From Chapter 6: The Oak Tree

“Do you know the legend of the seven sleepers?” I asked Jeff.

We’d collapsed under the needled shade of a pine tree after witnessing enough hewn marble to fill a dozen museums.

“Nope,” said Jeff, wiping beads of sweat off his forehead. What’s it about?”

“Well, it involves time travel. I overheard a tour guide telling the story. Apparently the Ephesians were way ahead of Doctor Who.”

According to local lore, in 250 A.D., a group of seven young Christians fled to a cave in the hills above Ephesus to escape religious persecution. After their first cave slumber party, the seven sleepers sent one back down to the city on a reconnaissance mission for bread. Strangely, that person found that the anti-Christian city had been adorned with crosses overnight. The sleeper questioned a local shopkeeper, only to discover that it was no longer 250 A.D., but the early fifth century and the Roman Empire had been converted to Christianity. The seven sleepers had slept, not for one night, but for 180 years. The plot twist was so unbelievable that all seven sleepers promptly keeled over in shock.

“God, that would be so surreal,” I said. “For us, it would be like going to bed before the Civil War and then waking up to smartphones, frozen pizzas, and silicone boobs. Time is such a weird thing.”

“I don’t believe in it,” Jeff declared, as if time were an Internet conspiracy theory.  “Or, at least not in an arrow-straight line like we assume. I think it’s fluid and cross-dimensional. We just haven’t figured out how to model it yet.”

“That ‘s why you’re so obsessed with coincidence.”

“Yeah, coincidences are like tiny peepholes into time and causality and the connections between things. Almost everyone experiences coincidence—odd little synchronicities. Sometimes there are big synchronicities, too. A bizarre confluence of factors that are tough to logically explain.”

“Right,” I said. “But if you hypothesize that time isn’t necessarily unidirectional and that causality might be able to reach back and work in reverse . . .”

He finished my thought, “. . . then you’ve got a whole new set of potential explanations for how and why objects intersect in time and space.”

“Like the oak tree.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “Like the oak.”

. . .

The oak tree appeared the very next morning after our first Capitol date. It was the first Saturday of April. Bright redbud trees had overthrown the watery gray palette of winter. The pungent, oniony smell of daffodil bulbs wafted down the street, a reminder that this was the only time of year when one could walk barefoot through a patch of grass without fearing a skirmish with fire ants or spiked sandburs. Windows were carelessly opened. Doors were left ajar. The entire population of Austin was flocking outdoors to appreciate the newly temperate conditions.

Giddy from the night before, I too was compelled to dig up my sandals from the back of the closet. I abandoned my studio and drove to the Greenbelt—the lush eight-mile stretch of limestone forest on the far western edge of Austin. In the two years since I’d moved to the city, I had only been to the Greenbelt once. On my first visit the creek was dry, but this time it was swollen with spring rain. I waded in up to my calves and shrieked as my toes went numb and my arms prickled with gooseflesh.

I left the water and stumbled down the trail like a drunkard heading nowhere in particular. I was delirious from meeting Jeff and the surging creek and the bright shocks of green rupturing out of every branch and crevice.

I saw the tree a mile or two in. It stopped me dead in my tracks: a mammoth oak in a clearing a little ways off the path. The trunk was thick as a caravel mast—and at least a century old. Its branches snaked into the sky, waving me closer. The tree was pulling me into its orbit. I unbuckled my sandals, approached the gnarled roots and made a full rotation around the base, feeling for footholds in the bark. I would climb the tree—it felt more like a command than a choice.

I wasn’t a teenager anymore, but after a few calculated lunges and a scraped knee I was up, cradled in a cathedral of branches. Breathing. Bark against skin. Moist dirt between my toes, under my fingernails. No one around. A holy moment.

I drove home and thought nothing of it. Jeff came over the next morning. Our second meeting. I didn’t tell him which of the sixteen porches in the apartment building was mine, but he strode up to my open door and walked right in like he’d lived there all his life. The ramshackle pile of seashells on the porch gave it away, he said.

