Chapter 2: The Haze Parts
Winter break is an excellent time to see family such as your younger brother and your parents. It is also an excellent opportunity for an academic to explore Brazil for research. Dr. Kate intends to do both. She progressively drives south from St. Paul to do so.
The sun feels good through the windshield. At the wheel, Katie has even exposed her forearms since Minnesota. The temperature must be at least fifty Fahrenheit—ten Celsius—here. The semi-content square cannot but help to convert the temp as she crosses territory. Dropping scientific facts is constantly part of her narrative. Considering science is as well. She hopes that this global warming thing, new to the 1990s, doesn't get out-of-hand. The weather today is lovely.
Soon, Katie will fetch Greg from Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tennessee has suited her younger sibling well since the Valley. At eighteen, good old Greg visited his military recruiter in Times Square. And, from that visit, the army sent him to the Volunteer State. At Fort Campbell, the able-bodied former boy scout excelled, and he got an eagle on his arm. The Screaming Eagles had him for a few years; then, Sgt. Butler graduated to some university study. As a Butler, he was both an adventurer and a scholar. His current position kind of lets him be both. Greg Butler is a park ranger in the Smokies. He assures that the healthy bear population doesn't take picnic baskets; he saves visitors from their boo-boos. Those kinds of things.
Katie departs iconic U.S. 441 for the road to Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee and the Great Smokies. Along the side trail, her eyes admire the scenic environment. Around her is a spruce-fir forest distinguished by the Fraser fir, found nowhere else than here. On the evergreen branches, goldfinches and blue jays alight and launch. Against the bright sky, a red-tailed hawk soars. Here and there, melting winter snow and ice sparkles in the sun, and it reminds Dr. Butler that this place is "hemiboreal", meaning that it bides between temperate and subarctic climates. The elevation of Clingmans Dome assures this condition.
The car climbs the rimed road over the salted blacktop. Normally, this oppy, acute Appalachian incline is closed during winter. But, an intrepid Butler flouts rules when she will, for a well-behaved woman seldom makes headway. Besides, the National Park Service is the one who closes the road, and park ranger Greg is the one who complementarily opened the way for her efforts.
Katie comes to the Clingmans Dome observation tower. Like a puy, gray concrete projects high into the azure heavens. At the top, the observation deck forms a promontory over the verdant landscape surrounding it. From on high, a person can behold Mother Earth for miles and miles. Katie scans the aerie for her Screaming Eagle brother. Surely, that is where the scientist-solider would place himself for the grandest view of Creation.
As she gazes, Katie's eyes begin to cloud. And, her mind meanders elsewhere—like the Amazon. Her fancy flits and flies from the tower precipice, and it visits the Valley of the Dinosaurs. Heaving a heavy sigh into the Smokies, she imagines that the Sky-People will raid from the heights at any moment. The breeze blows past her ears, and she remembers Gorak's tribe banishing Bork, a coward, to the Cave of the Winds, a cliffside prison. Prof. Butler's sweater begins to feel like primeval pelts upon her skin, and she envisions an Ardoc, a Pteranodon, about to ominously crest on the horizon. Hand moist and sweaty, enthralled Katie raises and aims her atlatl in excited anticipation.
Then, departing reverie, Kate realizes that she just juts her cellphone's antenna into the ether. She bats big brown peepers several times, and she is glad to eye the modern era between blinks. She extends the mobile's receiver, glad to have such cutting-edge technology. Perhaps, someday soon, some people will have flip phones like on Star Trek. Heck, Katie proudly already has that new-fangled innovation e-mail, as an eminent university type should. So, who knows how the '90s will lead to year 2000 and beyond?
Recently, Greg was a consultant on that CGI-heavy dino movie from Spielberg. Computers are becoming more and more than "simply" calculators and word processors every day. On those new webpages (on that new internet), graphics and pictures were becoming more and more important than elementary numbers and letters. Perhaps, pictures will matter more to people than words one day. Who knows where progress is going?
With that forward-looking spirit, Katie calls Greg on her cellphone. The scientist would have her brother and she pursue knowledge in Brazil—after checking-on their folks in Florida. The tone chirps in her ear.
Elsewhere, far away, tropical birds chirp too into Katie's hearing. The colorful avians occupy the bushes into which she has fled. Ardoc glides overhead gleaning for potential grub. The "girl" doesn't want to be that, and she doubts that her atlatl would defend her well. Ever a good scientist, she recognizes how the prehistoric innovation accelerates a dart into prey excellently, but a Pteranodon has naturally thick skin, really tough hide. Thus, Katie must also have thick skin, of a sort. Patiently, she must humbly hide in the Great Swamp's hedges. In her dark animal hides, she must hide from a hungry saurian. Unbeknown to her, another Katie must also hide for a while yet, far to the north.
But, of course, a lot of cool chicks have the name "Katie".
