There are always strange figures in the peripheral. Peering from behind a wall. Moving just out of sight when you turn your head. The people here like to kill one another. More than any other place in the state, per capita that is. I heard the stories about how it started but I just kept thinking that things like that never really start. Never really. I heard the stories and then I wished I hadn’t.

And the sun will set and the dark sky will grow darker and maybe it will rain again and maybe there will be strange lights on the horizon. Again. Maybe.

This place where everyone has been left behind. Everyone a lost child. Everyone like particles of lint or dust that the broom always seemed to miss on it’s way to the dustpan. And there is some strange electricity in the air but the figures I see, hunched over cars in the parking lot, scurrying to and from the liquer store, they all seem not to notice. They all grew imune long ago. But I feel it, reaching in, trying to grab me. Trying to keep me.

I can taste dust in my mouth now. I hurry inside, fighting panic.

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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That’s my mouth behind the camera under the funny hat. Missed my calling as a paparazzi. I know… Your not impressed. But my mom IS, so kiss off…

- Staley Out

Staley Out

The task of the narrator is not an easy one, he said. He appears to be required to choose his tale from among the many that are possible. But of course that is not the case. The case is rather to make many of the one. Always the teller must be at pains to devise against his listener’s claim – perhaps spoken, perhaps not – that he has heard the tale before. He sets forth the categories into which the listener will wish to fit the narrative as he hears it. but he understands that the narrative is itself in fact no category but is rather the category of all categories for there is nothing which falls outside its purview. All is telling. Do not doubt it.

From “The Crossing” by Cormac McCarthy

I don’t think anyone really humbles or inspires me as much as Cormac McCarthy.

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.

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.