So they went right up in four days, a hundred yards behind the guided group, took some pictures at the top and then back down to wait a day for the plane.  The professional guides were still mad, and had refused to talk to them, share any supplies or even take their picture.

The two had been friends since college where they were roommates for a year.  They both enjoyed climbing and found that their mountaineering goals and climbing abilities meshed very well.  They started pursuing the seven summits when they were in their early thirties, both with families and stable middle class careers.  Scott Davis was an owner of an insurance agency and Russell Johnson was the Used Car Manager for his father’s Cadillac Dealership, although to hear him talk, he ran the entire operation. He always insisted on being called Russell rather than Russ. If someone told an interesting story, Russell would immediately tell one that tried to one up the other person.

Their professions allowed them both to take up to four weeks vacation – they used most of that time to attempt peaks around the world.  Russell was adventurous and a fierce competitor, but sarcastic and demeaning to the point that a lot of people outright disliked him.  In fact he was borderline abusive with his own family.  At 6 feet 4 inches he kept fit and was overly proud of his toned body and willing to take risks that Scott would not take. Scott was described by friends as driven, a good guy, good sense of humor, and with an infectious smile.

While they were friends, Scott would not have said they were best friends, in fact his wife did not like Russell and was vocal with Scott about ending the friendship – she thought that Russell was mean spirited, a bully, and could not be trusted.  Scott had some minor guilt pangs about leaving his family on these long trips, but felt he deserved it since he worked hard every day. But he did think about his wife’s advice, and in fact he had thought of getting another partner for the remaining peaks.

At times they had argued vehemently as they climbed together – Scott at 5 feet ten inches usually let Russell lead on climbs, but he was equally competent.  “Bagging the summits was getting closer every year and certainly Russell was the most available companion to complete all seven.”  One of the problems was that Russell thought he was above any laws, rules, or good practices that governed climbing.  He believed that fees and permits were a rip off, and that having to hire a licensed guide was strictly BS.  At times this attitude had gotten them into trouble, but the worst that had happened was a fine of $2000.  Russell figured that by going on the cheap they had saved over $125,000 dollars each so far in their quest.

Each year they tried to do one mountain.  They had good luck with Elbrus in Russia, had to try Aconcagua (22,832 ft.) in Argentina two years in a row because of weather, and had no problem in getting up Kilimanjaro, although they got lost in the jungle at the beginning because they had to travel some distance away from officials who wanted $500 for each permit.  Losing their bearings for one full day in the jungle scared the heck out of both of them.
They had agreed on a modus operandi when they first started climbing.  Do it as inexpensively as possible, sometimes with used equipment, slide by the rules, live by their wits. If a rule hasn’t been broken, then break it.  So far it had worked well, other than getting lost for that one day in Africa. In each climb they usually suffered abuse from the professional guides, but since the climbs were costing them about one-fifth of the regular price they just let the animosity roll off their backs.
Now they were looking at the three remaining mountains, Denali in Alaska, Carstensz Pyramid in West New Guinea and of course, Everest.  “There really isn’t any question as to the easiest one,” said Russell.   Hell, there is a huge gold mine right at the base of Carstensz and it’s only a few thousand feet to the summit at 16,024 feet.  Let’s research everything and figure out how to do it for minimal cost.
And so they started to lay it out, planning to go in the rainy season, which was by far the cheapest but most dangerous.  They first found out that the name of area where they were climbing was Irian Jaya, a huge province of Indonesia – the western half of the island of New Guinea. The natives called it Papua and it was like going back to the Stone Age. Carstensz Pyramid was all rock with some minor glaciers and snowfields. The hardest pitch was 5.7, which they could easily handle at about 70 degrees.  They would need one rope for protection, good rain gear, but no crampons.  Should be able to get up and back in one long day.

“My Gosh”, said Scott, “look at the close up maps of the area”.  Its going to be harder to get to the base than it is to climb the mountain – at least a five day hike with porters and a guide.  The dang place is a morass of swamps, mangrove growths, impenetrable jungle, dense plains and sharp rock.  There are fresh water Crocodiles, Carpet Pythons, many species of deadly vipers and a huge variety of poison frogs. The first three days look like an endless mud hole, with slippery foliage and lots of deadfall. Three Hundred different dialects are spoken and rebels have been trying to achieve independence from Indonesia since 1960. The government has never been able to exterminate them because of the jungle depth. Insurgents killed three mining employees last year and there was a six-week strike at the mine.  In fact you may remember that Michael Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller’s son disappeared back in 1962.  Most believe that a Croc got him, but even now, this wild area is still dotted with tribes that would just as soon kill you and eat you rather than sell you their primitive art.   From 1995 to 2005 no visitors or climbers of any kind were allowed in the area because of the danger of being kidnapped or killed.

In 1623, the first Dutch explorer, Jan Carstenszoon, landed on the south side of the island and reported he had seen a peak with snow on the top.  He was roundly ridiculed, since this area was almost right on the Equator.  And it wasn’t until 300 years later in 1936 that a Dutch Geologist Jean Dozy saw the mountain and climbed some of the snow-capped peaks.  He also wrote a detailed report showing that there was some blackish green rock at around twelve thousand feet – looked like copper outcropping.  Nothing was done with this report because WWII broke out and the information was put in a file cabinet in Amsterdam.  Then a geologist in NYC, Frank Nelson, finally got a copy of the report and confirmed with a visit that it was a major find.  Mining Giant Freeport McMoran entered the area in 1974 and began feasibility studies.  In the nineties the Grasberg mine became the largest gold producer in the world, and the third largest copper producer.  It eventually employed thousands of men, including hundreds of security personnel – you could see the open pit from space, the rim of which went up to 14,000 feet.  The ore concentrate was removed via a huge gravity driven slurry pipeline that went 76 miles to the coast.

Russell and Scott looked at this giant slurry pipeline and road as they got to the town of Timinka, thinking this climb would be a breeze.  However they found out they were not allowed to use the road and would have to find guides to take them via the jungle trails they had read about.

They ended up hiring Moni tribesmen, staying about a mile off the main road that snaked its way to the mine.  Scott could not believe the minimal cost that Russell had negotiated with the six natives – $500 for the main guide and $300 each for the others.  “Hey”, Russell said, “These are mud people, look, they still have bones in their noses. “They are stupid, don’t know nothin’” Scott thought about saying something to Russell, but then decided to just let it slide.

It took four long treks to reach the mountain area – rain and then afternoon mist during most of each day.  After establishing their base camp the next day, they started climbing at 5 AM in the morning – beginning at around 13,000 feet, the mine about two miles away. The climb was straightforward on rock, with a lot of scrambling along the top ridge. But it was steeper and very slippery in the constant rain. Scott had Russell on Belay when he took a 15 ft. fall – stretching the wet rope, but no harm done. They topped out around 1:00 PM, just as the afternoon mist began to join the clouds. They could swing their metal ice axes around and the static electricity would throw blue sparks.

“Well, it looks like we got away with another one”, said Russell.   “All we have to do is to get back to the coast, get on a plane to Jakarta and back home”.  Scott said, “ It’s going to be a rough four days in the rain before we get there”.  “I’m still nervous about how far you beat the tribesmen down for carrying our supplies and guiding us, they seemed unhappy this morning.”  “Oh, don’t be such a worrier”, Russell said irritably.  “I’ve always been able to get us out of any situation”.  But Scott did worry as they down climbed and got back to the camp around 6:00 PM.

The next day started out with torrential rain and the trail became very slippery – in a couple of places they roped up just to make sure of their footing.  That evening the Moni guide and his bearers kept to themselves and did not show their normal smiles.  In the morning they descended into the edges of the rain forest with terrific thunderstorms and wind.  Sometimes they could not even see the trail ahead – the wind was almost horizontal and the rain so thick that they had to spit rainwater every few breathes.

That evening, the natives offered no conversation.  Everyone ate cold food from their packs and tried to keep some part of their body dry.  About 6:00 PM, Dianga, the chief guide, came over and said he wanted to talk.  His English was limited but it was clear he wanted more money to finish the trek.  Russell immediately jumped up and started to berate him, saying such things as they had a contract and that Dianga was not an honorable person and that he could go to hell.  Dianga did not say anything but the expression on his face was fierce.  He stalked off and went back to where his bearers were.  Russell poked Scott in the ribs and said, “These people are dumb as dirt, I guess I showed him”.  Scott said quietly, “I’m afraid we are going to have trouble before we get back”.  “Just be careful”.  Russell replied, “Come on, if worst came to worst we can just go to the mine road and claim we are lost”.

In a half hour, Dianga was back again, this time with the five others.  He said,  “We will not go on, unless we get double the amount promised”. Russell took Scott’s advice and said:  “We will offer you a 10% increase and then a tip at the end if we are satisfied”.  “That is our best offer. “Take it or leave it, you black bastard”.  Dianga stomped off and they could hear raised voices.  Scott was very concerned.  “Look Russ, these people are used to doing things different than we are”.  “This mountain and trek are not like the other mountains where there is some civilization around”.  Lets see if we can’t come to a compromise”.  “We’ve bagged the mountain, we can ease off now – the money we are talking about is really immaterial to us, but would make a huge difference to these people”. Let’s just meet their demands.”  Dave said it was a manner of principle, but he’d sleep on it.

An hour after they turned in, Scott felt strong arms pinning him to the ground in his sleeping bag.  He turned to see three of the tribesmen holding him.  Russell was being treated similarly by three others.  “What do you want”, both men spoke simultaneously.  No one answered but the men stood them up and tied their hands behind them.  Then a hood of woven vines was put over their heads.  Despite their continued pleading and saying they agreed to the terms, nothing was said.  Then the guides and porters got them dressed and started marching them away from camp about 9:00 PM.  Both Scott and Russell cried out that they would do whatever it took to make the guides happy.  But there was no response.   They slipped and fell and staggered for what seemed hours. Their shoes were then removed, pockets emptied, and both were laid back to back in the mud.   Dianga said in broken English, “You are in God’s hands now”. Then there was silence.  The bonds that held them were not tight and after an hour they were able to free themselves and take off the hoods.  It was pitch black with no moon, just the constant rain – they crawled up to the base of giant tree. They decided to just stay where they were and then hike out to the trail in the morning.

The night was terrible, cool rain on and off until they were shaking, no dry place to lay sounds of all kinds of animals in the jungle.  They were used to sleeping in the forest, but now they were alone and everything seemed frightening.

Finally it got light although they couldn’t see the sun because it was still raining steadily.  In fact they couldn’t see much of anything other than the jungle canopy above them and the green rainforest curtain all around.  They both were sick at heart, and sat under the large tree to decide what to do.  The first thing in their minds was what direction they should start to walk.  And they had to have some sort of coverings to protect their feet.  Scott’s feet had begun to itch and he looked down he saw what appeared to be several grey worms on his bare feet.  He tried to shake them off, but nothing happened.  He pulled one away with some difficulty and it left a round red bleeding sore on his ankle.  They were leaches and he quickly found they were all over his body.  They would bite, send in an anesthetic and tear a nickel sized round hole in the skin to get to the blood.  He knew the creatures could be burned or salt applied to get them off painlessly.  But he and Russell pulled off each slimy leach, creating bleeding soars all over their legs.  Scott suggested that they maybe pray for God’s help in being rescued.  Dave told him it was a waste of time; God is not interested in Irian Jaya or us.  Scott did pray silently to himself.  He was as frightened as he ever had been in his life.

The Grassberg pipeline was the primary landmark in this area. It went south seventy-six miles to the port of Amamapare.
There were no roads in this part of the island.  So the best plan seemed to be to head for the mine or the pipeline.  Scott climbed the tallest tree he could find, but between the vast jungle and the rain, he came back without any idea.  It appeared to them that they would have to go by dead reckoning.  Scott thought it was one way and Russell was sure it was 90 degrees in a different direction.  Russell was very adamant saying that he had kept track during the march.  Scott was quite sure that the porters had marched them to several points of the compass to confuse them.  But he decided to go along with Russell.  They started off after binding their feet with strips torn from their shirts.

“I wonder if someone will come looking for us”,  “Probably never will”, said Russell.  “Our porters and guide will just keep our stuff and return to their villages, saying that they left us in town”.  “Also we didn’t get a permit and we didn’t check in with the mine. Remember the last five miles to the mountain base were done at night.  We don’t have return tickets to Jakarta or to the US.  Only our wives will start to worry in about a week.  I guess if we had to we could make it a week while they find us.  Scott thought to himself, “no one is going to find us in this jungle, unless it is some of the local natives who are out hunting”.

They took off in Russell’s direction.  It was impossible to walk in a straight line – there were huge trees and swamps and mud sinks that required detours and hills that exhausted them on the way up. They kept slogging along but did not see any sign of a trail or human existence.  After six hours stumbling in the rain they decided to take a prolonged rest.  Both had cuts on their feet and they felt exposed lying down with their upper torsos naked.  Scott jumped up.  Look he said, “There is one of the hoods that was over our heads.  We have been going in a circle”.

