In “Heat Stroke,” Hans Ostrom remembers a July day in the Sierra Nevada, splitting tamarack wood in blazing sun. The heat rises through his body until, at seventeen, he goes blind. The moment is filtered through a teenager’s self-consciousness: he is more embarrassed than frightened, staggers to the general store, bumps into an old man who laughs, and waits on a bench until his sight clears. Then he goes back to the woodpile.
The adult speaker recognizes that same rhythm in his life—working hard until he collapses, recovering, and returning to work. The tone is spare, wry, and quietly reflective; even the sweet smell of tamarack sap sits alongside the alarming fact that a brain can overheat. It leaves a mood of stoic wonder at how strange and demanding ordinary life can be.