Kathy Shaw recently shared on FaceBook the news of her brother Mike Hirsch’s passing. I know not everyone is on FaceBook, so I wanted to share Kathy’s words here, along with some of Mike’s own words from a recent article he wrote.

From Kathy:

I’m heartbroken to let you know that my beloved brother, Mike Hirsch, lost his battle with ALS last night. He died peacefully in the place he loved the most, Birdsong, his camp in the Adirondacks, surrounded by his incredible wife Mel, his daughters and their significant others. He handled his ALS diagnosis with grace, humor and the most positive attitude imaginable. He died on his own terms, with no extraordinary measures. Mike made it to his 62nd birthday on Friday and was enjoying some of his favorite things – his family, the beautiful nature of the Adirondacks and ice cream at Donnelly’s – up to the very end. Lynn, Rob and I will miss him every day. He’s our hero and our angel up in heaven now. 

Like many of you, I hung on every word of Mike’s articles detailing his ALS journey. What an incredibly inspiring person Mike was. In an opinion piece he wrote for the Morning Call last October, he said:

“I pray that I will live on in the memories of family and friends. I pray our two daughters will enjoy lives as blessed as mine. I pray that I have done more good than harm. I pray to be reunited with my wife someday.”

There is no doubt that all of those prayers will be answered. And I know the extended Mattimore clan is sending a warm blanket of love and hugs to Mel and all his family.

Rest in peace, Mike.

———

I Have Journeyed to the Mountains to Die

By Mike Hirsch (The Morning Call, Oct 22, 2021)

I Have Journeyed to the Mountains to Die

At twilight, we drive up the steep dirt road leading to our Adirondack cabin, Birdsong. It rests peacefully at the foot of Marble Mountain.

I lie back in my power wheelchair close to the fire pit. The blaze fends off the cold and dark.

I watch the sky behind our 90-foot-high white pines drain to a deep shade of denim before fading to black.

The fire crackles.. A tree creaks. And then: Hoot-hoot-hoot, hoot-hoot, who-whoooo.

The first barred owl of summer. 

I am at peace.

Like a spawning salmon, I have returned home to die.

……….

ALS has progressed at the speed of a mountain river in the last two months.

My abdominal muscles packed their rucksacks, threw them in the back of a Subaru Outback and settled in Colorado, where they are enjoying outdoor adventures.

I, however, am fairly helpless without my core muscles. I lean farther left than Bernie Sanders. My voice has softened to the sound of a gentle breeze through oak leaves.

Worse, my breathing has weakened to the point I can no longer blow a stinging horsefly off my nose. (Swatting is not an option because my arms move no more than an inch.)

A measure of my lung capacity plummeted 40% in three months.

My doctors say it is time to turn my life over to hospice care. I agree. 

But the question loomed: hospice in the Pennsylvania valley we have called home for 21 years, or in the New York mountains where I feel most at home?

In Pennsylvania, I would be surrounded by the love and camaraderie of neighbors, friends and coworkers, who supported us with a thousand acts of kindness.

In New York, I would feel embraced by my family and the power of nature.

Mel and I hashed it out with daughter Emily, son-in-law Erick, daughter Mathilde and her partner Grayson. We all agreed to spend my last days up north.

…………

I was born in Buffalo, but in a way I started my life in the Adirondacks.

I caught sight of Mel for the first time as I stepped into our college newspaper office. This beauty waved her arms as she regaled several staffers with a riotous story. I did not know what the story was about, but I knew this: This was the woman I had been searching for all my 20 years.

We stole glances and shared stories while working together on the newspaper and sitting next to each other during Creative Writing.

She told me about her family’s cabin in the woods near Lake Placid, New York. I told her about my adventures hiking in the Adirondacks with my brother when we were teens.

One day, in a stairwell of Old Main, she invited me to join her on a seven-hour trip to the cabin on a school break. My heart missed two or three beats.

On that trip, I learned to drive her stick shift 1980 Renault Le Car. My spirit and soul opened to the charm of this woman and of the stark forests in March, with boulders coated in ice and the skeletons of birch trees lining lake shores.

We hiked the trails around the cabin. We walked along the Ausable, one of the country’s best trout-fishing rivers. I put my arm around her as we lay under a tire swing, gazing at the fast-moving clouds.

Forevermore, Mel, I and this cabin in the woods have been linked by unbreakable chains.

On a lark, right after we graduated from college in 1982, we drove to the cabin to relax and search for jobs. Miraculously, we landed the only two reporting jobs at the weekly Lake Placid News. We married that October.

Every summer, without fail, we vacationed at Birdsong. The morning trill of the hermit thrush, the lazy movement of the sun across the side yard and the graveyard quiet of the night soothed our frayed nerves. Time and heart rates slowed.

Mel and I would spend whole blue sky days sitting outside and reading newspapers and novels. Every year, I would reread Hemingway’s trout fishing masterpiece, “Big Two-Hearted River.”

The girls grew to love this place, too. They fought for time to read books in the hammock. We bonded during 12-hour excursions to climb mountains. Over a decade and a half, we reached the summit of 23 of the 46 highest peaks in the Adirondacks, always eating our lunch with a magnificent view.

I first met Erick when he drove Emily from Manhattan to Birdsong. He planned to return home that night, but Mel and I insisted he stay until the morning. He ended up staying for nearly a week. He fell right into our family’s rhythm of reading, hiking and exploring the trails around Birdsong. 

Over the years, he and I would slip out for early morning 25 mile bicycle rides on steep roads, returning to Birdsong when everyone else was drinking their first cup of coffee.

Emily and Erick named their Brooklyn photo studio, Heidi’s Bridge, after a rustic wooden span over a stream near Birdsong. Erick proposed on that bridge.

Our youngest daughter, Mathilde, followed her fascination with the natural world to an environmental studies degree from the University of Vermont. 

So the answer to where we should spend our last days as a family was as clear as the water of a mountain lake. I’ll be working as opinion editor for the Morning Call as often as I am able, will soak up the sunrises and delight in the rata-tat-tat-tat-tat and the monkey-like call of the pileated woodpecker.

Birdsong is where my life started with my precious Mel. It’s also where our earthly bonds will finally be torn asunder. My ashes will be scattered here. 

But Mel and I believe that our love will endure and that we will one day be reunited in a place as glorious as our Birdsong. 

…….

Top image Kris Parker/CONTRIBUTED PHOTO. Other images from the Hirsch family.

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