They looked at one another, fear tightening the muscles in their faces.  “What to do now”?  As usual Russell took the lead and said, look, I’m positive this time, lifting his arm, it’s this direction”.  “What direction is that?’ Asked Scott.  With the rain and the forest canopy, neither had any idea if they were going North, South, East or West. Scott spoke again, “I really think it is just the opposite of the direction you are picking.  It’s just a gut feeling, but I’m sure that it is our best chance”.  Russell, used to being the dominant one said, “ Nope, you’re wrong”.  “Lets start out now”.  Scott refused, saying he was sure about this direction. Russell immediately began to demean him, reminding him about a past experience where Scott had been wrong.  But this time Scott refused to change his mind.

“Damn you Scott, I’m trying to save us here – just follow behind me”.  Scott said no, but then came up with alternate plan – “look, why don’t we go our separate ways, keeping track of the trail we blaze by bending over foliage every few yards, and then we meet back here just before it starts to get dark”.  “That way we can cover more ground and if one of us finds a landmark we can both get out of this horrible mess”.

Russell was angry.  “Okay, I can see you don’t believe me.  Damn you then, go off in this God Forsaken Jungle on your own”.  “If I find a landmark and it’s too late, I’ll come back in the morning”.  “I’ll make sure I leave enough of a trail so you can follow me if you change your mind”.  “If you were smart you would come with me right now”.

They shook hands and wished each other good luck, dripping in the rain, then walked in opposite directions, neither looking back.  It was now three o’clock and Scott knew he could only hike for about two hours before he would have to return to beat the darkness.  He retied the cloth around his feet and made sure he bent ferns and branches as he started out.  The jungle was so dense that his progress was slow, sometimes having to go 50 yards or so out of his way to make any progress.  He started to doubt his choice.  He was glad when the two hours were up as he retraced his steps.  Maybe Russell would be waiting for him with good news.  Getting back was harder than he thought and he got off the trail he had blazed twice, but finally made it back as twilight fell.  No Russell, no sign that he had been there.

 
There was nothing to do but wait, try to survive the night and then hope Russell came back in the morning.  The night was horrible; there was constant rain, lighting flashes and roaring thunder.  With no watch, he had no idea of time.  During one flash he thought he saw some sort of animal.  The next flash showed it larger and closer.  He backed up against the tree where he was sheltered and grabbed a hanging vine.

The next flash showed nothing, but he thought he could hear the animal out to the side.  He grasped the vine, put his feet against the tree, and started to pull himself up.  After ten feet he swung onto a branch.  He looked below him when the next flash occurred.  There was nothing, but he was afraid to go down, so he spent a sleepless night hanging on to a huge limb. As day broke, he started to climb down, reaching for a thick vine that was not a vine. The viper’s fangs just missing his cheek as he dropped it.  Hands shaking he began yelling for Russell as he picked off the morning leeches.  After what he figured was a couple of hours he climbed down and started off, retracing his trail from before, once again praying – hoping that Russell would somehow follow.

Now he was hungry and thirsty, the ground seemed to soak up all the moisture and there were frogs and snakes in the scum covered ponds and puddles. Finally he found an open tree trunk and drank deeply – he tried chewing some plant stems but they were bitter and he had to spit them out.  The sun was just barely visible though the clouds, but the temperature went into the 90’s.  Soon he was dripping with sweat and his anxiety was rising.  His hopes that Russell had finally found a way and was looking for him were diminishing.  He wondered if he had made enough of a trail for Russell to find him.

“Why had they separated”?  “If I have to die out here, I don’t want to die alone.”  He thought he might find a stream and then could follow it towards a river, but there was nothing, just swamps with giant mangroves.  He was already exhausted but afraid to rest.  The undergrowth was so thick that he sometimes had to beat his naked arms against the vines and giant ferns to make a passageway.  Tears ran down his face as he thought about his wife, his two twin daughters and an infant son who would never know what happened to him.  Just like Michael Rockefeller.

The day passed, and he tried to remain calm and keep his head about him.  He often thought he heard noises behind him and almost broke into a run, but he knew that would be the final breakdown – the grip on is sanity releasing.  He was cut and bruised from falling over tangled roots and vines – insect bites covered his entire body – vermin finding his bloody sores.  His cloth wrapped feet were bleeding and painful to his touch – he was wretched, filthy with mud and stains. He could feel the leaches drilling his legs again and lice or something worse in his hair.  He even thought about suicide just to end this horror – if he had a knife he could slit his wrists.  He looked up to see if he could find a strong vine for a noose, but then thought about someone finding his remains, and he couldn’t bear that.  By then it was approaching darkness and his hysteria was to the point that he screamed out loud.  “Come and get me whatever is out there – I’m ready to die”.

Everything hurt so bad he finally resorted to crawling.  He found a tree he could just barely scale and climbed up to a fork.  He dreamed that he was at his own funeral, all his family and friends weeping around an empty coffin.  The usual platitudes “about God needing him home early” and  “that he died doing what he wanted” just made his skin crawl.  Sleeping fitfully with hope that this was all a bad dream, his body relaxed and he fell to the jungle floor just before daybreak – awakening to hell.

He figured this would be his last day, he would die tonight – he would welcome death just to get this incredible mental and physical pain over with. He could not believe that he had deteriorated so far in just four days.  The sun was finally up and he could finally see which was east and west.  He broke off a branch to use as a crutch and started in the same general direction. The jungle steamed and he was immediately thirsty, but he only found one large puddle, with a green froth over the top that was more like slime than scum.  He used his teeth to strain the water as he drank and then spit out the little worms, grit, moss and other muck that was left.  Staggering he fell into a hole and had real difficulty freeing himself from the clinging black mud that attached itself like glue – his one foot loosing its wrap – finally grabbing a mangrove root to get out. He crawled on, thinking of his family, tears running down his face. Ready to just lie still.  He felt shame, that he had put himself in this situation and was going to die from making foolish choices. He got up but then fell flat again, watching the insects crawling over him, knowing that in a few hours he would be their feast.  He had given up all hope.  He raised his head and could see that twilight was on its way.

Then he heard something – sounded like a diesel engine.  He yelled and screamed, but no one answered back.  The sound was starting to fade but he thought he could tell the direction. He mustered up all his strength and shuffled and crawled toward the diminishing sound.  Soon there was no sound at all and he wondered if he had been hallucinating.   After a couple of hundred yards he could see a clearing through the trees.  As he approached he recognized the slurry pipeline from the mine.  He was saved.  He fell to the earth and thanked God, sobbing as he realized he had been given a second chance to be with his family, friends and others who loved him.  It took him a day to stop crying, and he was afraid to go to sleep because his nightmares had him lost in the jungle again.

“And Russell. Here is what I think happened. He probably ended up a few miles from where Scott found the pipeline. My guess is he slipped and put his hand down and crushed a colorful poison dart frog or maybe disturbed a Papuan Death Adder – his hand and arm would have swollen in a manner of minutes. He probably staggered on making one last attempt to find help.  Eventually he would have laid on his side, eyes closing, feeling the poison completely the journey through his body – probably glad that it was over, and that death was here to take him.  In a week all that would be left was his skeleton, in six months nothing – all covered by the jungle verde.  He was never found despite an immediate search by 100’s of tribesmen and men from the mine and a week’s search by his friends and family, led by Scott.  Their original guides disappeared.

EPILOGUE:  The near death event changed Scott dramatically – he was quieter, not somber or sullen, but just more thoughtful – still had his grin and enthusiasm for life.  He lost any interest in the final two peaks.  Most of those who knew him said his value system had changed.   He now put his family above anything else – No more adventure vacations alone – the first to volunteer for any community or church projects. And he played by the rules realizing that they were there for a reason. He thought back occasionally on how different everything would have turned out if Russell and he had not always tried to always change the rules. He went to a psychiatrist for about a year to help him sleep and to also come to grips with what had happened to him in the jungle.

He was ask continually if he thought that God had heard and answered his prayers.  He replied quietly that he didn’t really know, but that he had thought a lot about it. He believed that God was not arbitrary, and so it was hard to explain his escape and not Russell’s. When ask to speak about his experience to church or community groups, he refused. He did know that the values he thought had defined him as a person were not his climbing accomplishments or career accolades, but the positive effect he could bring in service to others – especially to be a good father and husband.  As time went on his nightmares lessened, but he would still occasionally awake gasping for air, screaming, sure that he was back in the jungle with no hope.

 I think that I shall never see,

A poem as lovely as a tree.

What a crock.  Joyce Kilmer must have never had to do any tree trimming – flesh and clothing torn, dirty sweat running down his face, tree sap and gum clogging up every pore, bugs everywhere crawling all over him.

His last stanza says:

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

I’m glad he admitted that he was a fool.  He was born Alfred Joyce Kilmer in 1886 and decided that Joyce was a better first name than Al or maybe even Big Al.   What was he thinking? Thirty-One years later he died in World War One  - many think it was from a Hedgerow tree that fell on him to get even.

Trees have always had it in for me.  I have a long history of not getting along with the flora on this planet.  One of my worst incidents was at fourteen.  I was climbing over a fence with my Sears twelve gauge shotgun in hand, positive that the safety was on.  Just as I was straddling the highest rail, a branch reached up and pulled the trigger, sending buckshot past my face and blowing my straw hat off.  I was somewhat shaken by the lead pellets flying a couple of inches from my head – but I then knew the trees were after me.

From the 1^st grade on I fell out of almost every large tree that grew on our property, or shimmying down the trunks with bare legs – the bark cutting a road rash on the inside of my thighs.  Testing a dry branch with my foot that seemed stable, and then, as I put my full weight on it, collapsing like a trap door.  Walking underneath a pear tree with my friends, getting smacked on the head by a year old rotten fruit.  Building a tree house out of spare lumber borrowed from the neighbors – wedging the 2 x 4’s in the branches.  The floor, walls, and roof hammered together with bent rusty nails – then inviting all of my friends to come up and have a club meeting – only to have the entire cobbled up disaster crash to the ground, me the most injured.

And of course picking peaches, apples and pears in the fall. Attacked by green garden spiders with bodies the size of a fifty-cent piece – the second wave their cousins – yellow cat faced giants hoping that I would come within reach.  I exited several trees by jumping ten feet rather than come in close contact with these scary arachnids.

But did I stop interacting with these woody beasts, even though I was sure the entire tree kingdom was conspiring against me. I did stop for a short while when I had a Gardner.  It was a sign of status. But he was expensive and did not always do as I wanted.  So I decided to thin, trim, lace and prune the new growth that showed up.  Which in Southern California seemed to be about every other day.

There was one particular Eucalyptus tree that anxiously waited to do battle each year.   After several encounters, I named it Big Elmo.  Elmo was a huge sucker rising about 40 feet with three main branches – putting out limbs like the tentacles of a giant squid.  Fortunately I had a 30-foot extension ladder to contend with this monster.

I looked at my arsenal to get ready for battle.  New chain saw, thick extension cord, trimmers that looked like bolt cutters, hard hat with face mask, thick leather gloves, high topped steel toed boots, extension ladder, rope, and tree hooks to bring branches in – even new Levi’s and a tough long-sleeved shirt.  I was ready to go. I looked up to see that part of Elmo’s bark had twisted around the knots such as to create a face – a screaming gargoyle about twenty feet up – gave me the shivers.

I tilted the ladder up and finally pushed it through the foliage until it was leaning against one of the main branches.

I pulled on the rope and the telescoping top began moving up.  It would lock in place once the hook locks drop back a notch.  I started up; not noticing that one of the locks had not fastened. Up about 20 feet, I reached out to grab a branch to pull myself up.  As I did so some sort of many-legged hairy beast fell down my collar – I beat both hands against my neck, jumping up and down.  Bang, the one lock released and I was on an elevator trip down to a dirt nap.  I jumped just before the whole thing came crashing down, bruising my shoulder, skinning my arms.  I cursed the tree and the ladder, ripping off my shirt to find the black widow in side was smashed.  It was going to be a long afternoon.  Elmo’s leaves seemed to rustle in joyful excitement.

I reset the ladder, a bit uneven, but I was sure the bottom ends would bite into the soil as I climbed up – the top was on a thin limb out about four feet from one of the main branches.  I was approaching 18 feet when I switched my weight from one side to the other to push away a small limb.  Immediately the ladder flipped over, and I was suspended on the under side, my hands with a death grip on the rungs – eager sharp branches waiting my fall.  I finally swung in and locked my feet around the sides of the ladder and then down climbed until I could jump.

Okay, Okay, I said.  Its time to bring out the heavy hardware.  I got my electric chainsaw, plugged it in and started up the ladder.  Naturally the extension cord caught and separated. Back down the ladder, figure eight in the cord, ready to cut away. Up now about 25 feet, ready to sink the chain into a four-inch branch.  I lifted the saw above my head al la the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, revved the motor, and laid into the limb.  The chain immediately bucked back toward my face and leaped off its track, whacking my hard hat.

