The Guidance Counselor Who Can't Guide Herself

Meredith Gaines doesn't exist, though if she did, she'd probably tell you that's the least interesting thing about her situation. What matters is that she represents a decision crossroads thousands of adult children face as their aging parents cling to agricultural land that climate change is making increasingly untenable. The composite character we're calling Meredith is 45, lives in Hood River, Oregon, and spends her workdays helping teenagers navigate their futures while her evenings are consumed by an impossible question: should she move her 73-year-old father off the apple orchard that's been in his family since 1952?

The drought situation in eastern Oregon has gone from "bad year" to "existential" over the past five years¹. Her father's orchard sits in a junior water rights zone, which means when allocation limits are reached, he gets nothing². Last season, that meant watching $180,000 worth of Honeycrisp trees stressed beyond recovery.

We met at a coffee shop in Hood River on a January morning. She ordered a pour-over and immediately apologized for being scattered. "I'm supposed to help seventeen-year-olds figure out their lives," she said, "and I can't figure out my own father's."

Your dad still lives on the orchard full-time?

Meredith: Yeah. Alone. My mom died six years ago. Breast cancer, nothing climate-related, just regular terrible luck. He's got the house, about forty acres of apples, mostly Honeycrisp and Gala, and this conviction that next year will be better. Which is what he said last year. And the year before.

The thing is, he's not wrong to hope. One good water year and the trees could partially recover. But "partially" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Perennial crops aren't like wheat—you can't just replant next season and bounce back³. Some of his trees are twelve years old. They're either going to make it or they're not, and every dry season makes it less likely.

When did you start thinking about moving him?

Meredith: When I realized I was spending more time worrying about his well-being than he was.

He's out there checking irrigation lines that aren't delivering water, talking about drilling a deeper well that would cost $75,000 he doesn't have, researching drought-resistant rootstock like he's going to replant the entire orchard at 73. My brother thinks I'm catastrophizing. He lives in Denver and visits maybe twice a year, so his version of Dad is still the guy who hosted harvest parties and made terrible jokes about fruit puns. He doesn't see the weight loss. Doesn't see the way Dad's hands shake when he talks about the trees. Definitely doesn't see the medical bills piling up because Dad keeps skipping his blood pressure medication to save money.

What would moving him look like?

Meredith: She laughed, but not like anything was funny. That's the question that keeps me up at night, right? Because there's no version of this where he's happy.

I've looked at assisted living places in Hood River. There's one with a garden plot program, which feels like a cruel joke. "Hey Dad, instead of forty acres of apples, you can grow tomatoes in a 4x8 raised bed!" The realistic option is he moves into my house. I've got a spare bedroom, my kids are in college, my husband is supportive in that way where you can tell someone's being supportive but not thrilled. "Of course your father can live with us" said in a tone that means "I'm going to be very patient about this but also we're going to have some conversations."

But here's the thing. Dad doesn't want to leave. And I mean really doesn't want to. The orchard is him. His father planted those original trees. He planted the Honeycrisp section when I was in high school. There's a Gala tree my mom planted the year before she died that he talks to. Like, actually speaks to it. "How're you doing today, Linda?"

So you're weighing his autonomy against his safety.

Meredith: I'm weighing his autonomy against his safety against his identity against my guilt against my brother's judgment against my marriage against the possibility that I'm wrong and next year the drought breaks and I'll have uprooted him for nothing.

You want to know the worst part? In my job, I tell kids all the time that the hardest decisions are the ones where there's no right answer, just different costs. And I believed that was profound advice until I had to live it.

What does your dad say when you bring this up?

Meredith: We don't. Not directly.

We talk around it. He'll mention that he's thinking about selling some equipment, and I'll say "that's probably smart," and we both know we're negotiating something bigger. Last month he said, "If I sell the orchard, what was the point of all of it?"

And I didn't have an answer. Because honestly, I don't know. The orchard isn't profitable anymore. It might never be again. The water rights situation isn't going to improve—if anything, it's getting worse as upstream users with senior rights take more⁴. Climate projections for eastern Oregon are pretty clear about increased drought frequency⁵. So from a purely rational standpoint, he should sell now while the land still has value, before it becomes obvious to everyone that junior water rights in that basin are worthless.

“

But rationality isn't the framework he's using. He's using: "This is what my father built. This is what I built. This is what I am."

Have you talked to his doctor?

Meredith: His doctor says he's physically capable of living independently, which is technically true but also deeply unhelpful. He can drive, he can cook, he's not falling down or forgetting to turn off the stove. But "capable of living independently" and "should be living alone on a failing farm three hours from family" are different questions.

I asked the doctor, off the record, what he'd do if it was his father. He said, "I'd probably let him stay until something forced the decision." Which felt honest but also like giving up.

What would force the decision?

Meredith: A health crisis. A bad fall. Complete financial collapse. The bank foreclosing.

Any of which could happen tomorrow or never or five years from now. So I'm supposed to just wait? Monitor from a distance and hope nothing terrible happens while also knowing that the longer this goes on, the worse his financial situation gets, which means fewer options when something does happen?

My husband thinks I should just tell Dad he's moving in with us, that I'm the adult now and sometimes you have to make hard decisions for your parents' own good. But I spent my entire career telling teenagers they need to own their choices, that agency matters, that you can't live someone else's life for them. How do I turn around and take that away from my father?

What about selling the orchard but keeping the house?

Meredith: To who?

That's the thing nobody wants to talk about. The market for agricultural land with junior water rights in a drought zone is not great. There are senior rights holders who might want to expand, but they know they can wait us out. Every year the drought continues, the price drops.

And even if we found a buyer, what's Dad supposed to do? Live in the house and watch someone else farm his land? Watch them maybe succeed where he failed because they have better water access? That seems worse than leaving entirely.

Do you think you're going to move him?

Meredith: I think eventually something will happen that makes the decision for me, and I'll spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have acted sooner. That's the honest answer.

The guidance counselor answer is that I'm gathering information, weighing options, trying to make a decision that honors everyone's needs. But that's bullshit. There's no decision that honors everyone's needs. Someone's going to lose something important no matter what.

I keep thinking about this thing I tell my students: "You can't optimize for everything. Sometimes you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice." And they nod like that's wisdom, but it's only wisdom when it's someone else's sacrifice.

What do you wish you knew that would make this easier?

Meredith: Whether the drought is going to break. Whether there's going to be another bad wildfire season that makes the air quality dangerous for him. Whether the orchard has any recovery potential or if we're just watching it die slowly.

Whether forcing him to leave would break something in him that wouldn't heal. Whether letting him stay makes me complicit in whatever happens next.

But mostly I wish someone could tell me that whatever I decide, it was the right choice. And I know that's not how this works. I tell my students that all the time—you make the best decision you can with the information you have, and then you live with it.

But living with it is the part they don't understand yet.

She stopped talking and watched rain streak down the coffee shop window. Hood River gets forty inches of rain a year. Her father's orchard gets nine.

“

Maybe that's the real problem. I'm trying to make a rational decision about something that isn't rational. The orchard isn't an asset on a balance sheet. It's his life. And I don't know how to do the math on that.