The rifle shot reverberated off the mountains of Southeast Alaska’s Admiralty Island and the acrid bite of gunpowder hung in the chilled air. Mark rushed to the deer, finding a crimson hole high on its shoulder and an unblinking eye peering at him. The momentary adrenaline rush faded and the mental recrimination intruded. He had promised himself never to shoot a deer near dusk a long way from camp. The edge of daylight was slipping away like an ebbing tide and Mark had a deer to gut and bone before he started his laden trek. Those tasks required at least an hour and this large buck would take longer. A race in the fading light.
What was he thinking? He had ranged farther than normal in pursuit of a deer, a result of not getting a clear shot in the prior three days of hunting. His two hunting partners, Luke and Travis, had shot nice bucks the day before. Mark pressured himself to get one since he had never been skunked in eight years of hunting with them. He was sure they were back at the cabin now, prepping dinner and questioning a gunshot so late in the day.
Would they think a brown bear jumped him? He saw a few bear tracks along the creek bank—nothing recent—but not exactly old either. The island’s remote wilderness possessed the densest population of brown bears in the world and he needed to keep his wits sharp with a few bears still roaming in mid-November.
Before inserting his knife in the deer, he knelt and spoke to it, a habit learned from his father, who in turn learned from Grandpa Jake. Grandpa’s hunting partner, a Chippewa named Royal, had imbued a reverence for all animals which passed down through Mark’s family. Royal had preached, “Let humility take precedent. Take only what you need—not want—and only when you’re ready.” Mark placed a hand on its fur and ran it along the deer’s back, an acknowledgment of his strong connection with the beauty and intelligence of his prey. “Thank you for sharing your life. May our spirits meet again.” He pulled his knife out of his pack and got to work.
After gutting the deer, he wiped his hands on the moss of a downed hemlock. Normally, Mark boned out the deer right next to the gut pile but those bear prints made him uneasy. If a bear honed in on the deer, he would leave the guts as an offering. Pulling the deer by its legs, he dragged the carcass 100 yards away where he had a clear view through the woods so he could see anything coming toward him—at least until the last ticks of daylight wound down. Mark dropped to his knees, his breath hanging in a fog from the exertion.
In the remaining light, he rummaged in his pack for his headlamp, a five-foot sheet of plastic, and large Ziploc bags. Dragging the deer onto the plastic provided a cleaner spot to do the more delicate work of cutting the meat from the bone. The last thing Mark wanted was to have to remove spruce needles, dirt, and moss from the meat. His cold fingers fumbled with the headlamp switch until the beam flashed on. He hoped the batteries lasted.
As he sliced meat and dropped it in Ziploc bags, the frustration of his late shot ruined his focus and he accidentally slit two bags open. Part way through, his headlamp beam flickered, the light growing dimmer with each passing minute. Shit. Mark always carried extra headlamp batteries but two days earlier at the cabin he discovered they must have been left at home along with an extra set of wool gloves he had set aside on his garage workbench. At the time, it was not an issue. Now, it could cost him his life.
It was decision time: pack out in the dark with a load, stay with the meat overnight and hike out at first light, or pack out in the dark without the meat and hike all the way back in the morning. None of them appealed to Mark and one choice, hiking back tomorrow, was not feasible because the plane was scheduled to pick them up before noon and there wouldn’t be enough time to get the meat and come back to camp. Luke and Travis would never let him live this one down.
He had already stumbled twice during the day’s hunt. Once descending a ridge while crossing a blowdown spruce, and a second time stepping in a hole, leaving him sprawled flat on the ground. Even though Mark had hunted this ground for several years with a good feel for the terrain, trying to cross it in the dark with an overweight pack would be a treacherous bone-breaker.
His option dwindled to spending the night with the meat, an act he had never done, and never contemplated. His foolish decision to shoot pushed him into this corner. The headlamp blinked again and he took it off his head, tapping it to determine if that helped. He elected to turn it off and put the lamp inside his jacket near his body to warm the batteries. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the deepening gloompressing in on him. He could make out the shapes of adjacent trees but beyond was a gray blur.
