It does not have to be tall but it will not be young. The branches will be quite thick throughout, especially wide on the lower levels, and most certainly of the coniferous variety. The needles provide shelter from above in the certain event of rain and do to the trees age, there will be a thick mat of needles, shed over many many seasons, to provide a comfortable base on which to lay a hide or blanket. The lowest branches must not be too low and should provide ample headroom for sitting and in some cases even standing (if you are not too tall). Perhaps there will be smaller branches down low that have broken off upon which you may hang your hat or lantern. There will definitely be plenty of room to spread out and be comfortable, even if you must spend several days there. A Zeke Tree will always feel like home.

And more than all the physical requirements, a Zeke Tree is about a feeling. A feeling of safety and generosity. Comfort and character. No one knows just how many Zeke Trees there are, but what is known is that each is quite unique.

The tree is best understood in context to the man. Side by side. There is a darkly colored felt hat. battered and sweat stained. Holes worn in the creases of the brim. A generous salt & pepper beard conceals a warm smile below kind eyes. There is a calm confidence & openness. Perhaps he may be accompanied by a grumpy mule named Frank. Perhaps not. In any case the Man and the Tree seem at once to be perfectly suited for each-other, as if the tree had been waiting, growing for maybe a  century or more, just for the day of his arrival.

Zeke Trees.

Chapter Five – Bering Dreams

The sodium vapor lights only reach into the night, 20 or 30 yards beyond the stern and your not sure if that’s a good thing or not. On one hand you can’t really see what’s out there, and on the other, your imagination fills in the blanks. Not that your imagination has to work very hard. You thought about this for a long time and you figured it would be hard but in the end your imagination pales before the reality. You imagine it may feel like this if you were swallowed by a dragon. Or a whale. Is this how Jonah felt? But whales are graceful, floating weightless under the surface. Up here there is no grace to be found and gravity has gone insane. All of your senses scream at you, telling you, you should not be here. You don’t belong. Your a trespasser. But there is no place else to go.

And the sea stretches out beyond the Stern until it vanishes into darkness. Smoking and boiling as if alive like some obsidian lava or inky bile. It rises up, up and up and you arch your neck but still can’t see the top beyond the sodium’s and then it’s falling and falling and now there is nothing past the stern for a few moments except emptiness that hangs like an eternity until it all comes crashing back up and up and up again.

The men around you are hunched, faces buried under layers and hoods, each living separate bad dreams within a collective nightmare. Eyes squinting inside pasty cracked skin rimmed with dried salt spray. Beards growing whiter and whiter as ice builds, sprouting from chin and nostril as if each minute they are growing older and older, growing impossibly old, the sea stealing more years of their lives than ever they will live until they become some strange waddling creatures that defy age altogether. As if time has no meaning here, each moment an eternity and it’s all some strange foggy dream that may have never happened or never ceases happening. You fear this will not end and you have been banished to some remote corner of hell where the fires have all burned out. And carrying all your sins and failures and mistakes on your back for all these years you still can’t understand how you deserved this fate. How did things go so wrong that you ended up here. The only blessing being that amidst all this water there are no reflections and no mirrors because if there were, then the man staring back would be a stranger to you. Would be someone you never want to see, eyes burning into you, accusing, angry. Asking why did you bring me here?

And a wave crashes down from over the shelter deck but seeming to come from everyplace at once. For a moment you are inside it and then it’s gone, leaving you on your hands and knees like a three legged dog, gasping for air and dripping and then the ship roles and your sliding, sliding on your back and the sea is reaching for you, into your pant-legs and sleeves your tightly buttoned collar and pulling you towards the rail and someplace far away there are men yelling and reaching for you and you slip by them all and slam into the rail wall and then one of them is there to pull you to your feet and you stagger away as the ice water runs like fire down your spine and your eyes burn from salt. You stagger away for something, anything to hold onto for a few seconds. To catch your breath.

- Staley Out

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The Swiss Army Knife.

It was never really mine. I always knew that. And I wasn’t surprised when it left me. Not a bit. But now it’s come back. And I know why. Even if thirty years later my programed mind struggles to believe the lessons that little knife taught me. I know why.

I need to be reminded.

It was the smallest model. Not the keychain kind with the file and small blade. It was a real knife. It had scissors, a bottle opener and a blade. And of course, tweezers and a toothpick. If your a five year old boy you probably ought not be playing with knives but if you are, well, a Swiss Army Knife might be the coolest toy you could have.

I can’t tell the story here, I’m sorry. I’m not writing to tease you, only to further remind myself. This knife you see, well, it taught me the secrets of the universe. It taught me about the power we all have. Power we seem to forget as we get older. At least I think in my case I have forgotten. Even when I tell myself I haven’t its a lie because I might rememeber but I have trouble believing. I sure didn’t have any trouble believing back then, that summer thirty years ago. I just knew.

Thirty years. Wow.

