by kim hoff
Imagine yourself in a forest, on a mountain not much higher than a hill.
Ascend: v. 1. to rise or climb, as in, to ascend a mountain, on foot, by bike, by car, or another form of transportation. 2. It may be difficult, or easy. Often takes the breath away. Can be heart- stopping. 3. You may or may not make it to the summit.
Breath: n. 1. The intake of oxygen into the lungs. 2. A single sucking-in of air. 3. Necessary for human life. 4. Easy to lose, have it knocked out of, get caught, stop. 5. It is the thing we give when a person ascending the mountain has fallen.
Cardiac: adj. 1. Having to do with the heart, where the physical and emotional become one. 2. A type of arrest. 3. May indicate the need for restarting. This is not always possible, no matter how hard you try.
Deadfall: (mem-uh-ree) n. 1. A dead tree that at last comes down because its root system has decomposed. 2. Deadfall is what happens after the death itself. When a dead tree falls, it eventually becomes part of its own surroundings. It is a slow-release capsule of nutrients for the forest surrounding it, the forest it was a part of. 3. After a person dies, the life they lived becomes a slow-release capsule of memories that sustain those they left behind. 4. Deadfall is memory, a living-on in a different way.
Echo: n, n, n. 1. The reverberation of sound in an empty space. 2. “You can do it. Please, you can do it.” A wife’s words bouncing off the mountain wall, repeating in my head, wailing through me day after day because, you know, I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
Frost crack: n. 1. A tree’s bark contracts quickly when there is a rapid temperature drop, often resulting in this type of crack that runs up the trunk of the tree. 2. A chest is compressed quickly when there is a loss of pulse, often resulting in a crack of the rib cage. 3. I will never forget the feeling of ribs giving way beneath the pressure of my compressing hands, like leaning onto the top of an empty cardboard box that suddenly gives way, dropping me suddenly, closer to the ground.
Guilt: (mī fawlt) n. 1. An inability to let go. 2. A blaming of oneself. 3. I tried, but I couldn’t save him. 4. Guilt can, and usually will, last for years and creep up when least expected. Like when I drive by a tourist welcome center and, in a highway blur, I see an EMT kneeling over a fallen man. I snap my gaze away from the scene and remind myself to breathe. Shaking my head of its demons, I turn back to the white lines slipping steadily beneath my tires.
Hollow: (nuhm) -- adj. 1. Empty. -- n. 1. A hole or cavity in an object. 2. A feeling of loss. 3. A valley; a mountain’s opposite. 4. After that day, there was an empty place in a family, a hole where a husband and father once stood. -- v. 1. To make empty; to gouge out. 2. For a long time, I found only tears or nothingness in the space that day had gouged out of me.
Instant: n. 1. A brief moment of time in which your life changes. From that moment on, there will be a “life before” and a “life after”. 2. The time it takes to exhale a final breath. 3. [See also: forever.]
Juniper, common (deth): n. 1. An evergreen shrub commonly found in pastures, or rocky areas with poor soil. Juniper requires full sun and dies once it’s shaded out by encroaching plants and trees. When a juniper skeleton of needle-less twigs and branches is found in a forest, it is evidence that the dead shrub once thrived in a former open pasture that has long since been abandoned. 2. Juniper grows in a pasture surrounded by trees, not far from where I couldn’t save a life.
Know: v. 1. To be acquainted with. 2. To possess information. 3. To be certain. 4. I had never met this man, but his wife entrusted me with his life. 5. Information falters, if not held up by experience. 6. I will never know if I did it right. All I know for sure is that he died.
Last: n. 1. The final item in a series, as in the last breath taken. 2. Or the final kiss given - as a wife covered her husband’s mouth with her own for the very last time, attempting to give her own breath in between the series of chest compressions provided by my own shaking hands.
Mountain: n. 1. A raised part of the earth’s surface, forming a peak or summit that is at least 2,000 feet in elevation, higher than a hill. 2. A thing to be climbed. 3. The amount of guilt to be overcome.
Nurse Log: (kuhm-pash-uhn) n. 1. A downed tree that, even though it has fallen, supports other trees by giving them a place to seed, to germinate, and to grow. Its own decomposition provides nourishment to other trees, helping them to live. 2. I found out later that afternoon that he had died. His wife, even though she was grieving, was the one who called. She left a message to let me know. The cloud of her voice drifted through the phone line, so soft. “I wanted to let you know he didn’t make it.” Then the cloud opened, and rain fell from her words, “Thank you so much for trying. I’m glad you were there.”
Old growth: (hōhp) n: 1. Trees that survive well past the average lifespan of their species; they survive despite rocks, steepness, clear-cutting, or logging that sliced so many other trees from their place. 2. A community of these woody survivors, made up of red oaks and white pines, stood over us that mid-October morning and witnessed a slipping-away. 3. Afterward, I looked up and saw the gnarled, strong old trees above me, while his wife stared dry-eyed into emptiness. The trees did not mock me with their survival but offered this splinter of hope that some lives prevail, even against the odds.
