Port forwarding with ssh

[Ryan Golhar]

I have an application this is trying to connect to a certain port (call
it port x) on a certain machine (call it machine a) that is sitting
behind a firewall.  The connection can't be made because of the
firewall...

I can ssh into machine a and was wondering about using port forwarding
to allow my local application to connect to port x.  

Everything I read on port forwarding sounds like the application has to
connect to a local port which will then be forwarded to another port on
another machine.

Does anyone know how to do this short of setting up a VPN?

Ryan