter hibernation, then somehow both thawed and leathered by the sun of that Spring. She had drawn a picture of it in her biologist’s field journal, made notes, and given the desiccated creature a nickname, before flipping over her pencil and erasing it. She had written instead, “Male, sun dried.” It was the only frog any of them had found.

This year, the earth would be wetter, Ella was sure. This year, the research team would find pairs of frogs down in the ponds, mating, filling the air with their chirping. Everything would be lush.

Geoff fought the gravel as he urged their car up the path, hunching forward to hear the voice on his podcast episode, one Ken Mark, a herpetologist who had branched out from his study of amphibians to make broad claims online about ecology and climate. Ella was skeptical of his theories, but respected, as everyone did, Ken’s early work.

“I’m excited to work with this dude,” Geoff said.

“Frogs are the real canaries in the coal mine of ecology,” Ken was saying.

Geoff waggled his brow at Ella.

She turned her gaze back to the mountains. Geoff was trying to be funny in that way he did after they’d had a fight. This time it had been about Ken and his calls for scientists to begin exiting society. Geoff had been intrigued, Ella repulsed. There had been an eerie feeling in their apartment as they readied for this trip, packing gear and stuffing their clothes into bags, walking past the unsigned copy of next year’s lease on the kitchen counter, saying nothing as they exited, locking the door.

This year they needed wet, soggy terrain, full of frogs to count and catalog, a mess of tadpole data to send back, ample support at the funding board, more seasons to tend the apartment together.

They rolled into the camp and saw that Ken and Lily had arrived and set up already.

Geoff insisted on putting together the tent. That was fine, he needed these moments, feeling that he was doing things for the two of them. Ella watched him wrestle with a guy wire, trying to force it. She opened the hatch of the car and pulled their packs out, shouldered them both, stretching her back. Ella pulled in a deep breath and blew out sharply. 

She walked the packs over to Geoff and set them down.

“Do you need help?”

“Nah, I got it.” He sat back on the ground. “I got it.”

She went around to the far side of the car and watched the mountains. Wet wisps had begun to steam off the tops of them.

***

Raindrops slapped the nylon of the tent. Ella lay back on her elbows, waiting for the data sync with the university. The laptop on her legs was a source of warmth, humming and disgorging information in fits and starts. She ran her fingers along the cable that connected her laptop to the field drive. It was a superstition, touching the cord as it powered the drive and fed data to the laptop. They’d had difficulty getting the connection working since the rain began, but the field drive, studded with rubber armor, hummed confidently.

Geoff had gone off immediately to meet Ken and his protege, but Ella had wanted to nestle into the tent and get settled, prep the gear, feel at home. Geoff sometimes teased her for being over-serious, and she needled him about getting into field work for the camping. They both knew she was the better researcher, with a feel for the natural environment that Geoff called spooky. Sometimes he called her Earth Mama Biologist, and then she would start quoting his more dubious publications at him, but she loved the look in his eye when he praised her, alive and full of promise.

***

The rain pressed down all day, only breaking for capricious gusts of wind. Wet was good, it meant the breeding of the frogs could begin. Ella readied their gear beside their bedrolls, then donned her jacket and hustled over rivulets, holding back her braids as she peeked into the other tents to trade expectations.

She caught Geoff in Ken’s tent, moralizing in a lantern-light debate. Ken introduced himself with a deft reference to a paper Ella had published a few years ago. His field gear was of a vintage, but impeccably kept.

“Do you think,” said Ken, “that people will still continue to spend money on basic research once they realize that funding limitless exploration is what got us into this mess in the first place?”

Ella excused herself to go meet Ken’s protege Lily, who, rather than debate, preferred to stay up knitting and nibbling edibles in her tent. Lily squirmed; it was to be her first field work. She tugged at her curls of hair and rambled at how she loved the downpour, loved the chocolate, loved the bright striated fabric of the tent in the lantern light, loved the gentle pattern of her purls. Ella smiled politely. Lily clacked her needles as she rhapsodized about the frogs’ slender toes and their fragile reproductive systems.

***

The next day, the wind teased them, gusts whipping along with a bout of cool air. Not cold enough to harm the frogs, but enough to keep them from bounding out and plopping into their mating puddles. The front brought a chill to the camp, and the team spent the day bundled in their tents. Ella and Geoff shared a sleeping bag, and as she drifted out of a nap, she felt him grow hard against her.