So down the ladder, get the tools, fix the chain, oil it, then back up again.  This time I gently started cutting on the limb.  Chain bound, but then came loose and I was on my way.  One problem, if you are using a chain saw with both hands, what do you hold on to.  Nothing, just good balance and technique – neither of which I possessed. My face shield had fallen off and I immediately had a face full of wet sticky sawdust, so it was down the ladder again to get some safety glasses.

As I descended a couple of steps, I could feel something crawling on my ear.  Surely it couldn’t be a fearsome Earwig? My mother had told me about these terrible centipede-like creatures.  Specifically she knew people where the earwig had burrowed into the ear canal – hence the earwig name.  She also said that sometimes they laid their eggs in the ear and then a bunch would hatch – the spawn heading for the brain.  But I was sure it wasn’t one of those terrible insects as I swatted at it.  I looked down, Agggghhhh, there was an earwig on my arm.  Then horror of horrors, I could feel another one in the shell of my ear.  Throwing the saw and ripping off my gloves, I grabbed my ear with my left hand, gripping the Wig just as it was moving toward my inner ear.  It promptly stung me on the finger with its rear pincers and I returned the bite by smashing it flat with all my strength.

Now I was nervous, earwigs travel in large numbers, don’t they?  I could fight off a bite, but what if one did burrow into my ear? Was my mother right? I finally rummaged around and got a pair of earplugs and some airport like earmuffs to protect myself. Not a fashion statement but I was safe, so I thought.  Now I was prepared, right up to the top of the ladder, chain saw in hand, reaching up to cut a limb going straight up.

That is when I accidentally bumped what I thought was a wasp’s nest – they came flying out – on the attack.  Bitten a couple of times, I slid down the ladder post-haste – they followed.  Not just your every day wasp, but some sort of black killer bee.  They chased me all the way to the front door – three more bites.  I hid in the garage for a while until they had gone.  I thought I’ll get some starter fluid and a fireplace lighter and set the nest on fire, but then I remembered the last time I had tried that –the tree and I both on fire and still got stung.   So I got the pressure washer out and drenched the entire tree.  It had now been an hour and I still hadn’t cut one limb.  It was time for real action.  I went up again ready for anything.  I did think perhaps I should have gotten the damage insurance on the chainsaw.

Being no fool, I kept one hand on the trunk and held the chainsaw over my head with the other, feet on the top rung -34 feet off the deck – not an easy balancing act.  Went okay at first, but then the six-inch limb twisted around toward me before it was cut all the way through, nicely sweeping me off the ladder top.  You do not want to start falling through limbs with a roaring chainsaw as your companion.  I flung the saw and fell about ten feet before stopping, upside down of course, my left leg painfully wedged in a crotch.  I thought, as I started to see if I could right myself, “what in the hell is the matter with you, do you have a death wish”?  I was scratched everywhere, my shirt and levi’s in tatters, filthy with tree sap, the chain saw bent to blazes – Elmo a clear victor.  I decided to climb down, (took about ten minutes to untangle myself) go get a Dr. Pepper and think this whole matter over.

I went into the house, got the largest glass I could find and filled it with crushed ice, then headed back to sit at the base of Elmo’s trunk.   I looked up, downhearted, bruised and beaten.  Dropped four tablets of Ibuprofen into my caffeinated drink, and took a big gulf. “Look Elmo, how about this, you let me trim the branches that are blocking our view, not with a chainsaw but with a regular tree saw and I’ll promise to fertilize every month”.  There was a slight shaking of the leaves as Big Elmo thought this over, and then the limbs seem to droop invitingly towards me.  And that was it, we had a truce, got along from that time on – I didn’t even see another earwig.  But as I thought about Joyce Kilmer’s poem, I think for me there is a more suitable ending.

The Lord God made many an angry tree

Each anxiously and eagerly waiting for me.

I got comfortable on the lawn, looking up into the Cosmos – the stars extremely bright.   My boy scout astronomy merit badge kicked in and I could easily identify the North Star, Little Dipper, Orion the Hunter, Cassiopeia, and Jupiter.

Like millions of others before me, I looked up in awe, thinking how insignificant I was in view of endless space.   But then as I thought about it, what did I really think of an infinite universe?  The scientists tell us that the universe is 13.2 billion years old with a diameter of 93 Billion light years – somehow those two figures looked suspect to me.   Light travels at 186,000 miles per second – 700 million miles an hour  – so when you toss something out like 93 billion light years, it just becomes a black mark on a paper and loses any significance.

Physicists and Astronomers also tell us the Universe is expanding, but not into what.   Those experts, along with NOVA shows on Quarks, black holes, the big bang theory, dark energy, wormholes, dark matter, nebula, star nurseries and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity just made me feel more confused.   The Hubble Telescope IMAX program humbled me and made me feel even less significant – showing graphically what the fabric of space looks like.   Supposedly the light we see from the Andromeda galaxy started heading this way millions of years ago.  The thought that it was just arriving now scrambled my brain.

Thinking about all that was out there depressed me.   I know that religious explanations for all this abound, but the immensity of the entire universe overwhelmed me.   I guess there is a plan, but it must be one hell of a plan if there are figures like 93 billion light years floating around.

So here I was on this warm summer night – trying to enjoy the starry heavens – but thoughts kept bouncing around in my head causing me minor anxiety.   I decided then and there just to enjoy the heavens and think pleasant thoughts, trying to be reasonably content with my life.  I thought back to my childhood that I had enjoyed so much – family outings, my first Flexible Flyer sled, tormenting my sisters, exchanging valentines, and making lifelong friends.   Then as I brought myself forward to about the third grade, the most significant memory of school came to me – Aunt Maud.

There are quite a few memorial people who come into your life if you think about it.   Parents, teachers, and friends – all who have a significant effect as you plug through life.   Certainly one of the earliest and best memories was of my Aunt Maud.   She lived about a block from the Central School where I was trying to get through third grade.   Since I was new and an out of towner, my normal insecurities heightened.   Didn’t know a soul in the small school and was nervous about trying to find new friends.   During the first month or so these feelings intensified.   I was chosen last for any athletic games and then completely bombed out, being the first to be eliminated in a Dodge Ball Tournament.   One bully told me I was such a loser I should paint an ‘L’ on my forehead.

I was at a Saturday night birthday gathering for one of my uncles – sitting by myself, thinking that I didn’t know my cousins very well – they were all older than me.   Aunt Maud saw me sitting alone and came over to sit beside me on the concrete stairs leading up to the kitchen.   She said: “How are you doing Joe, why aren’t you out playing night games and laughing with the others.   I looked up and lied, “Oh I just don’t feel like it tonight.”  Aunt Maud asked: “Are you sick?”  I said, “Just a little”, lying again.   “I want you to come and see me on Monday Joe, when you have lunch time at school.”  “Will you promise to do that for me?”  “Yes!” I said, “I’ll be over at noon.”

She had spoken to me as she always did, slow, soft and musical.   She could quiet the most restless child with her voice.  We went into the back yard and she had me look up at the sky.  “Do you know where the Milky Way is?” She said.   I didn’t, and she pointed it out to me – “What do you see?” She said.  “Well just lots of stars in the night.” They have always been there – God arranged them, she said.   But those in the Milky Way are special – they are starlight and stardust.

The next school day went as usual – I sat towards the back of my homeroom.   We were studying Geography.   The teacher ask me to come up and locate Greenland on the map.   I picked out Iceland and was immediately ridiculed by our instructor, Mr.  Taylor.   Of course then I had to stand up in front of the class as he ask me to identify Tasmania, Outer Mongolia, and Finland.   Now I was 0 for 4 and got to listen to the snickers of the other students as I slunk back to my seat, head down.

At noon I headed for Aunt Maud’s before anyone else could further shame me.   I trudged up the street kicking a rock  through the October leaves.   I felt like a failure – the only thing that saved me from being an outright dunce was math – numbers were always safe.

I climbed up the porch stairs and knocked on the kitchen door.   Aunt Maud softly said: “Come in,” and immediately let me know that I never had to knock again – to just come in.    She was tall and spare, dark hair with gray streaks – graceful wrinkles around her eyes – not pretty really, but beautiful like the pioneer women you see in old pictures.  She leaned down dressed in her clean blue pinafore apron to give me a hug – smelling of fresh bread – her hands cool and firm.  I took off my earmuffs, mittens, overshoes and coat and sat down at the kitchen table.   Cutting a slice off a freshly baked loaf of bread, she coated it from crust to crust with cream and then sprinkled sugar on top.   This was not my normal twenty-cent school lunch with mushy string beans.   It was the best delight in the world.   She had the second one ready as I finished the first.

“Tell me about your day, Joe,” as she looked at me with those tired pale blue eyes.   I said it was going okay, but she wasn’t buying it.  “No, Joe, really, tell me about school.”  I flinched and told her about being picked last and being a fool in Geography plus a bunch of other times that I felt like a loser.

She moved over close and took my face in her hands.  “Don’t ever think or say that, you are not, not now, not ever, and your time has not yet come.”  You remember that and that you are my favorite person in the world.   I want you to come up at least twice a week during your lunch period”.   She always looked directly in my eyes as she talked – and I could feel my concern and anxiety slip away.   I knew that I was loved.

And I did exactly as she ask – twice a week during third and part of fourth grade.   She always had that kind expression on her face with a slight smile, always had time to sit down with me, never hurried, always had a treat for me.   There was just something about her – her gaze exerted her faith in me when I had none in myself.

Even at the tender age of eight, I knew there was something magical about my Aunt Maud.   Somehow she built my confidence.   I did well in school, made friends, and was accepted by my classmates.   I eventually stopped going to see her except once every two weeks or so.   She seemed to know exactly the right questions to ask – most of the time she wanted to know how I felt – specific questions, not the typical “how are you”?  I didn’t understand then, not even now, how that soft voice and gaze brought such tranquility to me – and banished my phobias.   After going to see her, I felt that I could deal with whatever challenges faced me at school and home.   I liked the way she sat right next to me when we talked.   Each time there was fresh bread with cream and sugar, or if I was really lucky, fried potatoes with pieces of bacon mixed in.

I loved my Aunt – she was the kind of person that I wanted to grow up to be – everyone loved her – she never criticized, just helped each person to become their best self.   She never cared for herself – the time she spent with others went way beyond just caring, since it calmed and strengthened them.   I don’t know if she knew how special her gift was, I think she realized that in the encouragement she offered she gave away something of herself.   Other members of the family had had experiences similar to mine – as I found out later.

She died at 56 of a heart attack, when I was 15.   I’ve never cried so hard in my life.   At her funeral there were twice as many people as they had planned for – many that were unknown to the family but that had been touched by Aunt Maud.   One of the main speakers sobbed so violently that he could not find his voice and finally sat down.   I was sick that I had not gone to Aunt Maud and told her how much she had changed my life.   But somehow, I think she knew and would have probably been embarrassed by my praise.

As I lay on the lawn, I looked up the heavens again, with tears on my cheeks, thinking about the effect this marvelous woman had on me and many others.  The Universe was still there with its endless measurements and definitions.  But right now, as I looked at the Milky Way and thought about my Aunt Maud, all I could see was Starlight and Stardust.

The only Red River he had heard of was in Texas, North of the Brazos – 1300 miles long.  You may have seen the film of the same name starring John Wayne, Montgomery Cliff and Walter Brennan – one of the Duke’s all time greats.

With his third long neck in hand, Jeremy wandered over to have a look at the muddy river below. Impulsively he took out a business card – writing on the back – telling the finder to call if the card was found.  Then he dropped the card in, twisted the cap back on the bottle of Budweiser and tossed it in. The bottle bobbed up and down a few times then passed out of sight.  Jeremy started his Harley with that familiar roar, and moved on down the highway and out of our story.

His bottle floated slowly north, touching Western Minnesota before crossing into Canada. After 145 miles it arrived at Lake Winnipeg.  Then it was swept by the current across the lake and into the river again. After another 300 miles eastward the brown bottle dropped into Hudson Bay – a total journey of close to 1000 miles since Jeremy tossed it off the bridge. Once it entered the salt water of the Bay it might bob around for years before drifting northeast and out into the Atlantic proper.  Or it might float in the bay forever.

But this particular bottle swirled around for a couple of years until winds and currents carried it to the extreme south, into St. James Bay close to the mouth of the Rupert River.  It bumped up against an old water-logged worm-eaten plank (half in the water but preserved by pitch) and was trapped there. No one around to fish it out or read the message.

Hudson Bay is a huge inland body of water. It is about 900 miles long and around 425 wide, draining one-third of Canada’s watershed.  It averages 330 feet in depth, has a shoreline of 5800 miles, is fed by 60 rivers, and has, even today, only 12 villages. Ice forms in the fall and doesn’t melt until June. It outflows to the Arctic Ocean on the North and the Atlantic on the Northeast.  Eventually it became the namesake of the Hudson Bay Company who had the right to exclusively import furs to Europe.  The company became the largest landowner in North America, reaching all the way to Oregon – some 1.5 million square miles.