He was wearing an olive-green 1940s Air Force jumpsuit that he’d pulled out of a dumpster behind a resale shop on the Mexican border (like most of his stories, it sounded like a Texas tall tale, but was probably in the general vicinity of the truth). The jumpsuit was an outrageous outfit for a science professor—or really anyone not in the Air Force—but he was enormously proud of it. I couldn’t deny that it suited him as we stretched out on my floor rug and studied each other, testing whether the magic from two nights ago was still around without the aid of tequila. He pulled out his phone.

“You wanna go for a drive? Yesterday I found this place I want you to see,” he said. “I think you would really dig it.”

 “Sure,” I smiled. “Where is it?”

“It’s this place called the Greenbelt. You ever been?”

I hesitated. “Actually, I was there yesterday.”

“Really? Well, I’d only been once before and I hardly remember because it was a skinny-dipping party at 3 a.m. after too many beers. Anyway, this time my friend and I hiked a long way in and we found this giant oak tree way down in the woods. You have to see it. It’s insane. Like, it reached out and grabbed me.” He stretched his arms out across my rug to mimic the branches.

I sat up and studied him. Was this some kind of weird stalker prank? Maybe online dating had been a mistake.

“Well, that’s pretty strange,” I said. “Because I found a tree, too. And I climbed it.”

“Huh, weird,” said Jeff. “I climbed my tree, too. You wanna see a picture?” He punched around on his phone and then held it up to my face. I froze. There was the exact same oak tree with all its tangled limbs. My oak tree. I stared at Jeff, struck mute. Was this a trick? Had he followed me? Where was the camera crew hiding?

“You’re not going to believe this, but that’s the exact same tree I climbed yesterday,” I whispered. “What are the chances of that?”

Ending up at the same park on a Saturday afternoon was somewhat reasonable—the Greenbelt was popular within Austin’s 250 parks. Hiking the same section of the eight-mile route was also possible. But the sequence started to become less plausible with the oak tree itself. What were the chances that both Jeff and I would gravitate off the same trail, on the same afternoon, toward the same tree—one of hundreds of old oak trees in the Greenbelt? And then, even if we were drawn to the same tree, what were the chances that we would both feel compelled to climb it within hours of each other? I hadn’t climbed a tree in years. Neither had he.

It was also surprising that the tree impacted him so deeply that it was the first thing he mentioned when he walked into my house the next morning. I was a botany geek, but I had never walked into someone’s house and said, “Oh my god, you’re never going to believe this new cypress I found down by the river.”

Jeff and I stared at each other. The photo of the tree lay between us on the rug. “Does this mean something?” I asked.

“I don’t  know,” he said cautiously. “Meaning sort of implies that someone or something is out there consciously orchestrating events and I don’t think that’s how causality works.” He ran his finger along my arm, playing dot-to-dot with my freckles. “On the other hand, something unusual is definitely going on. When these inexplicable synchronicities pop up, I think it’s a reminder to pay very close attention to whatever is going on.”

“Look, when we met two nights ago, it felt like . . . ,” I trailed off, hesitant to be so forthright with someone I’d just met. Every dating columnist ever employed by Cosmo, Glamour, and Marie Claire would unanimously vote against the words I wanted to say.

“Like what?” he prodded. “Just say it.”

“It felt like something was stirred up,” I said. “Something big.”

“Well, I can definitely confirm that,” he winked.

“Oh please. Spare me the throbbing member jokes. The feeling wasn’t even particularly romantic. When we met, I dunno, it felt like a cloud of potentialities was suddenly unleashed. Like, our meeting activated something. Woowoo, I know, but I think there’s something between us. Something magic.”

Instead of looking alarmed, he smiled. “I think you might be right. And, hell, I like a woman who isn’t afraid to start a second date with a declaration of cosmic connection.”