To Hell & Back

My earliest memory drifted into view, making me smile. I was six years old. Life was great. I was with my father at our summer cabin in Canada. I spent the long summer days running around aimlessly in the cold, throwing stones at animals, climbing on things, and just generally wasting energy, as kids are wont to do.

My summers were spent in Canada to avoid the heat. My body has always run uncomfortably hot, so the cold air, and especially the snow, on my bare skin was blissful relief. My parents moved us every few months in my early years, but we always stayed in the South: mostly Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Arizona. I think there were other states, possibly even crossing the border into Mexico, but I was a small child and didn’t pay attention to such things. I just knew it was always hot, except for summer because we flew up to Canada.

My father, not having spent time with children until I came along, always came up with elaborate reasons for our activities. He taught me to clean and sharpen a hatchet, lecturing about this and that all the while, then decided we were going to go out to find wood for a fire. He gave me a long lecture on the importance of dry wood versus wet wood, and many other things I didn’t pay the slightest attention to.

Dettrick Moatz / To Hell & Back / 6

I don’t think he ever realized how easy I was to please, nor how little I cared about anything at that age. He always tried to give me important life lessons. I probably should have paid more attention to them, since I can’t get them any longer.

I lost all feeling of my body as the memory began to play:

“See that?” my father said, pointing to a branch on a nearby tree. It was up the tree quite a ways, nearly twice as high as I was tall. “Cut it off and bring it with us.”

“The branch?” I asked, biting my lip.

He nodded, “Yes.”

“But I can’t reach it, Father,” I complained.

“Then how are you going to cut it?” he asked.

“I don’t know!” I told him, exasperated.

“You have your task, figure it out,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

Oh, great, he wants to play that game, I thought with a sigh. I looked around for something to use as a ladder, but it was all just snow, trees, and a bit more snow.

“You cannot just rely on others to get you through life. You must learn your limitations, and to do that, y—” I cut him off by using all my strength to slam the hatchet I held into the tree at waist height. It sank firmly into the tree with a loud thunk.

Dettrick Moatz / To Hell & Back / 7

“I must push myself until I cannot push myself any further, then keep right on pushing. Isn’t that right, Father?” I said as I put my foot on the hatchet’s blade where it met the tree. With the hatchet as my makeshift ladder, I reached with my arms fully stretched over my head, grabbed onto the lowest branch, and climbed up onto it.

From my new vantage point, I held onto tree branches and kicked the branch my father had pointed out to me until it broke off with a snap. I hopped down into the cold snow and turned around, a smile plastered on my face. I picked up the branch to present it to my father.

“I win!” I shouted triumphantly, branch in hand.

“That is not how that tool is supposed to be used,” he told me sternly, arms folded across his broad chest.

“You said to figure it out,” I told him as I tossed the branch at his feet. I grinned in triumph and said, “So I did. No complaining just because I won!”

“That hatchet has a specific purpose,” he said, determined. “You could have broken it before you had even gotten one piece of firewood.”

“Maybe the hatchet should learn to go beyond its limits,” I retorted. “Come on! We need more wood, Father! Don’t be so silly.”

He didn’t say anything else about how I used the hatchet after that. Instead, he turned and began walking away, pointing out my next task. I ran over to the branch, picked it back up, and followed him.

“Put the wood by the wall, then come here,” I heard my father say. “Staysa?”

Dettrick Moatz / To Hell & Back / 8

“Huh?” I murmured, shaking my head, confused. The memory had skipped forward. One moment I was following Father though the snow, and the next I was putting the wood I had collected against the wall of our cabin.

“What?” I asked.

“I am talking to you, Staysa,” my father called. When my attention was back on him, he pointed to a tree next to the cabin and said, “Staysa, if this tree continues to live, its roots will harm the cabin. They dig shallow and will damage the foundation. Depending on the severity, it could go so far as to make the cabin unsafe to live in.”

“Do you want me to kill it, Father?” I asked, confused.

“That is your choice to make. It is a living creature. Can you take its life in order to save the cabin, or will you let nature take its course?” he asked. “I leave its future in your hands. You may eat when you finish, whatever your decision may be.”

I frowned and looked at the tree. The tree was nearly half a foot thick and at the beginning of its life, by my guess. If it was like any of the trees I had seen earlier, it would soon dwarf the little cabin. Without a word, I started hacking away at it.

At first it was tiring and it didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere, but I kept going. I was anything if not determined when I was little. I didn’t keep track of time, but after a good while, I sat back and looked; I had cut a big chunk out of the tree.

Dettrick Moatz / To Hell & Back / 9

Unsure how to proceed, I paused. After a moment’s thought, I knelt on the ground, put my shoulder against the tree above the cut and my hands under it. With a shout, I pushed, giving it all I had. After several moments of intense effort, my foot slipped in the snow, and I fell onto my stomach.

Trees are tough, I marveled to myself, frowning at the tree.

“Staysa…” I heard my father begin with a heavy sigh.

“Go away! You said it is my tree, Father,” I told him.

I picked up my hatchet, moved to the other side of the tree, and thought, If I cut away from this side too, it’ll be easier.

After what seemed like an eternity, I came trudging into the house, damp with sweat and extremely exhausted, but my now blue lips were pulled into a big grin. I pulled the tree along with me into the cabin, then went to work cutting away the branches.

My father watched me for a time before he came over and took the hatchet from me. I tried to fight him, but I didn’t have the strength; he took the hatchet from my hands easily.

“But I have… to learn… to depend on myself, to push my limits,” I panted in protest, my small chest heaving for breath. My arms burned from the effort, and I could hardly lift the hatchet when he had taken it from me, but I was still determined. “Not… give up.”

“Just because you can’t always count on others doesn’t mean they aren’t there for you, and it doesn’t give you an excuse to not accept their help,” he told me.

Dettrick Moatz / To Hell & Back / 10

After a short pause he added, “You may be in the most dire of circumstances, alone and frightened, with nobody to help you… but you might have gotten there because you were too stubborn to ask for help in the first place.”

He put the hatchet down and left the room while I thought about what he had said. When he came back, he tugged off my sweat-soaked clothes, pulled a big T-shirt down over my head, wrapped me up in a blanket, and carried me to the couch by the fire.

“Let me know if you get too hot,” he whispered, brushing my hair with his hand. “Had you asked, I would have done it all for you, little one. You never once noticed you had all the help you ever needed. Now then, when you decide you’re strong enough… or hungry enough, knowing you… there is food ready in the kitchen.”

“Okay, Father,” I murmured with a yawn and a stretch. I spent a long time lying there before I went to sleep, my father’s words dancing through my head all the while.