The Skeleton Tree

by Iain Lawrence

  As Chris says in this story, the world is not really all that empty. Here and there we came across campsites and shelters, even little cabins like the one the boys discover. Most seemed sad and forgotten, but one had an eerie wildness about it, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened there. I could never find that place again. I remember only that it’s somewhere in Alaska, and it was very much in my mind as I wrote this story. That part is true.

  So is the skeleton tree.

  Everywhere we went along the coast, we kept finding signs of ancient people. Huge hollows in the forest showed where their houses had been. Strange patterns of stones on the shore marked their old fish traps and clam gardens. Enormous cedar trees, maybe two thousand years old, were still scarred from the harvesting of planks and bark. It was as though the people had gone but the land remembered them.

  We saw the burial tree on one of our early voyages. It was a gnarled old thing with tangled branches, growing on a little island in a big harbor. It held three or four coffins of different sizes, their cedar boards split and silvered by the sun, their corners blackened by rot and lichen. The highest one was very small.

  According to the American author Charles Hallock, tree burials were once common in Alaska. He wrote about them, rather flippantly, in a book called Our New Alaska, Or, The Seward Purchase Vindicated: “Tree-burial is more in vogue in the interior than on the coast, a dry goods box, shoe box, or even a cask obtained from some trader, being a good enough coffin for the defunct remains.”

  The website North American Nations (nanations.com) says burial trees, or scaffolds for the dead, were used throughout America. On the coast, important people were sometimes laid to rest in whole canoes mounted high among the branches.

  There cannot be many of those burial trees left standing. On the West Coast, trees live a long time, but none lives forever. I feel fortunate to have seen one.

  If stories were people, The Skeleton Tree would be Oliver Twist. Off to a bad start, it got a couple of whippings along the way, but turned out all right in the end. At least, I think it did. I’m very pleased with this story, and thankful to everyone who helped it along. Especially, I’d like to thank Kate Sullivan, senior editor at Delacorte Press. She’s my Mr. Brownlow, the man who found an ailing Oliver and set him on the right path. But I’m grateful to many others as well: my agents, Danielle Egan-Miller and Joanna MacKenzie; Françoise Bui, my editor for many years; Kathleen Larkin of the Prince Rupert Library; Dr. Thomas Uhlig of Twin Cedars Veterinary Service; Beverly Horowitz and everyone else at Delacorte; my partner, Kristin Miller; my friends Bruce Wishart, Sheila Brooke, Darlene Mace and Joelle Anthony; my sister, Alysoun Wells; and everyone else who may have helped without knowing it, just by answering my many questions. Thank you, all of you.

  Iain Lawrence grew up moving all over Canada with his family. He worked in logging, fishing, and even as a forest-fire fighter before studying journalism in Vancouver and working at newspapers for ten years. He is the author of fifteen books for young readers and has received many accolades, including the Governor General’s Award and the California Young Reader Medal. He lives in the Gulf Islands with his companion, Kristin, and their dog and cat. He invites you to visit him online at iainlawrence.com.