The Captain led her group up the beach towards the pass. It was strange that such a beautiful beach would be untouched and pristine. She had a hunch, though, that just ahead they would find civilization. Cynthia, Justin’s mother, walked alongside her, while the boys hung back. Cynthia wouldn’t stop talking.
“What if we don’t find anything? What’ll we do out here, all alone? What if we get hurt? I mean, really, do you have any idea where we are?”.
“In fact, I do know where we are.” The Captain was lying. “Just before the storm I had charted a course towards Puerto Rico. I had Jesse check the instruments just before we crashed. We weren’t far away, that I know. In fact, this may well be Puerto Rico right here”
They arrived at the pass and found, indeed, that it was a man-made road leading down the mountainside to the beach. Cynthia relaxed, but the Captain tensed a little, without showing it. Something was very odd about this road, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
The road was unpaved and covered with a reddish green gravel. What struck the Captain odd was the fact that there were three grooves worn into the road instead of the expected two. There were odd scratch marks on the cliff wall, as well. They looked like writing, but the Captain was unfamiliar with this alphabet. The failed to notice.
The road was remarkably steep, but passable. Cynthia wondered out loud what type of vehicle would be able to use it. The group walked a bit, then rested, then started up again. After about an hour, they came to a turn in the road where it suddenly leveled out. They were just about to continue along the road, into the forest, when Justin cried out: “The flare...I see the flare!” Over the tree canopy was the unmistakeable flare of the other group. Judging by its trajectory, they were not too far apart. The road appeared to go in the right direction, so they chose to stay on it. Maybe there was a town up ahead. Jake and Justin started walking ahead of the women. Cynthia looked relieved.
The gravel road gave way to a dirt one, always with the same three grooves in it. Forest around the road was thick with tropical like vegetation, although the temperature was really quite moderate. There were occasional hoots and hisses from deeper within the forest. Several extraordinarily large and colorful butterflies hovered lazily overhead. The boys were sprinting ahead with the Captain walked determinedly alongside a cheerful Cynthia.
They came to a circular clearing, at least a kilometer in diameter. In the center was the largest tree that Cynthia had every seen. It seemed to endlessly reach towards the sky as a long, thin pillar of wood and bark. She turned to the Captain and asked if she knew what type of tree it was. “Some sort of pine, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”
As the approached the tree, with Justin racing Jake around the trunk, the Captain looked at the shadow extending across the grass (which oddly enough, seemed cut like a lawn, not natural). She paced along the shadow and counted almost 240 strides from the base of the shadow to its tip. She went over to Cynthia, stood straight up, sort of parallel to the tree, and asked her to count the strides of her shadow. Cynthia counted 3 strides.
“Now I know about how tall this tree is, and let me tell you, it breaks all known records.”
“How did you figure that out?” asked Cynthia.
“Well, I’m 5 feet 6 inches tall and when you told me how many strides long my shadow was, I did a relatively easy calculation in my head. It’s all estimation, of course, but based on solid math principles. Now I want to figure out about how old this tree is.” She called Justin and Jake over to them. “There’s this old trick I learned in school to estimate how old a tree is by finding its circumference and thinking of its growth rings. Cynthia and I are about the same height, Jake, you seem to be about 6 feet tall, right?” He nodded. “Justin, I’m guessing your a little over 5 feet. So here’s what we’re going to do. Each of us is going to hug this tree and touch the finger tips of of our neighbors.” Amazingly, the four them just managed to touch their fingertips, meaning they formed a perfect ring around the trunk. The Captain sat pensive for a moment, then scratched some numbers in the dirt. After a little while, she stood up and announced that she knew that this tree was likely over 2000 years old.
“2000 years olds! That’s impossible. A tree can’t live that long, Aunt Patty.”
“Actually, you’re right, Jake,” interrupted Justin. “It’s really only about 1000 years old.”
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