Mark’s heartbeat accelerated as he thought of the work to be done in short order before he lost the light and his batteries died. The last of the deer was butchered; it was sloppy work with backstrap mixed in with pieces of neck meat and other random chunks. He told himself not to worry about it—he could sort the cuts back in town. Reaching into his pack, he felt for the muslin game bags and yanked them out. Each of them had a large plastic trash bag inside. Thank God for plastic! He opened the bags and feeling for all the gallon Ziploc bags on his plastic sheet, he dropped them into the trash bags to keep any rain out and help trap the scent. He set those bags inside the stronger muslin bags for carrying.
What to do with the meat? It was too heavy and would take too long to hang. It would not be smart to keep the meat next to him if a bear smelled it. Mark turned the headlamp back on long enough to move the bags 75 yards away from him.
The headlamp twitched on and off, signaling its demise. Mark needed to find a spot to settle until morning—and fast. A hunter all his life, he was an experienced outdoorsman but this was all new to him. He felt like a strong swimmer caught for the first time in a riptide. To panic and fight the current could be fatal. An ancient spruce with a crook at the base angled from the hillside. Mark got on his knees and tested the space; he could sit with his back against the tree and have a slight bit of protection from wind and rain. It would have to do.
With his hands he felt in his pack for the necessary items—like reading braille. He found a lighter, paraffin fire starter, along with a thick gob of spruce sap that burned hot, and shoved them into his jacket pocket. A main problem was the lack of light to find dry wood, and enough to keep burning once he used his fire starter. The headlamp might be coaxed to produce precious minutes of dim light before it went dark for good. He scrabbled around on hands and knees feeling for dry kindling and small sticks, fortunate the overhanging spruce sheltered a few dry handfuls. With his face so close to the ground, the thick smell of humus filled his nostrils with an organic musk of moist decay. Maybe a fire isn’t critical—at least right now. It doesn’t need to be big. Enough to warm up when I really need it.
Mark liked the way he was thinking; logically working through each problem. A Ziploc came out of the pack with two granola bars, a half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich from lunch, and three Hershey Kisses. Not exactly a feast but enough to help keep his stomach from growling all night. Back in the pack he located the space blanket under a water bottle. Food. Water. Fire. Shelter—kind of.
Mark stood up and for the first time in his life was unable to chase away the dark. No moonlight to throw shadows. No fire to cast an orange gaze onto the trees. No flashlight to illuminate the way. He couldn’t make out the spruce 15 feet away.
Mark always had an uneasy relationship with night. He recalled his first childhood nightmares with ferocious animals roaming under the cloak of darkness. It was always a tiger or bear coming to his bedside, and he pulled the covers over his head to shield himself from their teeth and claws. On one occasion, Mark wandered the dark hallway, seeking refuge in his parent’s warm bed. He screamed as he bumped into a wall, frightening his parents. Shortly afterward, they installed three nightlights to guide him to their bed. They were the breadcrumbs he followed until Mark was safely nestled next to his mother where he fell asleep to his mom’s soft, rhythmic breathing.
Mark decided to stay awake as long as he could and paced in his small space. This way, he kept warm by moving and staved off sleep until exhausted. The cold seeping in would make sleeping short and uncomfortable. While it seemed silly for a grown man, it also kept his childhood demons at bay.
The illuminated dial on his watch indicated it was only 6:30 p.m. and there were at least 13 hours to kill before the hike back to the cabin began. Mark, Luke, and Travis had a pre-arranged signal if one of them was stuck in the woods. At 7:00 p.m. the person fired three rounds at 10-second intervals if he was okay. Two rounds if he was injured. Nobody ever needed to fire those shots until tonight and Mark watched the slow sweep of the watch hands until 7:00 p.m. arrived. He pointed his rifle skyward and the sharp bark of the gun rent the night like a giant tear in the fabric of the earth as it echoed in the hills. The sudden burst of muzzle flash in the blackness startled him as he began the ten-count. Two more shots, and silence until he heard a lone boom from Luke or Travis acknowledging him. The final communication with them.
He continued pacing, making a point not to look at his watch. Next, he marched in place until the routine bored him and he elected to stand on each leg for 20 seconds at a time. He counted 1000 arm extensions. Anything to break the monotony and keep warm. At 8:00 p.m. he wolfed down the last of the PBJ sandwich. His goal was to make it to at least 10:00 p.m. before settling into his spruce nook.