“I have condoms in my first aid kit,” she said, not yet ready to tell him that she was late.

But he didn’t reach for them, and she didn’t insist. Ella felt a tremor in her belly as he moved above her, probably her imagination. She tried to forget it, nuzzling his shoulder through a mild orgasm.

He huffed and buried his beard into her neck.

Ella stared at the creases of the tent and listened for voices beneath the wind, though she knew it was too cold for the frogs to emerge and sing.

***

That evening, the research team assembled at the clearing near their tents and made dinner, all of them mute with anticipation, listening to the evening bustle of the birds and bugs around the nearby stream. The air bore a promising sweetness.

Geoff tapped his heels in the grass, something he did when feeling self-assured. She rubbed her hand across his back.

“When will the frogs begin chirping?” asked Lily.

“It’s always hit or miss with the timing,” said Ken, who had finished his meal, stacked his tins neatly, and wrapped himself in a grey parka.

“Will we hear them tonight?” Lily asked.

Everyone answered at once, a jumble of uncertain voices.

“The frogs should be singing, after a break in the rain,” said Ella, “if the weather conditions are right and they’re ready to mate.”

Geoff winked at her.

She pretended not to notice.

“How many did we get last time?” asked Lily.

Ken spoke up from within his parka. “Not enough.”

“It’s just the way it’s been going,” said Geoff. “Too wet one season, too dry the next.”

Ella caught Lily’s eye. “We’re hoping to show these frogs are a strong indicator of the health of the ecosystem.”

Ken sighed. “The health of the ecosystem.”

Then the trees above them sputtered with rain.

Ken barked a laugh.

The team gulped the last of their meals, packed up their trash in neat little bundles, and hurried back to their tents.

***

Geoff let Ella into the tent first, as he always did, and she quickly unlaced her boots under the flap before crawling in. Geoff entered a moment later and shed his jacket.

The rain spattered the tent with fat drops.

Ella switched on the lantern and began checking her gear.

“Tomorrow, eh?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Geoff. “Tomorrow.” He crouched just inside the tent and sat back with his arms around his knees.

“Let’s hope so.”

She watched him in the corner, rocking himself back and forth in that way he did, one hand wrapped around a forearm, staring and thinking.

Ella put her laptop and field journal in her rucksack and clasped it shut.

“What is it,” she said.

He looked up and said, “Ken.”

“What about him?”

“This is his last year,” said Geoff.

“I guess he prefers to be a podcasting guru or whatever,” said Ella.

“No, I mean he’s bugging out,” said Geoff. “After this, he’s gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s giving up.”

Ella took her rucksack and held it in her lap. “On his career? On life?”

“Ellie, he thinks The Cascade is starting.”

She brushed her hair back from her face. “Ugh, not this shit again.”

“Ken has been studying this for a long time, babe. He’s been talking to a lot of people from a lot of different disciplines. He’s been on NPR.”

“Geoff. The Cascade is just a conjecture. It’s for angsty high-school students and environmental anarchists and shit. It’s Youtube science.”

Geoff looked at her through the lantern light on his glasses and made shapes with his fingers. “You know humans are really bad at perceiving tipping points. Things happen imperceptibly, exponentially, until one subtle change starts a landslide of ecological disasters, and it can’t be stopped.”

“Yes and sometimes, Geoff, things happen one at a time.” She opened her rucksack and feigned looking for something. This type of talk was defeatist, out of character for him. At times Geoff possessed a wiry strength, a certitude, as when holding forth on some topic at a party or helping an undergrad through a difficult concept. Now he looked thin and compact and unfit.

“I’m worried,” Geoff said. “What if we don’t find any frogs again?”

“We’ll find them,” said Ella.

“And if we don’t? Would you leave with me then? Find a homestead or something?”

Ella touched her belly. She had been imagining a cozy apartment near the university, a cradle near the window, frequent friends and family visits.

“Do you know any geologists?” Geoff said. “They’re all...out.”

“Oh, all of them?”

“A lot of them.”

“They see things on a different time scale, Geoff. I see things on the scale of...us, you know?” She laid back and kicked off her pants and hurried into the sleeping bag, curled up on her side. “What, are you saying you want to go live in a survival community or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“I just repainted the fucking apartment,” she said.

“Great, that will definitely stave off an ecological disaster.”

