A Place Called Grave Yard.

This is a story I wrote about my first time out on the Bering Sea and the discovery of a cannery in which all died in the 1918 plague.

The water is cloudy with silt as the river is pulled into the sea by the morning tide. Salty air, heavy with the scent of maritime life, stings my face. The sky is overcast as I climb into the old, faded grey wooden boat. This is the first fishing trip i took when I moved to King Salmon, Alaska some time ago, and I had been looking forward to it. As we set out on the current, the Bering Sea parts to the bow of the skiff. The captain sits proud and somewhat noble as he mans the rudder. He is an Aleut; his people have lived and fished this region for thousands of years; and it occurs to me that I am witness to the continuation of an ancient way of life. Was it like this for my ancestors, too? My bones seem to resonate with my thoughts. Yes, I think, very much so, it is woven in the fabric of my soul, too. Captain Pete’s enthusiastic words carry over the turbulent waves and the roaring motor. “Today’s a good fish day; they will hang in our nets like grapes for the picking.” I smile and gaze across the white capped water of the open sea. The spray from the choppy water as the boat skims through the waves rises as mist and seasons my lips with salt. With a hearty chuckle, I respond back, “So just where are we going to harvest these fishy grapes?” He points to a distant shoreline. “Graveyard.” He answers. I follow his gaze. I can just make out the spot looming in the distance under the stormy sky. The clouds drape themselves like a celestial blanket over the land in the distance. The view fills me with a sense of both excitement and mystery as I ask, “Why is it called Graveyard?” “Many reasons…you’ll see.” he replies.

As we approach, ghostly images take on the shape of broken grayish buildings solidifying from the foggy mist on the shore. There are old, tattered wooden pilings stretching outward from the beach; the remnants of an ancient dock. As we draw nearer, I can see a slough flowing alongside the dock; we pull up into its channel. “We’ll set the net here.” announces Pete. I throw the net’s anchor buoy out into the water, and together we set the twenty five fathoms of netting across the channel, corking up creek’s mouth. The fish are swimming with vigor, and before we are finished setting our net, the salmon are teeming it. We finish setting the net, moor the boat, and go ashore. It will be hours before the net is filled.

“Tides coming,” Pete says as he points out into they bay. “Do you see that mud bank?” I look to where he is pointing and see a great expanse of grey muck in the water that seems to extend for miles. I turn to him and notice a solemn expression cross his swarthy face. “In sailing times, the wooden boats got stuck in the mud and when the tide came in, they would be battered to pieces in the waves. You can’t walk on that mud; so in those times, many fishermen drowned here. That is one reason why this place is called graveyard.” I turn and point to the now solid grey buildings. “Was this a cannery?” I ask. “Yes,” he answers, “that’s another reason for the name; over two hundred souls perished here in the early nineteen hundreds.” We stand in silent respect taking in the moments of what was once a thriving cannery, each of us thinking our own thoughts. I wondered if those people had died in the 1918 Bird Flu Pandemic. The sea breeze courses its way through the place, rattling old wood and tin. I start toward the cannery; my curiosity on high. “Not yet,” he says, pointing down the beach, “Let’s go over here.”

A long trail of bear tracks stretches along the beach. “What do you see?” Pete asks me. “Bear tracks; two sets, one old, one fresh.” I answer. “Bears could be just ahead of us.” “Aren’t you afraid?” he asks. “I respect the bears, but no, I’m not afraid of them.” I respond. I note a look of approval in his dark eyes as he smiles his satisfaction of his new friend. We move on, following the trail. A cliff rises up to a summit of about fifty feet. It is clear that the wind and tide have been rapidly eroding this entire area. We stop and Pete says, “We are under the old cemetery. ” “What do you mean?” I ask. He makes a sweeping motion over about two hundred feet of washed beach area from the water’s edge to the start of the sheer cliff facing. “Global warming. ” He says. “Where we are now standing was once the old cemetery. But as the glaciers melt, the sea is rising and reclaiming the land.”

Pete makes the Sign of the Cross in the Russian Orthodox fashion and gestures up at the cliff. “Do you see it?” He asks. On the cliff, just below the summit, a coffin has worked its way loose and had rolled halfway down the side. The old wooden box is splintered and broken and the bones of a man long dead lie scattered down the embankment. A skeletal foot still wears a faded hand woven woolen sock. The grave marker bearing the still legible name of the deceased remained stubbornly rooted in the eroding soil at the cliff’s edge. The scene is somewhat macabre but somehow still fitting to this place. An unspoken decision passes silently between Pete and me. Pete digs a hole while I ascend the cliff and gather the bones. The man was of Norwegian decent. As I gather, I am standing poised between two worlds. I am intensely aware that I am touching an enigma; from some ancient past, my DNA A is intertwined with this mans’; as I, too, am of Norwegian decent. Here on this lonely shore on the Bering Sea, the essence of our common roots touch once more. How many generations of Norwegian fishermen have stood here before me bearing roots that tie me to this land? I reverently place my kinsman’s bones in the newly dug grave. Together, Pete and I silently cover him, separated by the privacy of our own thoughts and yet united in our mutual respect for this man. No matter what his life may have been like, good or evil, he is again at rest now. In other parts of the country, some minds would freak out at the sight; others would scream for the authorities; we let the moment pass and continued our walk up the beach, the wind and the waves are the only sounds we hear.

By Darren Lynn..

Author's Note

I have no formal training as a writer so I am interested in any critique

Reviews

[Vyctm]

The scenes you create are very vivid. I like the story you have created. It is well made and full in every sense. The sentences flowed.

As for the formal training. I believe you do not need to be trained to write. The training is done within the writer as he writes more and more. He notices what sounds good and what gets the most attention from the readers.