Photosynthesis: (ree-zuhn) n: 1. The process by which a plant converts sunlight into carbohydrates and creates the energy it needs to live. When the days grow shorter and the temperatures cooler, photosynthesis stops. Any remaining chlorophyll breaks down, and the leaves’ green color fades away, igniting the colors of autumn. 2. Every year, his wife told me, she and her husband hiked this mountain on the second Monday of October, the best time for fall foliage in New England. This is why they were there at that time, on that day. It’s why I was there to find them. 3. He dropped on the mountain road next to the stone wall where visitors look out over a mosaic of red, gold and orange sweeping like wildfire through the forest below. Aside from his wife’s face, and possibly mine, this blaze of autumn is the last thing he saw.
Question: -- n. The uncertainty that pokes and pecks while sleep eludes. -- v. To ask: “Could I have done something differently?” “Could someone else have saved him?”
Resuscitation: n. 1. The goal. 2. The failure. 3. Resuscitation caws out its accusation as it drafts in behind the wings of doubt.
Succession: (hee-ling) n. 1. The gradual progression of changes in a plant community after a disturbance. 2. The life cycle of a forest: A stand of trees is clear-cut or toppled, and bare ground is left in its place. But life awaits its moment to return. The bare ground holds the seeds that transform it into meadow. Untended, the meadow eventually welcomes sun-loving trees, and conceives a forest. Over time, shade-tolerant, and then shade-loving trees populate the growing, thickening woods. 3. A forest clear-cut and laid bare eventually becomes vibrant again. 4. Ten years ago, I could not save a dying man. I was clear-cut. Succession is a gradual thing.
Truth: (hahrd to ad-mit) n: 1. I forgot to comfort him as he lay there dying. I felt for a pulse. I heard the air stutter from his throat. I stacked my right hand on top of my left and interlaced my fingers. I found the right spot on his chest. But I didn’t tell him who I was. I didn’t say, “hold on”. I looked up when I couldn’t bear to look at his face. I willed the ambulance to arrive. But I forgot to even ask his name until I heard his wife say it. Tom. 2. When I saw him on the ground and heard his wife yell to me, I actually thought, “Shit. I have to help them.” 3. I shouted, “call 9-1-1!” to the friend hiking with me. I ran to Tom, but I resented that I was the one who found him. That I was the only one there who had any training. That I was being asked to keep him from leaving the world he loved. The world I loved. 4. I was scared. Scared that I wouldn’t really know what to do because I had training but not experience. He’s the only person I’ve ever tried to save. 5. Tom is dead, and I don’t know if I did enough. 6. Truth is not as sure as it seems. But it has to be faced in order to get through.
Unforgotten: adj. 1. Remembered. 2. Always, in the back of my mind is the man whom survival denied. I wonder, even now, about his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law. How are they without him? 3. But their memories of him – those are his survival.
Verse: n. 1. A section of a poem. A stanza, or a single line. An image so raw, it steals my breath. 2. When I read that even “...a box full of darkness...” is precious, I clasped those words to my heart and held Mary Oliver’s poem close like a friend.
Was: v. 1. past tense of being. 2. Tom was. 3. I am no longer the same: Now when I’m in the woods, worry hikes with me – what if I round a bend and see someone on the ground, needing me to help? 4. But there’s also this: Now I say “I love you” whenever I feel love, whether I think I’ll hear it echoed back to me or not. Now I create the life I want. Now I risk failure. Now I notice the world. Now I remember that life is important. And so I live.
Xylem: (ab-suh-loo-shuhn) n. 1. The part of a plant’s system of vessels and ducts that moves water and nutrients up from the roots to the rest of the plant. Along with phloem, xylem makes up the plant’s vascular network and transports life to all its parts. If the xylem is blocked (by an embolism or by tiny particles trapped inside the vascular cells), the plant’s life-giving sap cannot move properly. The plant will wilt and eventually die. 2. A whole forest full of trees surrounded us that day, life drawing up and down their woody bodies. But on the pavement beneath, wrapped in the shadow of their boughs, a human vascular system shut down. I found out later it was an embolism. There was nothing I could have done. And nothing I could have done wrong.
Years: pl.n. 1. Time periods, each made up of 365 days. 2. Now, ten years later, a wisp of sadness lights on my shoulders whenever I pass that place or stand under those trees. Now, ten years later, on the second Monday of October, I say his name out loud in private memorial.
Zed: n. 1. The last letter of the English alphabet. 2. At last, it is the letting go.
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Kim Hoff is an essayist and poet writing through the lenses of nature and human experience. Kim’s essays have been published in Mass Audubon’s Explore!; Grist Journal; The Journal of Wild Culture; Panorama; Northern Woodlands Magazine; and others. Kim lives with her wife in Northampton, MA.