THE FOREST GNOME

“I wouldn’t have known about gnomes if not for Nicky.”

When I was a girl, we bought this for my brother Nicky one Christmas for a lark: a 12-inch-tall gnome with pointy hat and belted jacket. Not knowing Gnomish, we never named him, but “Forest Gnome” is etched into the leaf design at his feet, so Forest Gnome he was. He has a tree-bark face and earthy eyes, and I sometimes think he spends his time, when I’m not around, communing with the tree outside my window—or the ghosts of trees, shelved in the bookcase beneath him.  

By rights the gnome should be in Nicky’s house among his other imaginative treasures. I wouldn’t have known about gnomes if not for Nicky. He was 16 years older than me, and when I was little, he gave me the quintessential guidebook Gnomes, by Wil Huygen. It was told in a realistic fashion, and I believed it all. I imagined that forests and gardens throughout the world were teeming with these remarkable creatures. Nicky gave me that gift.

He was a great older brother. He could always find the owl in the tree, the cocoon on the bough, the bird in the nest. His eyes saw the beauty of nature, and he had the patience to wait and capture the perfect moment on film. He once took a sequence of shots of an osprey building a nest. It was a cold March day, and I stood beside him complaining, wanting to go home after his first shot, but he cajoled me into staying to watch the miracle unfolding before us. 

When, as adults, we took a family trip to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, he stalked a ghost crab and got the most amazing pictures of it scampering in and out of its hidey hole. He was a strong swimmer. As a teenager, at the lake where he was a lifeguard, he’d once saved a daughter and father who were drowning. It was after hours, but he went in and rescued them from a death embrace. Not many people know that about him.

Nicky was a great storyteller and could always make me laugh. There’s a Christmas picture of me laughing hysterically as I open a treasure chest Dad had made. Nicky is right there telling a joke—something about pirates, I’m sure, in that rascally voice of his. Christmas was his favorite time of year. He was a generous soul who thought it would be cool to be Santa Claus. 

Though we didn’t know it when he was alive, he regularly made dinners for his friends and gave a Christmas stocking to a neighbor’s child each year. He was a gregarious man with a nature that drew people to him. Ever ready with a helping hand for a friend in need. 

Nicky died at Christmastime nearly twenty years ago. He was found underneath his Christmas tree with a serene expression, as if he knew everything. Nicky liked to know things. He was always sharing interesting facts he’d discovered in his reading: that African grey parrots have the language abilities of a young child, that hummingbirds migrate alone. I believe that at the moment of death, when the veil was lifted, he knew the secrets of the universe, and it was all good.

—Catherine Coundjeris