Heat Stroke

One day in July, Sierra Nevada (sun unblocked, high, blazing) —I was splitting and stacking tamarack-rounds for somebody in town. Heat came up through my body to my head.

went blind. I was seventeen, had learned by then to be more embarrassed than frightened by affliction. I saw just well enough to stagger down to the general store, stumbled into an old man, who laughed. I found a bench, waited for eyesight to clear. Somebody got water. I went back to the wood pile eventually.

This has been a pattern of sorts in my life— work hard until I go blind or fall over, recover, go back to work.

Tamarack sap smells sweet, and a person’s brain can get too hot— how strange life really is.