I am kneeling and the green sod seeps into my jeans like a fungus.  Two minutes before I was moving my feet.  My mind was reeling with the height of the trees and the kiss of my dog on my face that morning when I left.  Now my head is pounding with a heaviness that weighs my eyelids and presses my neck down.  All I see is red and brown.

I had just inhaled the misty, rich dirt scent of the woods.  I had just stroked a fern and fingered its sharp grooves. A vague sense of the wonderment of the sky poking through the spiny trees lingers in my mind.  Now it's gone, and my body is forced down.  

Falling forward on my hands, I sense the wet ground enveloping me, pulling me in.  I gasp for breath, struggle against the force of gravity.  The wood becomes a wild thing, dipping and bucking, tearing at my hair and my clothes.  My arms are thrashing wildly and I grab for roots, twigs, blades of grass.  Then everything falls away.

photo by Coyhand.