Excerpt

Many years ago, we made the decision to build a new home. Like is often the case, we needed to be out of our old home before the new home was completed. We arranged to stay with relatives between house-sitting opportunities. Our son was only two years old at the time, and we were concerned this disruption might be disturbing to him if we werent careful. We decided that we should try to have as many constants in his little life as possible. Specifically, we decided to lay down in his bed with him right before he fell asleep. We started off reading stories and saying prayers.

This tradition continued and evolved over the weeks, months and years. A year later, a baby brother joined in the ritual. Eventually, the story-reading was replaced with a little game that became known as True/False: I would tell a story from the past, and they would guess if it was a true story, or one I just made up.

This went on for years. It was great fun for all of us. We all marveled at how I could come up with an almost endless supply of stories real and fictitious every night, with no preparation. One night, after quite a few years of this practice, I suddenly and involuntarily ran out. My story bank was empty, without warning.

Despite this, we still spent a moment or two, talking and saying prayers with our sons when schedules allowed.

With the thought that some of these stories at least the true ones might be of interest to others, I set about to document them here. Many are adventures, ranging from youthful day-excursions to Boeing Canyon, to winter mountain climbs. Most are in the outdoors. But stories may also find their way indoors, even into the Boardroom.

So whoever you may be, may you enjoy these stories as much as I did in living them.

A portion of one of the stories:
Much of our time was spent simply living: cutting firewood, keeping the fire going, preparing food, going to the outhouse, and getting drinking water from the spring-fed creek. We decided to break up this routine by taking the snow machine up Cache Creek. To Mikes knowledge, nobody had gone very far up Cache Creek by snow machine, which added to the excitement. The plan was to load up our gear on the trailer behind the snow machine, ride upstream to a cabin owned by a friend of his, spend the night, and return home the next day.

I was excited and packed carefully. I was worried about being so far from the cabin in such frigid temperatures, so I put another pair of warm socks on inside my snow packs. I took my 35mm camera and a zoom lens, and put them in a day pack. Out of experience, not paranoia, Mike always takes a firearm with him. He asked me to carry a loaded pistol in my day pack.

Jake, the dog, was incredible. He instinctively knew what we wanted to do and oftentimes we just had to follow him as he ran ahead of us. We did this for quite a ways, but then we abruptly ran into a problem. Driving along the frozen river, the front of the snow machine suddenly broke through the ice and dropped in, hitting the ice on the other side of the hole. The snow machine stopped abruptly, throwing Mike against the plastic windshield. The cold had made it brittle, and it broke into a dozen pieces. He was lucky it didnt cut him or even decapitate him!

What had happened was that the river had frozen, then the water level dropped a few feet, and it froze again, leaving two layers of ice several feet apart with a layer of air in between. The top layer was not consistently strong enough to hold the weight of the snow machine and two people.

We adopted a strategy to deal with this. We would disconnect the trailer and Mike would drive upriver to scout out a safe route. He would then return, re-attach the trailer, Id climb on behind him, and off we would go. This process was repeated over and over and over again.

Finally, we got to the cabin. In Alaskan tradition, it was never locked, and it was always ready for immediate if not emergency occupancy. We walked in, I took off the day pack, and threw it against the wall. Mike looked at me, then ordered me to take off my outer clothes. I was bewildered, but he repeated the order forcefully. Meanwhile, he opened the woodstove door. It was all ready for a match. They leave the stove ready to be started, including preparing curly sticks by whittling a stick with a knife and leaving the curls of wood attached.

In a moment he had the fire started and water warming on top. He had me sit close to the fire, and I was soon drinking a hot beverage.

I had hypothermia. Mike could tell the moment I threw my daypack containing my camera, lens, and a loaded pistol against the wall. He knew I would never do this normally. Later, after consulting experts, they said my hypothermia had been quite advanced and death was not far off.