Dutchman Henry Hudson discovered the Bay in 1610. He had sailed above Norway, Finland, and Russia, and around Greenland looking for the Northwest Passage – all in past years.  He had also previously explored and mapped some of the east coast of the United States. In fact he sailed ninety miles past Manhattan up to what is modern-day Albany – the Hudson River eventually named for him.

This voyage he was in the Discovery, a small 38-foot ship with two masts – more like a large sloop. His goal, like many others, was to find a passage to the Orient.  He had previously tried earlier in the year to go north and west of Greenland, above Labrador.  Again this attempt was stopped by gigantic ice fields.  As he came down the coast he dropped into Hudson Bay – thinking it might finally be the route to the northern pacific. But being cautious he crept along the eastern shore finally ending up at the southern point of the Bay in late fall, called St. James Bay.

Ice trapped the ship in November and he spent much of 1611 bound in the ice, buffeted by a terrible winter. The crew barely survived the cold and lack of food – polar bears came slashing at the ship and were killed for their meat.  The Indians they met were hostile and refused to trade.

Warmer temperatures finally arrived in June, and the ice began to break up. Hudson wanted to go Northwest to see if he could still find a passage to China.  The thought of being the first to find the Northwest Passage clouded his reason much like a mountaineer going for the summit when he knows its too late in the day, and that he is risking death.

Captain Hudson was a hard taskmaster and saw his crew as inferiors.  He had worked his way up from cabin boy to captain and believed all should suffer the hardships he himself had borne.  Most of his crew of 22 were experienced, but many were ill and exhausted from the difficulties of the voyage – and frightened of the dangers that might be waiting  them – maybe never seeing England again.  A dispute over the future ended in yelling and threats and finally a separation of the crew into two factions.  The tension grew day after day.

Eventually the Discovery started Northwest to do further exploration, but after a few miles, thirteen of the crew mutinied, including Robert Juet, Hudson’s best friend and companion on his other three voyages.  They put he, his 15-year-old blond son, Peter, and seven crew members in a small boat. The sloop then headed northeast to meet the Atlantic at the entrance to the Bay, 700 miles to the north – their plan was to sail for England.

The marooned sailors were so desperate that they rowed after the ship trying to catch it – pleading to be taken aboard – Henry begging that at least his son be rescued – but to no avail.  In the year and a half that it took the mutineers to get back to England, the two ringleaders had died and only eight were finally put on trial.  Eventually they were found guilty of murder but never punished.  And no one came to explore Hudson Bay again for two generations – 54 years later.  Most
historians believe that Captain Hudson and the others died of exposure on the banks of the Bay.  But we know there is a different ending to the story.

So what really happened to Hudson, his teenage son and the other seven crew members?  Seated in the small rowboat with a few supplies and provisions – some flint muskets, fishing tackle, the clothes on their back, and a compass.  Think of how they must have felt?  They didn’t know where they were – no idea what surrounded them except the expanse of the Bay to the North.  They knew the mutineers would never come back and they could not expect any type of rescue.  Most historians think that Captain Hudson, his son and crew-members all died of exposure.  But we know there is a different ending to the story.

The rest of their lives was to be lived out on the banks of St. James Bay unless they could somehow to reach civilization.  Hudson was racked with misery and helplessness, especially knowing that his son would die out in this God forsaken wilderness on the shore of an inland sea.

They rowed back to their winter bivouac and set up a rough camp on shore.  Captain Hudson looked at his alternatives. They could row north along the shoreline and eventually out into the Atlantic, stopping along the way to hunt and find food, but the wind would be against them.  And, the small boat would never survive in the open ocean at the mouth of the Bay.  And it would take a very long time to creep along the top of the Bay, and then start down the western shore of eastern Canada and eventually to Nova Scotia, a journey of around 1800 miles.

Going west was into unknown territory, and no one knew what obstacles or hostile Indians they might meet – it was the great unknown.  Going south brought the same problems.

But going east and a bit south looked like the best chance. Hudson (who was a very good navigator, becoming a commander at age 26) thought that it might be a 300 Mile march before they crossed the St. Lawrence River into New Brunswick where there might be settlements.  Captain Hudson counseled with his men and son, but made the decision alone that they would start moving immediately, passing through what is Quebec today – populated by the Micmac, Algonquian, Cree and other Indian tribes.  They smashed and sunk the boat so the Indians wouldn’t have use of it and to make the Eastern decision a final one.  Four hundred years later Jeremy Jone’s note and beer bottle bumped up against the pitch covered wormwood plank – all that was left from the rowboat.

The first problem that faced Hudson was the health of three crewmen – everyone suffered from severe malnourishment – the hard tack biscuits and salted beef had long run out. Their only food was what they could kill and plants they might eat.  One crewman had gangrene in both feet from frostbite and could not walk. Another had come down with scurvy – hair, teeth and fingernails falling out, and in addition he was vomiting blood, yet another had broken a bone in his left leg.

The crew rigged a stretcher for the man with frostbite – the supplicating wounds smelled terrible and the men at the leg end of the stretcher had to be replaced often.  Hudson did not expect the man to live long since there were black streaks on both legs moving up to his knees.  The sailor with a broken leg was fitted with a splint and used a musket for a crutch. They moved away from the lake at a slow pace – about a half-mile an hour –blanket sacks containing all they could carry.

Hudson had calculated that they could reach the coast in two months, by the end of August.  It looked like rough country to cross and it was – tundra with pools of water and bogs everywhere, large rivers to ford or build rafts to cross.  And dense forests with tremendous undergrowth that required lots of detours.  There were no trails except for those made by animals.

Exhausted that first night they slumped down on pine needles in the deep forest, eating some dried Arctic Cod – collapsing into a deep sleep with no watch posted – not even a fire was made.  They put Gerd downwind so they wouldn’t have to smell the stench of his legs.

About two in the morning they heard a terrible scream.  They jumped up to see an immense Brown Bear drag Gerd by his putrid legs into the forest. They got their guns and followed the screams.  All of a sudden the screaming faded and then ceased.  There was no moon and the darkness made them wonder if the bear was lying in wait for them. They hurried back to camp, made a fire and set watches for the rest of the night.

The were all shaken the next morning, and Henry wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to take their chances in the boat.  But they had actually made more than five miles the first day.  For two more days they staggered on, making, accounting to Hudson’s calculations about eight miles a day.  But they were quickly wearing down and part of each day was needed for rest, trying to find some game, then preparing it to eat.

On fourth morning, Hein, the able seaman who had scurvy disappeared during his night watch – just a note scratched in the dirt that said he couldn’t go on, was dying, holding them back, and not to look for him.  They spent a half-day trying to find him, but then gave up.

Now they were down to seven after just four days.  Captain Hudson wondered if it might be better to just go back to the edge of the Bay and rest, maybe think about another alternative such as hiking North along the east side of the Bay, but he remembered the gigantic, unprovable rivers that they had seem from the ship on the way down.  And in talking with the remaining men, he decided that they were still on the best route.  They took the next day to rest – but bothered by mosquitoes and black flies that attacked despite their long hair and beards.

Over the next two days, they made better time, ten miles a day, built fires at night, and posted a watch.  Then they started to move on to higher ground.  Little did they know that they had three mountain ranges to climb and descend, including the Laurentains, which were 4000 feet high.

After a month, as they began to view the coming mountain range, Frans, with his broken leg, began to have real difficulty.  The splint on his leg would loosen because of his exertions – and the leg was obviously not healing.  He was also becoming weaker – falling several times each day.  But he survived several large river fords with the help of his companions. Then they came to a roaring gorge that was ferocious both in volume and speed of the water.  They went downstream about half mile looking for a ford with no luck and then turned upstream.  They ran into a 50-foot waterfall, but climbed around it since upriver was in the general direction they were moving.  Above the falls they found a two-foot log that had fallen 30-feet across a deep abyss.  Hein volunteered to help Frans.  The others crossed with some difficulty, and anxiously awaited to make sure the last two got to safety.

As they started across everything was fine until the midpoint of the log.  It shifted ever so slightly just as Frans was moving his rifle crutch ahead.  As the musket slipped off the side, he reached out for Hein and in a second they had both fallen, hanging precariously from the log’s branches. The others started out on hands and knees, but watched in horror as two finally lost their grip and fell into the ragging stream, bouncing against the rocks before being quickly sucked under and over the falls.

The remaining five men sat, tears streaming down, crushed by the loss of their friends and the hopelessness of their situation.  Captain Hudson figured that in a month they had covered about 110 miles.  “We have no other choice but to go on”, he said, even though he expected they would all be dead in another month.

For another 25 days they staggered on, continuing to live off the land by killing game and eating plants and leaves – they used the stinking skins of the animals they killed for clothing and blankets.  All this time they had not seen another person.  The shrieking of the wind was often joined by the howling of wolves at night.  It rained and snowed and hailed and froze daily, the sun rarely shown and they were wet most of the time.  Their situation was so bleak that they often thought that death would be a reward.

One of remaining crewman, Jan, had large open sores on his feet and legs – many times asking Hudson to just leave him.  They slowed their pace so he could keep up, and finally they got over the first mountain range.  Now they looked like scarecrows – skeletal, showing the effects of long-term exposure and malnutrition – filthy, clothes in tatters – feet bound in animal skins, matted hair and beards.

Bad luck continued to befall them as were climbing over an escarpment one day – jagged rocks the size of a row boat.  Jan suddenly gave out a cry and jumped back.  He had fang marks on his leg and another set on his cheek.  An eight-foot diamond-back rattler slithered away beneath a rock.

No one knew what to do – just watched as he screamed in pain, his leg and face eventually darkening as the venom spread.  The infection in his feet adding to the poison.  It took a day and a half for him to die, and crushed any hope that Hudson and Peter and the two crewmen had left.  But there was no other choice, either lie down and die or push on  – and so they did, at a fairly rapid pace of 10 miles a day – actually praying that death would come quickly.

They saw more game, and between the Mt. ranges there were streams and grasslands – even some berries.  They were making very good time and there was enough to eat and drink. They started to believe again that they might just make it.

Then their luck ran out.  As they came over a knoll, there was a hunting party of Abenaki Indians below.  The two remaining crew members immediately turned and ran back the way they had come.  Captain Hudson dropped to his knees, held his hands out, palms up, and motioned Peter to do the same. Both men were knocked flat by clubs that smashed into their backs.  In the meantime the Indian warriors were whooping and yelling as they chased Samuel and George, the final two crewmen.  The uproar increased, then there were a couple of shots and all was quiet.

Henry Hudson thought, as he lay there, his face in the dirt, that he had brought death to all who had followed him, and was about to lose his son.  If he could only barter his life to preserve Peter’s. The two were jerked up and roughly pushed forward.  The Indians looked in their eyes and pulled on their hair.  They both realized what had saved them for now – their blond hair and blue eyes. They traveled about three miles, all the time subjected to threatening gestures from the Indians.

They were tied and left in the open that afternoon and night.  No food, no water, no way to relieve themselves.  They were both stiff and half frozen in the morning.  Their conversation during the night was about dying gracefully – and praying for God to receive them. They had given up hope of any future life, praying that death would come quickly without torture.

Henry was lifted bodily to his feet the third day and marched away – down to the river, put in a birch bark canoe and was just able to turn his head to shout goodbye to his son as the canoe slipped downriver.  And that was the last anyone ever heard of Captain Henry Hudson.

Peter was given food and drink, but tied up at night.  The Indians seem to have lost interest in harming him, leaving his care to the squaws. He thought about all that had happened since they left England – wondering if anyone would ever know the fate of his father, himself and the crew.  And he thought if he had a chance he would try to take his own life – better that than to live out his existence among these savages.

And that is where we leave Peter, 15 years old, in the hands of the Abenaki Indians, in a remote area of what eventually became Quebec, still 120 miles from the eastern coast. Not sure if he and his father were killed or kept as slaves.  Their remains were never found.

But just one footnote.  When Mountain Men and Explorers finally fought their way up through central Quebec seventy-five years later, they ran into fierce Indians – but remarkably there were a few who had a golden hair and some with blue eyes.

Hudson’s Bay today is pretty much like it was in 1611 when Captain Hudson first saw it.  Almost no people live on its perimeter, and it is still a wild, cold, windy and savage country.

What where the chances of me becoming perfect?  Not a prayer – zilch, zero, nada – no chance at all.  If anything I was a shining example of imperfection on all fronts.  And I started to think, “does the Lord really expect perfection?”  You know, a perfect family, perfect child, perfect body, prefect job, perfect marriage, and even perfect faith.  The only perfect I knew were people that were a perfect pain in the rear end.