Geoff pulled his jacket around himself and curled up in the corner of the tent.

Ella closed her eyes and hugged herself as frog vocal sacs distended and deflated in her mind. She willed herself to slumber.

***

In the morning, she woke to find the rain beating in waves, a stippled sound rolling over the tent. Geoff was gone, probably out being brave in the weather. Ella tucked her hair up into a knit cap and turned on a light. A few drops of water clung to the inside of the tent seams. She took her rucksack and pushed it down inside her sleeping bag for good measure, hugged it and tried to go back to sleep. Was the hard drive whirring? She reached down and opened the sack and put her hand on the drive. It was still - she must have had a phantom vibration, like when people forget their phones are not in their pockets.

Failing sleep, she got up and put some rain gear on, opened the tent flap, and put her hand over her face as the rain pelted her, even below the overhang. Her boots were soaked and the rain had inundated the ground as well - it was hard to tell water from mud.

She squeezed her feet into her sopping boots and stood up outside with a mind to squish her way over to Ken’s tent and interrogate them about this bugging out business, when a light emerged through the mass of rain, then another. The lights crept forward until Ella could see they belonged to a white form, a park ranger truck that lurched ahead and stopped just short of the camp.

Ella strode through the muck and squinted at the passenger side window, which rolled down as she neared. Sitting at the wheel was a park ranger, a young clean-shaven man with a rosy, professionally concerned face.

“Ma’am, get on in,” he said.

She opened the door and ducked her head inside the cabin.

“You can dry off,” said the ranger.

Ella climbed up into the passenger seat as the ranger handed her a towel.

“My name is Roger, I’m from down at the station. Came up here to see if you folks were alright,” he said.

“We should be,” said Ella. “We have plenty of food, and most of us have done this before, but this rain.”

“It’s unusual,” agreed the ranger. “And this cold.”

“Yeah, our stuff is rated pretty well for it, but we weren’t expecting it at this time of year.”

The truck’s wipers beat a diligent rhythm through the gloss of water on the windshield.

“Listen,” said Roger. “This should be the last of this front but there may be another one on the way after. The roads are already pretty sloppy. I’ll see if I can come on back and check on you again in a few days, but my unofficial recommendation is for you all to head out today.”

He looked at her and nodded.

“That’s what I’d do.”

Ella thought of returning to the apartment in sopping retreat.

“I think we can bear this out,” she said. “If it doesn’t get much crazier.”

“Well,” the ranger said, “that’s life. It’s unpredictable, just how it was made.”

Ella watched the wipers for awhile, hoping the rain would subside. After some time, three figures emerged from the downpour into the beams of the headlights. They drew closer and Ella saw by their coats they were Ken, Geoff, and Lily.

The three of them huddled around Roger’s window while he gave them the same advice in the same steady tone. Then Roger turned to her and wished her well. It took her a moment to realize she should get out of the truck.

After Roger had backed up and driven away, Ken lit an electric torch and shone it on the ground. The rain streaked through it and beat crowns from the water.

“We’re having a hell of a discussion over at my tent,” said Ken. “We’d be pleased to have you.”

Geoff stomped his feet in the mud. “Babe, you should come.”

Ella imagined the day in Ken’s tent, slowly succumbing to geologic pressure from the three of them, agreeing at first just to visit the property, snared into concessions, yes, the grounds are lovely, yes, she could imagine staying there.

Instead, she declined with a mumbling excuse and retreated into her tent. She kicked her shoes into the corner, pulled off her rain gear, and dragged out her coziest sweatshirt and leggings. She put them on and nestled into the sleeping bag, scooting it to the middle of the tent.

She spent the rest of the day huddled there, daring occasionally to pull out her laptop and try to get something working, but the water in the tent made her wary. After burning through a few percent of its battery, she closed the laptop and held it against her belly for warmth, then put it back away. Several times she reached in and felt for the drive to make sure it was still safe and dry.

They had packed some cans of tuna, but the thought of it made her ill, so she ate a few granola bars and a can of cold soup.

In what must have been the afternoon, she pulled out her field journal and drew a sketch of the mountains with angry crags. She wrote, “mating pairs found:” and left it blank in hope for the next day.

Before nightfall, the patter of the rain pulled her back into sleep.

***

Sometime after daybreak, Ella turned over in her sleeping bag and opened her eyes to silence.

