DAYS PASS, wet and icy, each more miserable than the last. The sitters that were to relieve Watchman and Maidenhair never show. The standoff enters week two, and the ring of workers at the foot of Mimas turns angry.

“You’re out in the middle of nowhere. Four miles from the nearest person. Things could happen. Nobody would know.”

Maidenhair beams down on them, beatific. “You guys are too decent. You can’t even make a credible threat!”

“You’re killing our livelihood.”

“Your bosses are doing that.”

“Bullshit!”

“One-third of forest jobs lost to machines in the last fifteen years. More trees cut, fewer people working.”

Stumped, the loggers wander into other tactics. “For Christ’s sake. It’s a crop. It grows back! Have you seen the forests south of here?”

“It’s a onetime jackpot,” Watchman shouts down. “A thousand years before the systems are back in place.”

“What’s the matter with you two? Why do you hate people?”

“What are you talking about? We’re doing this for people!”

“These trees are going to die and fall over. They should be harvested while they’re ripe, not wasted.”

“Great. Let’s grind up your grandfather for dinner, while he still has some meat on him.”

“You’re insane. Why are we even talking to you?”

“We have to learn to love this place. We need to become natives.”

One of the loggers revs up his chain saw and whacks the branches of one of Mimas’s largest basal sprouts. He steps back and looks up, brandishing a limb like a sailboat mast. “We feed people. What do you do?”

They shout at Maidenhair, tag team. “We know these forests. We respect these trees. These trees have killed our friends.”

Maidenhair holds still. The idea of a tree killing a person is too much for her to think about.

The men below press their advantage. “You can’t stop growth! People need wood.”

Watchman has seen the numbers. Hundreds of board feet of timber, half a ton of paper and cardboard per person per year. “We need to get smarter about what we need.”

“I need to feed my kids. How about you?”

Watchman sets to shout some things he knows he’ll regret. Maidenhair’s hand on his arm stops him. She’s gazing downward, trying to hear these men, attacked for doing what they’ve been asked to do. For doing something dangerous and vital that they’ve learned to do so well.

“We’re not saying don’t cut anything.” She dangles her arm, reaching out to the men from two hundred feet away. “We’re saying, cut like it’s a gift, not like you’ve earned it. Nobody likes to take more gift than they need. And this tree? This tree would be a gift so big, it would be like Jesus coming down and . . .”

She trickles off on a thought that Watchman has at the same moment. Been there. Felled that, too.