It creeps in like a thief. More like an assassin. Reality. Steals your belief. Kills your dreams. Lies to you. I’ve fought hard to not become cynical and I thought I had succeeded but now I am doubting myself. Reality was whispering in my ear, telling me I was doing a good job, telling me I was okay. Everything was okay. But I fear it may have been a lie. Nobody loses the power. They just forget. And they believe the lies. The loud loud lies.

So I’m just writing this to remind myself. And you. If this wasn’t written on a computer screen (and I still had a Swiss Army Knife) then I’d cut my finger and sign it in blood. I won’t forget again.

But I can’t so I’m just gonna keep that Swiss Army Knife right where it belongs, bobbing at the forefront of my random waking brain activity. Just in case.

This piece is called “The Third Time I Almost Died” because there are two other occasions before this that I know I could or should have been killed. Of course there may have been more, but how many times do we escape death and not even know it? Unless of course your a soldier, fireman, police man or crab fisherman in the Bering sea, most of us don’t often come face to face with our mortality.

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Chapter Three – The Third Time I Almost Died
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I tug on the rope and glance back over my shoulder, down into the darkness below. I can’t see the bottom but I know it’s close. I look back up at Todd, crouched on the small shelf of snow a few feet above me. “This is ten”, I say and lean back.

It sounds like a gunshot and I’ve never been shot at but as if by some primordial instinct I drop prone. I look up at Todd and his eyes are so wide I think they could swallow his face, And the second thing I notice is the smell, shattered granite smells a lot like gunpowder. Or maybe it’s that they both smell like death.

But let’s back up.

Thirteen hours ago we were at the top of this unremarkable pile of rocks. It might only be half the size of the massive Denali looming over us to the north but we thought we were on top of the world when we got there. Tired and thirsty, eleven thousand, three hundred feet above sea level, we had embraced and spent maybe five or ten minutes admiring the view. We could see for hundreds of miles.

Forty hours before that we had run out of fuel for our stove. A potentially fatal miscalculation. We wanted to go light but took it to far. Inexperience maybe, but a mistake like that can kill you. Up here without fuel there is no water. And this is some of the hardest climbing either of us have ever done. The hardest anything either of us have ever done. And Todd’s been to war. Last night I spent two hours chopping a shelf out of the ice on the side of some cliff, I tied all my gear off and packed my water bottles full of snow and slept with them. I shivered all night but in the morning my body had meted maybe a cup of water. Precious water.

I haven’t been hungry yet, not in two and a half days without food. But thirsty, so thirsty. Without water your blood thickens, your muscles cramp and become useless. The decreased circulation makes you far more prone to frostbite. When we ran out of fuel we never considered going back down, it wasn’t even an option. We had a quart of water each and a full belly. It would have been two dangerous to backtrack, down climb and rappel the way we had come up. We knew we had to go up and over, down the other side. We never dreamt it would be this hard. We got off route, it started snowing and when we should have been back at base camp we still weren’t at the top. So thirsty.

We climbed through the snow. Both leading sections of rock and ice that pushed our bodies and our minds to the limit. We lost three pitons cause I buried em too far into the rock for Todd to remove. He never even tried. Now, a day and a half later we could use those pitons on this rappel. All we know is that it’s ten rappels, maybe twelve to fifteen hundred feet. Sometimes we down climb short sections, sometimes we dangle on the end of the rope, swinging back and forth in the blackness, looking for something to create an anchor with for the next rappel. We take turns going first. It’s hard and scary going first. You don’t know what’s below. You just hope you’ll find something good before you run outta rope.

And here we are on the tenth. It’s my turn to go first. Since Todd went first last time he made the next anchor and the first thing I ask when I arrive is how is it? He beats it with a gloved fist. “Bomber dude.” I can still hear those words. And it looks bomber. A massive fin of granite that he tied several nylon slings around. Ran the rope through and clipped in, waited for me to come down and see what lies below. It drops off steep, undercuts even. But we know this is probably the last one. For the first time since the summit we are smiling. “This is ten”, I say, and lean back. And it snaps. This giant piece of prehistoric granite, it weighs as much as a small car and we’re both tied to it. My heals are hanging over the void.

To this day I have no idea how I didn’t go. I have no idea how I somehow pitched my weight forward and didn’t disappear down into the darkness, pulling Todd with me and killing us both. His eyes are so huge in the light of my headlamp and all I can hear is my heart, pounding in my ears.

But the worst part is that that broken piece of rock was our only anchor. And here on this little ledge there is nothing else but a shallow crack, maybe half an inch deep. We don’t say much and Todd pounds in an aluminum stopper. It only goes halfway in. Looks like I can jerk it out with my hand but its gotta support the over 250 Lbs of me, my pack. And gear. There is nothing else.

So I do it. It’s all we can do. It’s too steep and we are two exhausted to be able to climb back up and find something better. Todd un-clips and sits without an anchor on the little ledge. He isn’t so sure it will hold either. I gently lower myself off the ledge and make my way slowly down. A foot slips and I pendulum wildly to the side. I am sure the stopper will pop but it doesn’t. Forty feet down I’m not at the bottom but I find a better anchor. I tie in and yell for Todd to come down, we’ll set up here and go again.