Then she heard boots squelching the mud outside, and pictured Geoff buttoned up against the cold, grinning foolishly, enjoying the dank ground.

“Hey,” she called through the nylon, “it stopped?”

“Yeah,” he said.

Ella pulled her cap tighter over her brow. “Thank god.”

“Lily has some camp waffles for breakfast, if you want some,” said Geoff’s silhouette through the wall of the tent. “And some pemmican.”

“Lily,” said Ella. “She came well prepared.”

Geoff stomped his boots in the mud. “Yep,” he said.

Ella huddled in her sweatshirt and parka as she ate Lily’s dry, delicious waffles. No one seemed bothered that she’d slept in. Ken and Geoff had already packed up their breakfasts and gone off to take a look at the nearby stream. Lily kept a few waffles warm and waiting in the pan, a thoughtful gesture, welcome in the unexpected chill. Ella sat hunched in her seat as Lily peered at her, watching her eat.

The day was certainly too cold for frogs to mate in, and another bout of rain was incoming. What sort of career was waiting for someone so young and eager as Lily, with fewer research dollars to spend in more places, and less dependable weather? Ken had seen enough, but he was near the end of his career. It was easy, in a way, to forgive his gritty, pastoral, back-to-the-land retirement plans. But it seemed he had tried to snare Geoff, filling his mind all night with the glories of their pessimistic utopia.

“Hey,” Lily said. “Do you want to take a walk after breakfast?”

Ella stopped chewing. “Sure.”

“I wanted to chat with you. Whenever you’re full.”

The two of them walked up over a short crest and into a shallow, grassy valley where there might be good ponds. They stayed quiet at first, listening for any chirping of frogs. A sharp breeze swept across the grasses, and Lily raised her voice into it.

“So how long have you and Geoff been together?” she said.

“About five years. We met in undergrad. We moved in together almost a year ago.”

Lily skipped head and turned to face her, walking backwards. “You guys should come with us and check out the property with Ken!”

Ella stopped walking.

“It sounds so beautiful, and there’s solar, and a great well, and they’re gonna do prefab earthwork buildings. And they’re gonna have satellite internet, you could still do your studies, it’s only a few hours outside of town.”

“Not interested, thanks,” said Ella.

“Why not?” Lily seemed to pity her a bit. “Geoff is.”

Ella sighed.

“Look, Lily, I know you’re very excited, it’s your first trip, and we’re not finding anything, but Ken is just...he’s wrong. There’s no big Cascade of changes happening.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lily. “He’s not wrong.”

Ella looked across the valley. The wind made beckoning swirls in the grass.

“My father was a marine biologist,” said Lily. “He tried to kill himself a few years ago. Do you know what the suicide rate is among marine biologists right now?”

Ella had heard stories. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

Lily folded her arms. “You do know. You know what’s happening, everyone in field work does. I studied biology so I could do something, so I could help somehow. And now we’re out here, frog researchers, without the frogs!”

“We will find some,” said Ella.

Lily regarded her with disdain.

“You just want everything to be okay so you can get on with your life. Go back to the city if that’s where you want to be. I’m going to check the place out with Ken. And so is Geoff.”

Ella noted that Lily’s voice had broken a bit when she’d said, and so is Geoff. She pulled her parka tighter around her and watched Lily’s slender form trudge back toward camp. Lily stopped at the ridge and looked back at Ella, then turned and descended away.

For some time, Ella stood in the valley, listening for chirps of frogs through the blasts of wind.

***

She ate a somber dinner alone in her tent, crackers and peanut butter, then booted up her laptop and checked her messages. Worried tidings from their research sponsor, cautions about the weather. The disk drive comforted her with its pleasant hum.

At dusk, Ella turned on a lantern and took out her field journal. She turned past the page where she had left, mating pairs found: and on a fresh sheet she doodled a frog eye and started on a tadpole but thought better of it.

Just then, she heard it, faint and distant: a plaintive chittering sound, like a creaking hinge, frogs calling for their mates.

She kicked out of her sleeping bag. Where was the flashlight? Nevermind, the lantern might do. She threw her field journal into an inside pocket of her parka and wrestled her boots onto her feet. She fumbled with the zipper of the tent, rushed outside, and stopped, listening for the direction of the piquing frogs.

