“I remember the sound my body made as it hit the ground. A sharp crack. Then the white heat of pain that …
“I remember the sound my body made as it hit the ground. A sharp crack. Then the white heat of pain that stabbed through my body, escaping through my mouth in an almighty howl. I tried to scramble to my feet — the instinctive reaction to falling — but I couldn’t get up. Everything below the arms remained a dead weight.” Thus begins Claire Nelson’s memoir, “ Things I Learned from Falling,” (HarperOne), out May 25, a harrowing page-turner of a book recounting a 2018 hike she took in Joshua Tree National Park in California, with near-disastrous consequences. Nelson was a 30-something New Zealand journalist seeking time off from her hectic London life when she traveled to California for two weeks of house-sitting at a friend’s place, eager for a chance to relax and reset in nature.