As a young boy my dad had told me, “You’ll never be perfect, son, but you can grow into someone I can be proud of if you work hard.”  He also had a few other things to say when he was unhappy with me, such as,  “I ought to send you to work for a year on a ranch in Wyoming,”  (I’d always viewed Wyoming as a place created for people to move away from) and, “I’ve never seen such a Numbskull kid,” and,  “Do you think you’ll ever amount to anything?”  All physiologically approved back in the 50’s.  I generally let his comments roll off my back assuming they were said in humor – but he certainly was letting me know that I wasn’t going to be prefect.  And as usual my mother backed him up reciting how imperfectly I had washed the dishes last night.

But, back to the church bench.  My eyes starting to glaze again, but my sleep was disturbed as I thought about the scripture. I wondered that if we are something other than perfect, could we still satisfy ourselves and the Lord – to strive towards being better than average and sometime, just sometimes, achieve excellence. That is how interpreted the Scripture in Matthew. I thought, even if we could achieve perfection, it leaves us nowhere to go but down as the next similar event in life rolls in. My daughter was a perfect straight A student in school, but she was stressed all the time because she couldn’t improve, only decrease her grades in the future and be seen as a failure – each time grades came out she was racked with Anxiety and Fear.  For most of us, a B+ is okay and sometimes a ‘C’ ain’t all that bad.  I got one in an Organizational Behavior class and it was a gift.

I thought, “do we each have a perfect dream in our minds that we are striving toward and then find that realizing that perfect dream is fleeting and unsatisfying?”  I thought about Hollywood and its cadre of the rich and famous – striving to get a bronze star on the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard.  What happens when they are replaced by a better looking, more talented competitor?  Or even one with better plastic surgery?  They thought their title as an Actor defined whom they were, along with that star imbedded in the marble on the Walk of Fame.  When that fame disappears, they have nothing to hold on to.  If perhaps our own dream is realized then we should enjoy it to the hilt that day, knowing that it will fade soon enough.

I have a friend who has had the same dream for 30 years. That dream is to become incredibly wealthy and sail to Tahiti with an all girl crew – a perfect life for him.  First of all, by the time he hits the monetary big time, the all girl crew will not be too interested in him as an aging geezer.  And since his wealth will be well known, every brother-in-law, shirttail relative, acquaintance, shallow friend and even non-shallow friends, all will want to borrow money or backing for their latest scheme.  Now he will have to worry about someone robbing his house or kidnapping his wife and children.  He won’t vacation without bodyguards protecting his family.  With his wealth, he will be a target to be the chairman of numerous charities (the real purpose is to have him be the main donor – and lead by example).  And if he doesn’t respond, he will be characterized as a ‘Scrooge’.

Religious and Political opportunities will abound – most of which he won’t want anything to do with.  Everyone whom he has had contact with will want something from him.  Acquaintances and even friends will secretly want him to fail – getting some perverse satisfaction of watching him go down.  So much for finally realizing a perfect dream of wealth.

What about Room For Error?  In being perfect there is no room for error in the future. If you get a perfect score on the college SAT’s, you are expected to get straight A’s all through college – there is no room on the upside and only failure on the downside.  You have to explain the slightest deviation/imperfection.  One way is about growth in the future and the other; ‘no room for error’.

We sometimes look at our own failures as someone else’s fault – we believe we are the victim in the mix– quickly looking for someone to blame and maybe make a profit from it. We try to escape any accountability and are always looking over our shoulder to see if we are going to be caught.   While on the other hand if we step up to take full responsibility for our actions, we can have much better peace of mind and life is easier to live – and its satisfying behavior. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a criminal who is caught red handed immediately confess his crime rather than lawyering up and doing everything he can to escape the consequences?

I also like to think of excellence as looking at what works and then try to enhance that.  If you are trying for perfection then it’s always a Right/Wrong – Good/Bad experience.  Its like trying to get a teenager to clean their room – it’s either completely clean or something else – usually something else – and leads to massive frustration.  Years ago I assigned my children duties to do each day – cleaning up the dishes was an example.  Many times I was irritated by them not completing the tasks – the harder I tried to get them to do everything on the list and have a perfect score, the more frustrated I became.  But when I worked with them, the results were much better.  It was easy for me to see what worked and what didn’t.  Trying to have them do everything perfect didn’t work – period.   Perfection calls for Right and Wrong, while excellence is understanding that if something doesn’t work there are other alternatives.

Here are some verses from Shelley’s “Ode To a Skylark”:

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are

Those that tell of saddest thought

The first two lines from Shelly’s stanza talk about concentrating on Before/After/Then/When – achieving perfection in our minds.  Where excellence requires us to live in ‘the Here and Now’ – to be conscious of where we are in life.  Can we live in the moment and not in our stories, memories or future plans. When someone says, “At least I have my memories,” I tend to think they have given up trying to see each day as a new adventure.

Really, the Process/Journey is everything.  The prize, say of summiting the Grand Teton faded very rapidly for me – my climbing ability was enough to get up, but was miles from being perfect. Maybe we need to try to make sure we enjoy the moment, not reviewing it over and over as a continuing reward. In trying to be Perfect, we tend to see ourselves as the results.  If we have a really cool car, like a Ferrari, we tend to think the red paint and the roar of the 12-cylinder engine is what defines us.  When someone is introduced, many times the occupation or success is mentioned right after the person’s name (“this is John, he is an Investment Banker for BankAmerica”).  I’ve never seen anyone introduced as an excellent father, fantastic grandson, or anything like that – much more important than being introduced as the President of Microsoft.

It seems to me that out of always trying to get to the point of perfection, (and holding on to it with a death grip) comes frustration, tension, anger, fear and confusion.  But doing the best we can, (sometimes with excellence) can come joy, ease, acceptance, fulfillment, and peace.

As these thoughts bounced around in my mind, I wondered what does all this mean?  That we should toss our goals away; knowing we can’t become perfect; thinking we can do anything significant?  I don’t think so.  To me, it means that we should try every day to be our most excellent self.  To realize that along life’s path there will be mistakes and heartache and many difficulties, but that is part of the journey.  That we will not always be able to reach our expectations  and that sometimes we really do need to be happy with our non-perfect results and live in the moment.  I believe that the short scripture in Matthew really means that.

The meeting was about over and I had spent most of it in tiring, complex and imperfect thoughts – exhausting really.  I slumped back in my pew, eyes gently closing, imperfect right there in church.  I decided then and there that I would rather continue my attempt to try to be slightly above average (with an occasional blip up towards excellence), and to leave the goal of perfection to others who understand Matthew better than I.

There are other Archangels  – Gabriel and Raphael are the two most mentioned in the Scriptures, but Michael is the most prominent – many believe that he is the destroyed many who heralds the return of the Savior.

But there is another Archangel.  This one has been destroyed many times over the centuries, spends a lot of each year in  semi-darkness, is bound by ice five months at a time, and has been leveled many times only to rise again from its ashes.  It is the city of Archangel in Far Northern Russia on the Barents Sea, just south of the Arctic Circle.

In the 12th century a group of Russian Orthodox Monks trudged north from Novorsok (an area east of Moscow) and founded a Monastery at the mouth of the Dina River where it flows north into the Ocean.  If you hiked north from the city onto the ice you would cross between Spitzenberg and Franz Joseph Land (both ice-covered, Franz Joseph with 191 islands and a total population of 9), touch the North Pole, then head south, eventually being greeted by Eskimos and Oil Workers on North Slope of Alaska.

The Monks, knowing that they would need all the help they could get, named their Monastery after Michael the Archangel – The trusted one of God – and the name of the settlement and eventual city became Archangel.

And help they did need, first the Norwegians, then the Finns, then other Russians came calling with axes, swords and all other manner of weapons time and time again. Eventually, Peter the Great pried St. Petersburg away from Sweden.  And Archangel was confined in trade only to what they could use themselves, reducing the population to near zero.

In the early 1900s first Lenin and then Stalin with efficient ruthlessness almost eliminated the population of the city again, perhaps because the residents strongly supported the White Guard over the Bolsheviks (Reds) during the Russian Revolution. They also destroyed the Monastery and any other churches in the area.During World War Two, when St. Petersburg was in the hands of the Germans, most of the Allied Aid came through Archangel. Its still a grim city to this day – surrounded by snow and ice much of the year and endless white birch trees.

Anyway, enough background. Our little Christmas story is located in Archangel in the middle 1800s – a long time ago – over the centuries Michael had always had a special spot in his heart for the city that carried his name, and looked in from time to time to see if he could be of help.

The central character in our tale is a ten-year-old girl named Lara – beautiful, with unusual blond hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones – maybe from a long ago Norwegian Conqueror– but similar to the Lara in Dr. Zhivago. The time is just before Christmas, the winter solstice,  darkest day of the year.The sun does not shine on that day this far north, just gray twilight and the northern lights streaking the sky.

It was now just six months since her mother had died, and her father spent all his time drinking.  Their cabin was out of town, a dacha that her father had broken into – on a little lake set back in the thick birch trees. Each day he sent Lara out to beg or steal food so they could survive. She could hear the wolves calling at night and some animal had left deep claw marks on their wooden door.

Lara was especially afraid of the wolves. She had heard the rumor of a family that was out in their Troika (Three Horse Sleigh) that was beset by wolves on the ice.  The horses galloped furiously but the wolves surrounded them, trying to bring them down.People in the town said they finally tossed the youngest child(Lara’s age) from the sled and escaped as the wolves fell upon her.Everyone said it was just a rumor and that she probably just fell, but Lara shivered at the thought.

Lara was thin, more like a rag doll, with a coat full of holes, an old gray scarf, no socks and shoes too large, stuffed with bark –a small gold cross on a thin chain around her neck – given to her from her mother on her eighth birthday. Her appearance made people pity her and give her something, but also shy away, not wanting their guilt to last as they passed her by.  She often thought about her mother, tears trickling and then freezing on her cheeks.  An old song kept ringing in her ears:

Bring me back my Momma, on this Christmas Day

For I’ve been so lonely since the Angels took her away.

You can give the other Girls, my dolls and candy too,

But bring me back my mama, that’s all I ask of you.

She wondered what would finally happen to her, if they ran completely out of food, or firewood to keep warm.Would death be better, with plenty to eat, and a warm hearth as the Church promised?   All she had been able to steal that day were two candles. She sagged against a building, her feet and hands tingling with frost. Please God, she whispered, please help me and my Dad.

God does hear all prayers, but this one he turned over to Michael.  Michael wanted to jump right in and provide everything Lara needed to get through the winter.  But the Lord reminded him that much of this life involved trials and that we were made stronger by undergoing them.

Michael wasn’t sure that he completely believed that, especially for those that were right on the edge of death and despair, so he decided to look in every day on Lara and see how she was doing.

Christmas Morning came and Lara’s father told her to go into town and beg, that people would be more generous on this day. He told her to go by the Monastery to see if the Monks would give her food.  It was bitter cold with a wind off the Sea Ice, but she did as she was ask and began wading through the snow the half mile to the main road that led into town.

Only one other set of footprints were in the snow and she tried to match the steps. Then she heard a sound, and at first thought it was just the tree limbs crackling with frost.  She was more than halfway from the cabin to the road anyway. Then she heard the noise again – behind and to the side.  Turning quickly she thought she caught a quick glance in the gloom of something grey in the trees.  The next noise was to her right and just a bit ahead.  Lara was frightened, the wolf story fresh in her mind.  Then she saw them, three on each side of her.  Heads down, eyes alert, mouths open, getting closer. As terrified as she was, she wondered if she was going to be the wolves’ Christmas present.

Her hands were too cold to try to climb a tree and she had nothing to defend herself, so she kept trudging though the snow.  She heard the whispering of feet behind her and quickly turned to see the largest wolf just 10 yards behind, crouching, getting ready to spring. As she started to run, losing one of her shoes, she thought her last thoughts – that except for the pain of the attack, she hoped she would soon be with her mother.

As the wolves closed in to render her body, Lara clutched her cross and knelt in the snow – praying.  Michael had seen enough. Nothing this little girl can experience from now on will make her stronger or a better saint.  And with an oath he came between Lara and the wolves in all his might and glory – his sword raised  high. The wolves were unimpressed and were gratified that  their meal would be even larger.  Then Michael smiled and with a terrible cry moved among them with the speed given only to an Archangel.Since it was Christmas he didn’t slay them, using only the flat, hard side of his sword to drive them off.

Then he turned to Lara, putting his robe around her.“Would you like to see your mother again?” he said.  She nodded, fearful tears still in her eyes. And with that, the Archangel Michael took her in his arms, and for now bade farewell to the city that bears his name – gently taking Lara from this earth to heaven – and into the waiting arms of her mother.

One of my fondest memories was my 1st Grade Teacher (there was no Kindergarten in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho) reading to us for a half hour each day (if we behaved ourselves).  It was “The Bears of Blue River”– a book I tracked down in my 60’s – still as good as I remembered it.  After a steady diet of Dick and Jane (I preferred their Dog Spot myself), I was ready for heavier material.