But she heard only the quiet evening air, and then bits of conversation that floated over from Ken’s tent, strident phrases she couldn’t quite catch in the three voices.

***

The next morning, Ella’s ears woke before her eyes. There had been an angry demonstration in her dreams, and when she stirred, the torrent against the tent was deafening. Once again, Geoff had spent the night in Ken’s tent. She pulled on her boots and rain gear, began packing her belongings. As she moved about the tent, she could feel water already pooling on the ground below it. Ella placed her laptop and field drive into her rucksack and tied a plastic bag around it. She rolled up her sleeping bag and then created small bundles of her supplies, so she could run them quickly to the car.

Then she heard the sound of an engine turning over outside and blasts of a car horn.

Ella rushed out of the tent. Red tail lights dazzled in the rain.

“Hey!” She ran over to the car and slapped Ken’s window with her palm. He rolled down the window. Geoff sat beside him.

“Listen!” said Ken. The rain was soaking him already. “We’re going to the property!”

She looked past him, at Geoff, who was saying something about the apartment, but Ella couldn’t hear him through the downpour.

“Geoff will meet you back at your apartment,” said Ken. He began to roll up his window. “You should pack up and leave - this area is not going to be safe much longer.”

The car rolled ahead, tires splashing the mud. Lily caught Ella’s eye from the back seat as they passed.

They drove away gingerly, testing the path as they went.

Ella stomped back to her tent and ducked inside, retrieved her field journal and lantern.

She then packed all her supplies into her car and collapsed the tent, loosely folded it into a dripping bundle, and stashed it in the trunk.

She trudged through the muck of the camp. The spots where Ken and Lily’s tents had been were already indistinguishable from the rest of the sopping earth.

Past the camp, the ground sloped down, and she rested against tree limbs to steady herself. Water ran past her boots and dashed off the trunks of trees. She edged carefully down from tree to tree. Soon she came to what had once been a small bank, and there was the creek, now a churning river of dun, pummeled by the rain and carrying along limbs of brush, tearing away chunks of the earth as it went.

Ella knelt down next to the water and dipped her hand in. The current was thick and jerked her arm forward. She caught her balance and tried again, pawing at the soft earth of the bank.

It was difficult to see through the downpour, but she kept at it, focusing on one patch of mud, then another, as the stream rushed on. She wasn’t leaving without at least one frog, even one dead, possibly having laid eggs, she would find it and go back home, sketch it in her journal, enter the data – one mating pair found – and sign the lease.

A horn sounded. Ella looked up toward the camp and saw the rain darting through beams of light. Another beam joined, wandering, and then a voice called out.

“Hey! Hey there! Are you okay? Anyone there?”

“I’m fine!”

A figure appeared at the edge of the ridge, shining its light down at her. “I don’t think so, ma’am, this whole area is gonna flood.”

She stopped digging, her hands full of mud.

***

In the cabin of Roger’s truck, Ella shifted the towel under her and warmed her hands at the vents. Roger was going on about weather systems. Ken’s car had managed to make it through, but barely, and the road had been closed.

Roger turned the truck around and started to navigate slowly away from the camp. The headlights shone through swarms of raindrops. Though it was daytime, the mountains were invisible in the distance. 

“Sorry you folks had to cut your work short,” said Roger. “Maybe you can try again next year,” he said. “God willing, if the weather’s better.”

Ella hugged her rucksack to her, resting her chin upon it. The pack had been the one thing she’d saved from her car. Though the electronics in it were turned off, she felt it again, that phantom vibration in her belly.

Roger guided the truck into and out of a gulley, and Ella’s stomach dropped. “Everything in its proper season,” he said.

Ella took her field journal from her pack. In the dim light of the truck’s cabin, she began a new page of notes, things she and her baby would need, to weather the coming storm together.

About the Author

J. Siegal writes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, music, and code.  He plays barrelhouse piano and produces the musical group Red Spot Rhythm Section.  His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review and Skeptic Magazine, among others.  Currently, he is at work on his first novel.  He lives with his wife and two children near Chicago, IL.

About the Artist

Katie Hughbanks’ photography has been recognized internationally, including two honors from the London Photo Festival. Her poetry chapbook, Blackbird Songs, was published by Prolific Press in 2019, and her collection of short stories, It's Time, will be released in June 2024 (Finishing Ling Press). She teaches English and Creative Writing in Louisville, Kentucky.