Page 1 of Eco-Activist's Mountain Men
CHAPTER 1
Luna
Goddammit, this is steep.I'm scrambling up a heavily wooded mountainside, deep in the wilderness and miles from anything or anyone, aiming for the waypoint on my Garmin. The guy in the shop barely showed me how to use it, but at least he helped me program in the coordinates.
I'm tired and hungry, but most of all, I'm desperately thirsty. All I want is to collapse on the ground and rest. But that's not an option.
It can't be far now. Just one more rise, I think. But then I've thought that for the last three rises… or is it four now? My legs are shot after five hours of hiking from the nearest town—a godforsaken, one-horse mining outpost I only reached by hitching a ride on a logging truck.
I couldn't wait to leave that place. Looking back, it was a five-star resort compared to where I am now.
Why do I always get myself into these messes? According to my parents, I've always been contrary. If everyone else is too hot, I'm too cold. If they all want pizza, I insist on pasta. Perhaps they're right. Maybe my contrariness is what made me drop out of college, but honestly, who the hell cares about Business Administration, for fuck's sake?
That's an easy one… Daddy cares.
That's why he's made so much money, and—as he constantly reminds us—that's why we live in a beautiful home in the Hamptons and can afford ponies, yachts, and ski trips to Val d'Isère. So yeah, he's smart and he's rich… and he doesn’t let any of us forget it.
In the end, I'd had enough. I dropped out of college, dyed my blonde hair bright pink, and joined Kill Climate Change—an activist group that actually does something meaningful, rather than fucking everything up, like my daddy and his business cronies.
You should've seen my mom's face the first time she clocked my pink hair—she nearly had a heart attack. That was two years ago, when I was twenty-two and still finding my feet in the environmentalist movement.
She's over it now, bless her. I do love her—Daddy too. They mean well. They're just stuck in their ways. Can't see the truth anymore, no matter how hard I try to explain.
This has to be the place.
I've finally reached the loggers' camp. Took fucking hours and nearly killed me in the process, but I gotta say… now that I'm here, it's absolutely stunning.
The Mount Hood National Forest is one of Oregon's hidden gems. Surprisingly close to Portland, it stretches for over a million acres to the east, filled with rivers, waterfalls, lakes, glacial creeks, meadows, valleys, a wide variety of wildlife… and of course, millions of trees.
I'm here for the trees.
When I learned they were cutting them down—right in the middle of a goddamned national forest that's supposedly protected by the U.S. Forest Service—I was fucking incensed. Government contracts sold to the highest bidder, giving logging companies the right to rip hundreds of acres of old-growth woodland out of the heart of one of our greatest resources. Unbelievable.
One of those companies is McKenzie Forestry Services.
According to Kill Climate Change's leader, Tim Collier, they've got a godawful track record—clear-cutting everything in sight and leaving devastation behind. It's like they either don't know trees are the lungs of the planet, or they just don't give a shit. They're not stupid, so yeah, it's the latter.
That's why we've decided to act.
My job—alongside my fellow activist, Randy Jessup—is to arrive ahead of the main group, climb the elevated walkways the loggers use to move through the canopy, and then, just as Tim arrives by helicopter with the media in tow, unfurl the banners.
Boom. Instant headlines.
That was the plan, anyway.
What actually happened is that Randy never showed up at the SleepEZ Inn in Portland that Kill Climate Change had pre-booked for us.
Which, of course, left me on my own, and that's a problem.
I tossed and turned all night in that crummy hotel bed, the old AC unit rattling like it was dying, and a blinking red LED from the sprinkler system taunting me from the ceiling. I barely slept.
In the end, I decided: fuck it. I'd go ahead anyway. We're not supposed to act alone, but the media team and helicopter were already booked at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. Besides, we'd been planning this for months. There was too much ridingon it—and honestly, how hard could it be to hang a banner from a rope walkway?
When Tim gave me the assignment, he'd praised my past work and said I'd earned this starring role in what would be the biggest event our group had ever attempted. If it went well, he said, my face would be all over social media and TV, and the coverage would help drive attention to the fight for tree conservation.
All my teammate and I had to do was get two banners in place today, ready to unfurl at exactly the right moment tomorrow, just as Tim and the film crew passed overhead in the rented chopper. They’d capture it all live and send it to every news outlet that mattered.
Simple, right?