Do you remember, like I, that magical moment in early childhood, when The ink on the pages of a book gelled – that string of confused, alien ciphers —  pronounced with help from Phonics,  wove into meaning.  Now sentences spoke and gave up their secrets. At that moment, whole universes opened. For me that moment came in the second grade. I quickly found books to be one of my greatest sources of pleasure.  Still feel that way today – would like to read at least three hours a day if I can. Is it a habit? Absolutely. Does it provide a refuge from the stresses and daily irritations of life? Without question.  Sometimes, unfortunately, I find reading makes the real world a source of disappointment –life is generally not like the exciting adventures and accomplishments of the heroines and heroes we find in the pages, nor do people behave as nobly as the characters in literature.  Although sometimes it’s the opposite – we get to feel pain and disappointment and great sorrow as we read through the pages.

When we read we project our own imagination into the stories and the characters – escaping into a world more rewarding than the daily grind of life. Reading is not like seeing a movie (movies based on a good book are generally disappointing) or playing a video game, or surfing the Internet, or fooling with our phones – where everything is laid out without taxing our imagination.  These pastimes stimulate your emotions, but it just isn’t the same as a good book.

Heber City Utah’s Library made you wait for a library card until the third grade – then I began hauling books home in my highly polished Radio Flyer Wagon.  They were big and heavy – thick pages with hard covers – Huck Finn, Don Quixote, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Old Man and the Sea. The Wizard of Oz series was my first favorite. And then on to every volume of Tarzan of the Apes and Bomba the Jungle Boy. Then Kidnapped, Ivanhoe, and the Three Musketeers. Tried War and Peace, and then again in my twenties – gave up both times.

Alas the Measles struck me down in the third grade and I was confined to home – made to stay in a dark room, be quiet, nothing to do.  My mother made it a point to tell me not to read because it would ruin my eyes.  Naturally I took no notice of her recommendation, but I couldn’t escape her all-seeing eye during the day.  But, when bedtime had come and gone and the house quiet, I snuck out my trusty flashlight, got one of my favorite books from under the bed; (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, as I remember; ok, sometimes It was a comic book, “Tales of the Crypt,” was a much thumbed volume) and went “Under the Covers.”

As in most cases, my mom was right – two weeks of squinting Under The Covers changed my eyesight from 20/20 to about 20/150 – both eyes. I was blind as a bat.  The solution – glasses with Coke Bottle Bottom Lenses so thick and heavy they caused a permanent crick in my neck – falling off my nose to ding my feet. And of course, every schoolmate, friend or foe, was quick to call me Four-Eyes.  I paid dearly for my two weeks of self-indulgence under those covers.  Sports a disaster. Ask to leave my little league team because I was a danger to myself and other players.  I hit our coach in the back when I thought I was throwing to third.  Last to be picked for any team.  Plexiglas shield over my entire face for football. Not that I was much of a player anyway, but having my glasses bounce around while trying to look through a hand me down heavily scratched full face mask was a disaster.  I believe the coaches understood, glad to have me to blame as the scapegoat for a 2 –6 season our senior year.

After football that year – 1960 – I got hard contact lens. I wanted to look cool, be attractive to the girls – no more Mister Four-eyes. You had to get used to the pain over a couple of month period, so they said. It felt, from beginning to end, that there was a combination of sand and razor blades in my eyes. I looked like a red-eyed demon most of the time as my eye capillaries rebelled.  If you left the lenses in too long the pain faded as your cornea started to wear down, and then you had to keep your eyes closed for a couple of days to get them to heal – my doctor said it was just like snow blindness.  I gave up all hope next year in the army when the blowing sands of Fort Ord, California caused permanent corneal scratches. Periodic exams brought ever-thickening glasses until Lasik surgery showed up in the nineties and released me.

Anyway, lets take a quick look at where the delight of reading started?  The Archaeologists tell us that a spoken language goes back 6,000,000 years and written language six thousand.  Doesn’t it ever bug you that these so called experts are able to come up with such exact round numbers – Could it have been 5375 or 6234?  And six million for the start – how do they know when speech developed from grunts backed up by a club, to some caveman telling another, “hey Neanderthal brain, ”Your Mother Wears Combat Boots”.

Anyway its only since there was any sign of civil behavior do we find any writing.  The Sumerians started out with Logographs – round pieces of clay with signs, pictures and symbols – sort of hard to borrow a book from a friend, especially when he said, “Sure help yourself to the 300 stone pages in the back of the cave – better bring a 100 or so of your closest friends to haul them.  The Phoenicians had an alphabet of consonants with nothing between each word – tough reading..  The Greeks added vowels and formed essentially the alphabet we have today – most reading was done aloud – since the listeners couldn’t read.  Around 200 BC punctuation came into vogue with manuscripts from the Alexandria Library.

The medieval scribes separated upper and lower class letters, and the last major upgrade came around 900 AD with the installation of spaces between words, but most Kings, Queens, and Nobles still couldn’t read or write – just the clergy.

Our friend Johannes Gutenberg really was the savior and hero for all of we future readers.  Around 1439, he invented movable type and a press to mass-produce writings – 240 pages per hour – within a few years 30,000 bibles had been printed by he and others he trained.  Before that time you basically had to whack a priest over the head and steal the hand written scriptures that he had copied.  That was providing that you knew how to read, since the only people who could read anything were the monks, rabbis, Imams and other religious leaders.  There is a lot of history that shows the religious leaders were not particularly interested in having the unwashed rabble (us) be able to read.  You weren’t a God if you could read but you were close.  Surfs, peasants, slaves, women, etc. were supposed to know their place and that place meant not being able to read, period, – along with lots of other restrictions.

In some areas of the world writing and reading never took hold.  Lot of cultures just didn’t develop in that way – Polynesia, most of Africa, North and South Hemisphere Indians, Caribbean Islanders, Southern Chinese, Eskimos, Aborigines, many others – never developed a written language.  They have oral histories, but as you well know from hearing tales retold, the content can change very rapidly and so we tend to discount their validity.

Written language is very important, as it is a fundamental way of communicating, and doing so indirectly and over time. It is the main way civilizations accrue and record their technology, educate their citizens, and keep a historical record. This “collective wisdom” for lack of a better term is a hallmark of many great civilizations.  Its what we look for first.  It is a sad fact that 40% of the population of the United States falls below the basic literacy line.  Very Sad. Not only are they missing out on one of life’s greatest rewards, but the chance to get a good job, move up the employment ladder, or become a productive member of society is limited.

People read for many reasons – pleasure, instruction, research, self-improvement (I avoid these like the plague, the bible is enough for me), religious uplifting, and assignments in school (Law Books on Civil Procedure being the worst) – the list goes on and on.  Conversation can run dry, you can only play so many games or watch so much TV or lengthen your naps or surf the net or cuddle up with your iPhone.  For those of us who love to read, it is very much like a drug – which addicted readers cannot be without. We become irritable and apprehensive, mute and down faced without a book to grasp in our hands. The Kindle/Nook/iPad are of multi-functional use, but the true reader likes to turn the paper pages, feel their texture, smell the ink, and turn down corners to mark juicy passages or a stopping point. From The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to The Explanation of Quantum Physics by Stephen Hawking – each can be read with much excitement and satisfaction.

Reading does have some physical disadvantages if not careful – I have a lifelong habit of reading in the tub. Surrounded by warm water, a good light overhead, a sloped support and finally a comforting book. It’s a great way to prepare for sleep.  I do occasionally nod off however and the book and I slide underwater.  Even with aggressive squeezing, the pages expand to twice their normal size as they dry.  I’ve looked for waterproof books but apparently there is not much of a market for fools like myself.  The solution has been to borrow books from others.  However when I’ve ask to borrow a Kindle, my friends tend to look down their nose as if they have met something very disagreeable.

For a while I tried to read with a book on my steering wheel - glancing up from time to time to see where I was on the road. After all I had steered with my knees many times without any Fatalities while dialing phones, sipping a beverage, flossing my teeth, writing or other activities.

As you might guess reading led to the vehicle wandering a bit.  I finally gave up trying after seeing a biker jump off his bike and leap over a guard rail.  I had barely touched his bike with my mirror, so no big deal.  I also watched two joggers running towards me with panic, then terror, then dive into the brush since I was on the wrong side of the road about to hit them and go over the curb.  Most irksome was that I bent two rims, had a flat tire and two side scrapes and other road rash while traveling the highways and byways before quitting. Now I have to be content to listen to books on CD.

So, will there be books in heaven? Yes I’m quite sure, but I’m concerned there might be none in hell.  But just to hedge myself, I have a friend who has guaranteed me that at my burial (especially if he catches the scent of Brimstone) he will put in a tome or two.  I’ve requested that he fill the casket with all manner of books (for sure The Short Stories of Somerset Maugham, the Bible, All of Steinbeck and John Mortimer - but skip War and Peace) on extensive subjects, just in case. If he does as I ask, the Casket, the books, and me will top 500 pounds. My apologies to the pallbearers in advance.

The big event of the summer was Pleasant Grove Strawberry Days, which in the 1950′s included three parades, a rodeo, Monte Young’s carnival rides, and various games of chance. But, I found I did not have the ready capital to participate.  I was flat broke.  Pretty much my normal circumstance. I had to come up with some funds so as not to miss my favorite rides, the octopus and the tilt-a-whirl (35 cents each) and the other festivities – especially the games of chance – highly enjoyable, but expensive.

My dad came home one evening after ten hours on his backhoe.   He was in his usual irritable mood so I waited until he enjoyed an Unfiltered Camel outside after dinner, and had settled in his favorite chair with the paper.   I ask if there were any odd jobs around so I could make some money for the coming Strawberry Days celebration.  His countenance darkened and he pointed a finger at me.  “Any odd jobs that are around here for you to do are part of your responsibility to the family”. “Who do you think pays for this house, buys the food you eat and the clothes you wear”? Then he went on for 15 minutes about how no one knows how to work any more, and that the upcoming generation was composed of shiftless and lazy young people like myself. Then he started to head towards how he used to have to walk ten miles to school in Raft River, Idaho, in a blinding blizzard with only barbed wire for shoes.

I was getting ready to retreat when he said:  “Look, if you want to make some money go ask Mr. Paul (our neighbor) if you can pick cherries for him”.  Three Hundred pounds on a good day at 4 cents a pound – the orchard being right across the road.  I saw myself somewhat above the menial task of picking fruit, but to stay in good graces with my dad I decided to at least make a minor effort.  Plus twelve dollars a day sounded like a small fortune. To my surprise Mr. Paul said he’d hire me and to report to the orchard in the morning at 6:00 AM. Starting at that time was also a big negative, but I supposed we would get off early.

The next morning I presented myself – short-sleeved shirt (wrong) no hat (wrong), gym shorts (wrong), and tennis shoes (wrong).  I was quickly sent back across the road to get a long-sleeved shirt, a wide-brimmed hat, Levi’s, and work boots.

I was expecting some training but instead I was given a rusty 4-gallon bucket, a 25-foot ladder, a skyhook, and a bucket hook.  A tree awaited me about 50 feet away.  First the ladder. It was wide at the bottom (4 feet) and then narrowed to about a foot at the top.  The other supporting side was just a 25 foot two by four – naturally the entire apparatus was inherently unstable – I could tell right away that the ladder had it in for me.  The skyhook was a thick piece of rusty wire with the ends turned back on each other so as to make hooks.  The theory being that you took the six-foot skyhook and pulled cherry laden branches to you – the ones that were out of reach.  One of the older pickers yelled at me:  “You got the coffin ladder, look at the top where there is a dark red stain”.  “That is blood, not cherry juice, good luck, you’ll need it”. What was he talking about anyway?  I was a bit nervous because in looking at my fellow pickers I could see that they were an assortment of bullies, hooligans and the unemployable from my school.

I started away, stripping cherries from their branches until I had about 2 inches in the bottom of the bucket when the boss man showed up.  He looked up at me and shouted:  “What the hell are you doing”? “You aren’t picking without stems on, are you?” I said “no, although admitting I may have just got a few without stems”.  He looked at me suspiciously and hung around watching me pick for the next five minutes. Told me that any branches broken would be deducted from my pay.

But now the question was what to do with the two pounds of stem-less Bing cherries in the bucket.  I thought about going down the ladder and dumping them in the weeds, but then I thought, hey, these are fully ripe, almost black and luscious – who cared that they had been sprayed with DDT twice in the last month.  I’ll just eat the amount in the bottom and then start picking with stems on.  So I stuffed my mouth with cherries, wiping the reddish black juice on my sleeve, not caring if I occasionally swallowed a few pits.

Took about 15 minutes for the two pounds to disappear and about another 4 hours before the fireworks started. My Mom had told me that cherries are a rich source of a variety of vitamins and minerals such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, iron, magnesium and calcium (actually she didn’t say squat, but all of the above sounds impressive).  Cherries do unfortunately contain sorbitol, which is a type of sugar that isn’t digested or absorbed by the small intestine. As such, undigested sorbitol acts as a fermentation agent for the friendly bacteria in your large intestine, which then produces hydrogen gas and contributes to abdominal pain, cramps, bloating, flatulence and diarrhea.