Six hours later we ski into base camp. The sun is just coming up. We’ve been climbing, rappelling and skiing for over 25 hours strait to get back here. Todd collapses in front of the Tent and I watch snow collect on his Gore-Tex suit as I hurry to take off my skis. I have a mission. Water. Ten minutes later he comes into the cook tent and I hand him the first quart bottle of water. He chugs half of it and hands the bottle back to me. I empty it and start melting more snow. Todd heads to the sleep tent to unpack his down bag. I just sit there for about a minute and then I vomit all the water out between my feet. I’ve never been more miserable than that moment. We spend the next day slowly re-hydrating and eating and sleeping and we fly out the day after that.

Up on that ledge, when that anchor broke, that was the third time I know I almost died.

-Staley Out

POST SCRIPT: It should be noted that I gave up this kind of climbing when I became a Father. And even though I still get a hunger in my gut when I see pictures of certain ice-covered peaks, I don’t regret the choice. Not for a second. I don’t want my daughter to grow up without a dad like I did. And I wanna live to be a grandfather.

It is summer 1980, probably late June or early July. I sit at the door of our tepee fiddling with an old bone, some string and a few carefully chosen rocks, fashioning a crude weapon. I will be seven in a few months. My father is still alive but only for a couple more weeks.

I can hear my brother David, three years younger, splashing in the small creek below our campsite. He is washing his dirty white felt cowboy hat and singing to himself, something by Waylon Jennings perhaps, he used to love that song, “Mammas don’t let your baby’s grow up.” The adults are away, re-staking the horses to new feeding ground, they do this twice a day. They have taken my youngest brother (at the time) Andy with them; he is almost a year old and beginning to walk.

The air is very still, barely a breeze; a few small birds peck around the two-week-old campsite for bits of food. I look down the gentle slope to the creek where my brother sits, perhaps twenty yards away and my heart stops. The creek is perhaps six or eight feet wide at most and shallow. Barely a toddler even Dave could cross it safely. And across from him sits a young bear. A brown bear, probably young enough that it’s mother is close. And I might be six but I know it’s the mother that’s dangerous.

I rise slowly and say nothing. Dave doesn’t see the bear, he continues to sing blissfully and wash his cowboy hat. It doesn’t look any cleaner. I walk very slowly towards him, eyes never leaving the bear that just sits on its haunches, regarding my young brother with what looks to me like curiosity.

My heart is pounding faster now. I can smell it. Musky and a hint of berries. I am halfway there. It hasn’t moved an inch and Dave hasn’t seen it yet. I look around. No sign of a mother, but that means nothing.

And I’m there. Eight feet from this young bear with my brother between us. Holding my breath and wondering how Dave didn’t smell it too I reach down and take his hand. He jumps a bit, I surprised him and he turns to me with his large brown eyes and rosy cheeks like a cherub in a renaissance painting. Holding his hand tightly now I raise a finger to my lips but make no sound. Shh

And I pull him back up the low grade of the hill. The bear still hasn’t moved, still looks curious and David still clutches his cowboy hat. We walk backwards all the way up and a few feet from the mouth of our tepee the bear turns slowly and ambles off, casual as can be and disappears into the thick brush beyond the creek.

Was that a bear? Dave asks in his lisping cherub voice. Yeah, be quiet I say and pull him into the tepee.

Half an hour later when the adults come back they don’t believe us. Maybe it was a fox. No? Maybe a wolverine then? No.

I was only six but I knew it was a bear.

I’ll be posting them every so often here.

Chapter One – My Lantern
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I must have been four or five because when I was six I got an X-Wing Fighter. And even though a lot was expected of me as child I don’t believe that at three my parents would have given me a lantern for Christmas.

A tiny kerosene lantern, coated with red enamel, maybe eight inches tall, not counting the handle. It had a rag wick and a little dial to move it up or down and control the illumination.

I was so proud of that lantern. It had it’s very own hook, drilled into one of the log beams that made up the ceiling of our little cabin. My mother or father would hang it there so I could read or draw by it’s light but mostly I would just sit and admire the lantern. My lantern.

But it’s true purpose was far more practical than simple reading or writing. Winter nights in Alaska can be cold and with no moon, dark as coal. I would pull on my Sorrels and my parka, a wool hat and mittens, and holding my lantern high overhead I would venture out into the twenty below air.

My breath would freeze before me as I crunched through the often times knee high snow to the old outhouse. The little red lantern illuminated the frozen terrain around me in an eight-foot diameter bubble of light that no evil in the universe could possibly penetrate.

I would pull back the frozen curtain that served as a door and set my lantern on the plywood seat, next to the hole. With my mittens I brushed the crystals of frost from around it’s edge and using an old block of wood as a stepping stool I would climb up and do my business as quickly as possible, eyes never leaving my lantern.

Minutes later I would be back in my very warm bed, blankets wrapped tightly around me, everything silent except my parents breathing across the room and the occasional pop of spruce from the barrel stove.

My lantern sat next to me on a table, dialed down as low as can be, the last thing I saw as I drifted off, back to sleep.

Yes, I think I was four.