“By the scars of the detonation zone, it’s been down only a year or two.” Michael hadn’t visited this particular grove in a while.
“Detonation zone?” Claudia was weary, he could see, but hadn’t offered a single word of complaint or shown any sign of slowing. What word was better than magnificent?
“See?” He swung his arm in a vertical arc to imitate the line of the fall. Perhaps two hundred and fifty feet long and twenty feet in diameter, the redwood had ripped a slice out of the forest canopy where the sun now shone through. “It dragged adjacent trees down with it. Stripped the branches off those there and there, and probably buried another cluster of trees beneath when it finally crashed in. Look at the ground to either side of the trunk.”
The trees all around lay on the ground pointin