I found that picking with the stems on was much slower, but I chugged away, thinking about the $12 dollars I was going to make on my first day.  The job was dirty, hot, and a dangerous with a good chance of being injured.  I found that the coffin ladder was so named because it had a strong tendency to tip if you got above the 5th step. As such I had continual difficulties, such as the ladder falling over while I was trying move it, forgetting that my half full pail was hooked to the top step, and watching my ladder crash over even when I wasn’t on it.

Hooking a branch just pulled the ladder towards the tree if I wasn’t very careful.  About three times a day the ladder would fall towards the limbs and I would be launched into the tree, there to fall to the ground taking a bunch of branches with me – landing in various positions – head first seemed to be a favorite.  Also the branches I was able to pull close with the hook sometimes broke, and the ladder back-lashed putting it into free fall the other direction, naturally tipping my bucket over as it hit the ground. I could usually get about half way down before jumping for my life.

Once the boss left all kinds of shenanigans began to take break out. I was picking away after an hour or so and something whizzed by my ear – I thought it was a bumblebee. The next thing I felt was a missive of some sort whack me amidships – right in the kidney.  The next got me just behind my ear.  I turned and found all nine other pickers were engaged in a welcoming me to the orchard by peppering me with cherries with the rapidity of Machine Gun Kelly.  I went down the ladder and hid behind my tree until their barrage stopped, although I had red splotches everywhere. I quickly learned that you bit a cherry in half, so it would splatter when hitting an opponent.

Every day when the boss left for a while, cherries were heaved by all hands.  There were a bunch of non picking activities such as peeing in each other’s lugs, stealing cherries, and taking broken branches and depositing them under someone else’s tree.  I was targeted as the main victim – seemed like everyone who came by kicked my ladder. Sometimes the ladder fell, sometimes it didn’t.  My only consolation was that some of my friends had worse jobs – digging ditches on the Gas Crew, toiling on the pea viner, a paper route; Lord forbid, or even worse, working for their fathers.

Around 10:00 AM the sorbitol began to manifest itself. I had a few cramps, but I ignored them as I ate my lunch under my tree – plus I added about 20 more cherries for desert. Thirty minutes later the abdominal pain could no longer be ignored and I went down my ladder as quick as I dared.  I sort of waddled and short-stepped with my legs together to our house, taking the back corner first.  Then it hit; I wasn’t going to make it.   I doffed my Levi’s and fertilized a four-foot fan behind me.  And I can tell you that using lawn blades as a substitute for toilet paper doesn’t cut it. After a half hour when I was fully evacuated I staggered back to the picking field.  One of my new friends wanted to know why I had hustled across the road in a crab-like motion. “Interpretive dance,” I told him remembering a phrase from our student teacher.  He looked at me as if I were both stupid and crazy.

At 2:00 PM the boss called for a halt for the day.  He weighed my lug and a half and pronounced 126 pounds.  Surely that couldn’t be correct After all my hard labor – $5.04 – 62 cents per hour. One of the other pickers took me aside and offered the advice that I perhaps might consider putting a few rocks in my lug as soon as I had cherries to cover them.  While not totally opposed to that increased weight method, I hardly thought it was worthy on my first day.

My fellow pickers chided me as to my ability. They would ask: “Was the bottom of my bucket covered yet? By lunch time did I have a hundred pounds picked”?  How many times had I fallen off the ladder?  Did I count the number of times I crashed into the tree branches?  Why was I afraid to stand on the very top step to pull limbs toward me”? Since I was the youngest in the orchard the comments stung, and there was not one thing I could do about it. All the other pickers were older and more experienced and tougher – and lets face it, I was afraid of them – bigger and nastier – they let me know that any retaliation on my part would end up with me being on the receiving end of a knuckle sandwich.

For two weeks I averaged a little over a 100 pounds a day and never saw anyone get close to 300.  But I saved cash of $44 and I was happy and well-funded for the carnival.  In fact I rode the Octopus 32 times, the Tilt-A-Whirl 27 and lost $21 on games of chance, eating the remaining balance in hot dogs and hamburgers.  I did try the Rock-O-Plane once, but threw up twice.  However, my dad had approving remarks for me, tempered by calling me Mr. Moneybags and letting me know that I was completely responsible for my school clothes.

As a well-known professional picker, I now moved on to pie cherries the week after the carnival, having spent myself back to zero again (the $44 and the carnival both down the road).  Actually, it was worse than zero because I had to borrow $4.75 from my mother the last day of the festivities. Pie cherries were sour and very juicy so I wasn’t tempted to partake.  Also, you picked with no stems (much easier).  Now my method of just ripping my hands through the branches and harvesting the cherries worked well and I got up to an average of 200 pounds per day, but only 3 cents per pound.

The pie cherries did have some disadvantages – they were juicy and the juice ran down your arms and sometimes your shirt collar – all now sticky and itchy. But I was making about what I had with the regular stemmed cherries.  The boss there stood for no nonsense whatsoever, but I sort of missed being harassed every day. Unfortunately the summer was only about half past after the cherry season, so what to do now?

I joined the beet crew, thinning sugar beets, but the first day I saw that the end of the rows were somewhere over the horizon. I was very discouraged, especially finding that you got only $.75 for each row. Plus there were other difficulties such as knowing a sugar beet from a weed.  You were given a short-handled hoe and you could injure your back for life by leaning over, or scuttle along on your knees with permanent leg damage.  I rotated each method but still couldn’t see the end of the row after an hour – in fact it appeared that the row ended somewhere beyond the curvature of the earth.

Then Mr. Sheba, who owned the field, came raging up behind me since I was unknowingly hoeing up the beets and leaving the weeds.  He screamed and swore at me in English and Japanese and seemed to want to start World War III right there in the field.  I was fired on the spot for gross incompetence and destroying sugar beets, then had to wait behind the crew truck until everyone was finished at 2:00 PM.  An example of many future embarrassing moments – eagerly awaiting me in life.  Apparently not too many hoers got fired the first morning.  An appeal for getting paid for my half row brought hilarious laughter.

During the end of July and the first of August I couldn’t find anyone who needed my talents, so my picking skills were going to waste.  Then my school friend Lee mentioned that his uncle was in need of pickers for Peaches, Apples and Pears. What was the compensation I wanted to know immediately – 20 cents a bushel, and with easy picking – 50 bushels a day.  Hey ten bucks a day sounded pretty good.  I was equipped with a large canvas bag with a strap around my shoulders – doubled back on its self to provide a sack to pick into. Then when you filled the sack up you undid a clip at the top and emptied the sack from the bottom into a bushel basket.

Well, same song, second verse. Took about an hour to pick three bushels, so the take was 60 cents an hour – 8-hour shift – back to $4.80 a day. But I had no other choice, so I jumped in.  Besides, no squirting juice, no one hucking fruit trying to kill me.  And the trees branches were lower, the ladders shorter. So for a month I plugged away replenishing my coffers.

At the end of the summer I vowed to move on to a better profession next year – easier, cleaner, better pay, maybe indoors, something where I could use my mind and not get tagged with a cherry in the face. Alas I spent the next three summers being a professional picker, with my father there to remind me that I shouldn’t even think about quitting.

At age 14 I joined him at the bottom of various sewer trenches as a Slave Laborer – same deal – hot, hard and dangerous – I didn’t miss being on the unsteady killer ladder that wanted to do me in, or the top branches of a 30 foot cherry tree reaching out for me like an angel of death, or getting pelted with a twenty cherries all at once. But some of the time I did miss the satisfying ring of those first picked cherries as they hit the bottom of the pail, then seeing the amount in my lug grow with each full bucket.  And I do still like a ripe Bing Cherry – but never more than a handful – stems on, of course.

Actually run the St. George Marathon?  26.2 miles. 385 yards.  39,525 steps, 138,336 feet. Senseless, Crazy, Sick.  No one would torture his body like that, let alone his mind.  You’d have to be brain-damaged, or on heavy drugs. I had long decided that I would never attempt a marathon.  And eight weeks later, as I staggered across the finish line, fighting pain in every muscle, joint and bone, I wondered “Why the Hell did I do this”?

I had learned better about running while striving to become a member of the high school track team.  I went out for the 440 and threw up at the 330 mark. Running, I well knew, was for health food nuts, deviates, masochism, and “legitimate” athletes.

But my two friends – chicken legs Mark with his fish-white non-tanned skin, and Stan, who had lost 50 pounds and his sense of humor while running, challenged me.  I figured that if these two pansies could run a marathon, anyone could, even me. And if I didn’t enter, I knew I would be listening to their exaggerated tales of training hardships and mile-by-mile marathon nostalgia for the next several years. Besides I found myself wondering if I had what it takes to run a marathon at age 40.

The first Sunday in August was blazing hot – 100 degrees plus.  I figured if I could run in the heat of the afternoon, there would be some hope for the marathon.  I ran and staggered for 13 minutes – one mile.  My heart was cracking 200 beats per minute.  There was no air left in my lungs.  I seriously considered calling the coroner and sparing my family the job.  I lay on the floor for 20 minutes before I got up enough stamina to see if there was blood in my sweat.

I must have done some cerebral damage with that first run because the next morning I started eight weeks of training – half a mile the first day, working up to six miles by the third week.  Each day got harder.  People lied to me; promised me all kinds of euphoria if I’d only keep at it.  It never happened.  No ectomorphy, no runner’s high, no out-of-body experience.  Nothing but pain, stiffness and boredom.  Even then, there was always intense guilt if I missed my daily run. I didn’t even lose weight during the first month.

After three weeks, my insane friends talked me into doing a 10-kilometer race, complete with warm-up exercises, breathing practice, even a skating stance.  The majority of these people were serious runners.  One nasty ultra thin guy ran backwards as he passed me by (just a little intimidation).  As I struggled mile after mile, the only people in sight were a 1st grader, an old guy, and two women who needed serious Weight Watchers assistance.  Among all men who ran the entire race, I finished dead last.  However, I beat the little girl and the two Weight Watchers; but they walked a lot.  The old guy just kept pulling away.

I really wanted to quit – the hell with the marathon.  Call off the insane battle.  You don’t even get a T-shirt unless you hit the marathon finish line within 6 hours.  There was no way I would be ready to finish a marathon inside a week.  The only reason I didn’t retire from running was that I had opened my big mouth and told everyone within hearing that I was going to be a marathoner. The kind of friends I have could have been counted on to remind me I was a quitter, for the rest of this life and into the next.  I kept running.  During week five it got less painful – I didn’t feel suicidal after each training run.  I made seven miles, then ten, and finally a fifteen miler up a canyon. The 26 miles began to seem almost possible.

The night before the ordeal you are supposed to “carbo load”.  A mythical, mystical eating ritual – spaghetti, baked potatoes, bread, or any carbohydrate that will sustain you after mile twenty when you “hit the wall”, and your body refuses to move one foot further.  Some other friends, who were too smart to run, regaled me with marathon horror stories – soiling ones self, bleeding feet, thighs, and nipples; vomiting blood and tissue; blood in the urine for months; permanent stress fractures in the legs; and riding the last ten miles in an ambulance while taking oxygen from a paramedic They emphasized that these were the sorts of things that happened in the course of a normal marathon to people who trained properly for a year or more.  My stomach churned those carbohydrates like a garbage disposal.

Friday was a sleepless night – the night before the marathon.  I arose at 4:00 am to apply Vaseline to my feet wondering why I hadn’t tried it in a practice run to see if it actually worked.  And then I went next door to the room of two girls who were going to run.  I thought I was in the main street gym.  They have everything from eye of newt to tongue of bat, for toughening skin, lubricating working parts and for protection from the elements.   While I had been busy learning that I would probably end up with bleeding feet, they were learning how to prevent it.

Everyone but me, on that 5 am bus looked like a greyhound.  I couldn’t see a single runner that I felt like I could blow off the road once we got going.

It was 33 degrees at Pine Valley above St. George when we got off the bus.  I thought my spit might freeze.  Roaring bonfires between long lines of portable toilets provided the only heat.  Several companions and I wore large garbage bags as capes trying to keep warm.  We looked like part of some “Hefty Bag” cult.  I could feel disdain coming from the “real” runners doing exotic stretching maneuvers. The fear of running that awesome distance does weird things to your innards.  The lines at the portable johns lengthened as the start approached.  People began frantic dives in the undergrowth, yelping as they hit barbed wire or a thorn covered brush.

You start the race according to your past accomplishments as a runner.  Of 1750 runners, my number was 1740.  Apparently they had heard of my lightning speed and durability.  Where I started there were a few people who looked a little less like greyhounds, some with as much fear in their eyes as mine.  When the gun went off, we were at the back of the pack.  Standing still waiting for the real runners to get moving and make way for us – it was four minutes before I crossed the starting line.  The first mile took twelve minutes.  I thought, “great, I’ll be there by Thanksgiving unless I pick up the pace.”  The first six miles were fun.  The three of us laughed joked and made obnoxious and deprecating remarks to the many runners passing us.

Climbing a mile long hill at mile seven, I noticed some people who were walking up were going faster than those of us running, so we walked on up.

At the halfway point I still felt pretty good, though the thought crossed my mind that some real runners had already finished.  When a companion needed a restroom break, I ran up the road three hundred yards and back while I was waiting. I got unbelievable looks as I ran against the grain. But after mile fifteen, pain began creeping in everywhere.  All talk stopped.  I walked a hundred yards at every 2 1/2 mile aid station and drank my Kool-Aid with aspirin for pain.  I began to wonder if there was a way to pull a “Rosie Ruiz”.  Was there any way to take a short cut, to hitch a ride or just outright cheat?”

Mile 20 began the start of a four-mile slight decline.  I hadn’t hit the wall, but my body was deteriorating badly.  I could feel squashing blisters, toenails coming loose and hip joints that felt like they had been lubricated with iron filings. Two friends ran back to help us finish the race.  They were fresh and merry, and I hated seeing their energy.  I thought, “I’ll never do this again.  I’ll take my running shoes off and throw them out the window of the car on the way home.”

At mile 24, my left foot felt like someone was driving a truck over it each time it hit the ground after pounding it down 19,762 times – any wonder? Pounding your feet, ankles, legs and thighs into the asphalt as if you were trying to kill these body parts.  Every step was intense pain.  My teeth ground involuntarily.  Then finally the finish line – people cheering and clapping, exultation and total exhaustion as I collapsed on the lawn.

I could barely walk, I couldn’t climb stairs for a week unless I did so backwards.  My left foot wouldn’t perform for a month.  But I had done it.  I had run a marathon.  Four hours, thirty minutes, fifty-nine seconds.  I had gone from hating to walk a block, to running a marathon after eight weeks of training.  There is life after 40 after all.

People have asked me about my life long running career after the marathon.  I did do some 5 and 10k’s with my family for a few years – every member of whom also hated running – but I had suffered, why shouldn’t they.  But run another marathon, surely you jest.

If we look in the Gospel of Mathew, we find that since the silver was blood-money it could not be used for anything to do with the temple. Here is the scripture (Mathew 27:3-8) that describes what happened. “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.  Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood. And they said: ‘what is that to us’ see thou to that.  And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.  And the chief priest took the silver pieces, and said, it is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took council, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in”.

So we see that after Judas was dead the Priests purchased a place for his burial – Potter’s Field.  Why that name?  Because this original Potter’s Field was where the artisans of that day dug clay to make their pots.  Hence Potter’s Field.  There are, of course, theories that the atonement and final crucifixion could not have happened without Judas in his role as betrayer – but that is a discussion for another time.

For me, wandering through the cemeteries even in full daylight is very interesting – looking at the dates when someone was born and died, wondering what they died of, what mark they had left on this planet, and viewing the inscriptions on the headstones.  Here are a couple of my favorites – “I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.” And,” Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”.

Let me relate a few of the experiences I have had as a cemetery buff – I’ve been lucky to visit some of the great cemeteries in the world – Genoa, Italy, New Orléans, Sleepy Hollow, Long Island and a few of the thousands of others in every town and city in this country – every community, no matter how small, has a cemetery – a boot hill, a graveyard, a final resting place.

I had a friend who had promised a relative that he would scatter the man’s ashes over the mountains.  No problem right?  I was invited to go along.  We were up at about 12,000 feet when my friend opened the window nearest him into the slipstream. You can guess what happened with the lid off the urn – trying to dump the ashes out the window. They came right back in a grey plume and completely covered us, the pilot, and the entire interior of the cabin.  We landed, got a vacuum and sucked the remains of Mr. Guy Roberts into the canister.  I’d say we got about 75% of him for the second ride up in the air.

When I was quite young, it was a kick to go through the cemetery on Halloween with my friends, scaring each other speechless along the way. Five of us were in the large Provo, Utah Cemetery wandering around when a huge shadow crossed a large white headstone next to us – as I looked back in rapid flight, I could see it was the shadow of a huge black stallion, at full gallop.  We had all started running as fast as we could with an occasional look back to see if anything was chasing us, when David fell into an open grave.  In those days they dug the grave a few days before the internment. Sure that he had fallen into the arms of Beelzebub, David was yelling, cursing and crying all at the same time, begging for help. Naturally we, as his good and loyal friends, went back to assist him.  Sorry, not likely. We were sprinting as fast as we could for the fence – horse or no horse.  David eventually got out but screamed out some rather nasty names for not coming to his aid, and swore never ending vengeance against all of us.

I think I got my fascination with cemeteries and Potter’s Fields from my Dad when I was quite ten years old.  We were down in Arizona along the Colorado River on a family vacation. He located an old Cemetery that the military had used.  There were sunken area’s defining graves where soldiers and others had been buried back in the 19th Century.  He proposed that I accompany him to dig up one of the graves, just to see what had happened after 100 years of a dry climate.  I was a little squeamish since some of my father’s other ventures had not turned out particularly well.

There was a full moon and we had shovels, picks and a crow bar – and not wanting any interference, we started about midnight – with just a dim flashlight.  After an hour of digging we hit the top of a collapsed coffin five feet down.  We carefully removed the dirt until we could see some bones.  Every sound made me jump.  One leg was missing, but there were military buttons and a ring, all covered in a green tarnish.  My Dad proposed that we load the “Colonel” up in a cardboard box and transport him back to Utah.

I showed my friends the remains “a la Tom Sawyer” for a minor charge. But then I did a little research at the library and found that the fine for digging up a body in a military cemetery was $25,000 – statute of limitations to run forever.  I convinced my dad that we should give the Colonel a decent burial and be rid of the loathsome thing.  I found he later just dumped the whole remains in a sewer trench he was back filling and called it good.  We’ll both probably have to answer for that some day.

In 1856 the great famine in Ireland reached its peak, over a million Irishmen died – primarily of starvation.  Britain controlled Ireland and dug trenches along the roads so that the indigent could be easily be tossed away unmarked and then the trenches filled.  And I believe everyone is aware of the French and also the English having city employees who roved the streets shouting: Bring Out Your Dead” during times of the Plague that wiped out a third of Europe.  All of those bodies were tossed into mass graves – Potter’s Fields.

I was in Bombay (now Mumbai) some time ago and I saw corpses laying along the road from the airport.  I ask a young Indian girl what happened to these bodies.  She pointed to a tall building where vultures circled around the top.  She explained that if there was no identification, the bodies were stripped and lain out for the birds to eat on the roof – a religious thing – probably the worst Potter’s Field I have run across.

So what if you are a serious climber and die on a remote mountain – and do not have anyone interested enough in you, or who has enough money to ship you home.  One alternative favored is to drop the body into a deep crevasse, so it falls out of sight.  Probably to be released from the foot of the glacier in a 1000 years or so after residing in an icy Potter’s Field. That is the practical solution if you are on a high mountain and it’s near impossible to bring the body down.  On Aconcagua (22,892 ft) your body is brought down by the climbing rangers (if possible) to the little Potter’s Field at the bottom of the mountain – no markers, nothing to tell people who was buried there.  Our guide made sure he took us there before we started the climb – it was sobering to say the least, especially since there were freshly turned graves.

Probably the most famous Potter’s Field in the World is Hart Island in Long Island Sound – with some sign of life for over 200 years – used as a Prison, Woman’s Insane Asylum, Tuberularium, Drug Debilitation and Boys Workhouse over its history. Hart Island is just above and east of City Island in Long Island Sound with the Bronx shore very close due East. Lost souls are buried in 45 of the 105 acres that compose the island, which is a mile long and varies in width from 1/16 of a mile to 1/3 of a mile.  The other 60 acres are the remains of broken concrete and decaying buildings, including a 50 foot tower with a Cross on one side and the word Peace on the other.  Through most of its history the unknown have been buried in roughly 1100 trenches.  Jail inhabitants from Rikers Island now do all the work in disposing of remains – paid at $.50 per hour.

The authorities figure that there are about 850,000 bodies there – growing every day as the inflow comes in from the city’s morgues and hospitals. It is the largest Potter’s Field in the World – unusual because most cities and towns incinerate the remains of the unidentified.  At Hart Island in the present day, the caskets are laid right next to each other; twenty-five across and then stacked on top one another two rows high.  Babies and small children are five coffins high and twenty across. In the past, remains were dug up and re-used after 25 years, which allowed for sufficient decomposition – sort of turned into new soil to be used as cover for new coffins.

There is also the medical waste stream to deal with – Huh?  The medical waste stream is all of the body parts that a hospital or morgue disposes of – say the intestines for a guy who has had a bowel resection or someone who has had a cancerous lung, fingers, toes or even bigger appendages taken.  These are categorized and sent to Hart’s Island in boxes – some small, some pretty large – a third of the souls on Hart’s Island are children.

Now I’m going to tell you a story about Hart’s Island – I’m not admitting that I went there or I didn’t go there.  I will say that there is a lengthy statute of limitations for trespassers.  The island is under the control and supervision of the Department of Corrections – NYC.  I’ve lived in New York three different times so you decide whether this happened or not.  After hearing stories about Hart Island, I researched it thoroughly and decided I wanted a look – really interesting cemetery. No one is allowed there, so attempting a visit in the daytime could have serious consequences.  I ask a couple of friends of mine to come along at night – their joint response was “Are you out of your mind”.  So I rented a row boat myself – easy to reach the island in about 30 minutes from the Bronx shore – I didn’t want the noise of an outboard motor or anything else that might alert people that the island had a night visitor.

There is a small pier but it’s only used during the day for a new load of remains.  The island inhabitants are the bodies of those who slipped into oblivion with no one to wish them well. I came at one a.m., moonless night, raining softly, no thought of being caught – who else would want to come out there at that time.  I felt as if I should have had Edgar Allen Poe sitting along side me.

I quickly rowed to the Island with nervous anticipation. I don’t have much of a belief in zombies, banshees, phantoms, vampires, ghouls or other undead performing necromantic rituals, but I did involuntary shudder as I walked down the dock. I just wanted to feel what it would be like to wander around where almost a million destitute people had reached their final rest. The only markers were row numbers, right next to each other.  I had a military flashlight with a narrow beam and I started to go up and down – walking through the remains of 150 years of burials.

I saw my first set of bones sticking out of the mud after just a few minutes, and then a second or so later my feet crunched something underneath – I didn’t look down.  Then rotting caskets, then rows and rows of those long gone.  Took about a half hour to go across the island.  I thought about the 800,000 plus souls that were buried, or in some cases partly buried – I stopped, turned off the light and became completely still, just to see if I could feel the spirits of those indigent souls that were underground or who had returned to the soil as they disintegrated.

At first I couldn’t hear or feel anything, just a heavy silence strained through the soft downfall of rain.  Then I began to hear whispers – or so I thought.  Those who had been murdered or abandoned or lost – just the faintest of murmurs. “Come Join Us” they seem to say. Those whispers made my neck hair stand straight out even though I was sure they weren’t real, but I started walking back to the pier.

I stopped again and turned off my light one more time.  This time the murmurs seem to say “Come With Us”.  That was enough for me – I turned on the light and began briskly walking back to the dock – of course I slipped and fell in the mud – on my hands and knees. Dropped the flashlight, the light went out, and I scrambled around in rain trying to find it. Almost had crossed the Island when I saw something through the darkness and rain about 100 yards to my left. It was a figure about six feet tall.  Didn’t move, just stood there.  It wasn’t any kind of a red-eyed demon with hood and cloak or any other monster. Just a specter, standing silently.  I shined my light that direction, but could only see the figure through the rain – just a quiet terror – I couldn’t really see what was there. I was really frightened, frightened enough that I made a bee line for my boat, running as fast as I could with a couple of falls along the way, shaking all the time, not daring to look back.

I grabbed the oars and pulled hard with my head down. Once I was away from the pier, I looked back to the island just to satisfy myself that it was only my imagination some sort of an awake dream.  But the figure was still there, and I rowed even faster.

And all those dead, forgotten by everyone, left alone, stacked upon one another – Unknown and Unwanted.  I could still feel their presence as I rowed away with all my strength.  Was it real or just my nervousness that activated what I heard and saw? It was real to me that night, I know that.  And I also know that I’m never going back for a second visit to Harts. So that was the end of my nighttime adventure with a nerve-racking finish that put up tremors in my hands and chills up my spine.

But I sometimes ponder all of those who ended up in a Potter’s Field somewhere. Poor Judas, the climbers at the bottom of a crevasse, and the millions of those buried in Potter’s Fields around the World – and especially the underground residents of Hart Island – no one but the ages to remember or morn them.

While I’m a believer that your soul doesn’t have much to do with your body as you depart this world, I still would like someone to visit my gravesite – hopefully to be remembered with fondness and humor, not forgotten in a Potter’s Field.