At 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. he peeled the aluminum foil from a Hershey’s Kiss and savored the chocolate melting on his tongue. One Kiss was reserved for the walk out. With nothing else to do, Mark folded the foil wrappers into squares and unfolded them until he sprinkled the tattered remnants on the forest floor.
He didn’t want to look at his watch anymore—the hands moved too slowly and it was paramount to get as comfortable as possible for the night ahead. There was no way he was going to lay prone on the ground. Too much cold from the damp soil would make for a longer night. Under the shelter of the overhanging spruce, Mark pulled the remaining items in his pack and deposited them in an extra trash bag next to him. Cocooned inside all his clothing, Helly Hansen rain pants and parka, with gloves on and a wool hat pulled low on his head, he placed the empty pack underneath his butt for insulation and sat on it. He tugged the space blanket tautly around himself, careful to seal the draft from entering, and wrapped his arms around his knees. It was now the small engine of his heart producing heat fighting the frigid air. He always had a healthy respect for bears, but at night, alone, cold, and hungry, Mark was in many ways no different than a bear in the woods.
The darkness enveloped him and at first it seemed so still. His ears were the gateway to sensing his surroundings and the darkness amplified his awareness. As he sat there, the breeze made a symphony of sound: the gentle rubbing of branches, the lilt of limbs swaying, the plaintive groan of a tree trunk. Mark grasped how he had taken light for granted. He thought back a few hundred years when activities ceased during the nocturnal hours without a candle or campfire.
To occupy his mind, Mark counted back 30 years toward his birth year in 1956, trying to recall one memory per year as far back as possible. Chuckling at the numbskull stunts he pulled in his teenage years, he flinched as a small mammal, likely a vole, scurried across his leg.
Back at the cabin, Mark imagined His hunting partners sated from eating venison steaks, downing the last of the Wild Turkey, and playing cribbage while he was in his self-imposed exile. The hissing light from the Coleman lantern and warmth of the cabin’s wood stove taunted him. Mark scuffed the ground with his foot in annoyance; his ego and competitive streak had got him into this predicament. He saw his grandfather’s grizzled face and the disapproving look from his dad.
Mark’s head tipped toward his hunched knees and he was asleep. How long? He didn’t know but he awakened to a loud crash not far away. Out of sleep’s haze, his first thought was a bear had eaten his meat and was coming after him. He instinctively reached for his rifle until he realized a branch aloft for more than a century had slammed to the forest floor. What were the odds if Mark had picked a spot, only to find he was underneath a Sword of Damocles? The search party would find him with his skull caved-in at the base of a spruce tree.
He flexed his fingers and toes, moved his feet in semi-circles—anything to keep blood flowing. The breeze died and a hush swept across the forest. Again, he nodded off for an undetermined time only to be startled by an animal skittering by. Had a pine marten smelled his meat? It could make a mess of things, and piss all over it. He debated getting up but there was nothing to be done in the all-encompassing darkness, swallowing him as if he were adrift in space.
Mark tilted between sleep and wakefulness from the penetrating chill. The wind picked up and his spine detected the tree’s vibration against it, along with the slight heave of the ground from the roots entrenched below him. The unrelenting life force of the forest surrounded him. He cursed the slow passage of time. It was as if he were counting each grain of sand as it passed through the waist of the hourglass. To keep busy, Mark swished his tongue around in his mouth clockwise and then counterclockwise until his jaw tired. Anything to distract him from the chill and his stomach’s churn.
His head canted toward the spruce trunk and he conked out again, dreaming of his wife, Katie, at home tending the kids by herself. She attempted to get their twins, Lonnie and Jack, to bed, and they scampered away. The crick in his neck awakened him. He stared into the unseeable ebony with the hulks of spruce and hemlock swaying and creaking one minute, and then quiet as ice forming on a muskeg pond. Anxious about the lecture he would receive from Katie, Mark wondered if he should tell her about his “overnighter.” If he didn’t ‘fess up, Luke and Travis were bound to fill Katie in on the details—a much worse scenario. A little hubris would have prevented this.
A spray of spruce needles landed on him, disturbing another stretch of sleep. Light drizzle turned to sleet and back to drizzle. Fat drops from the trees splattered on his space blanket. Perfect hypothermia weather. Two weeks earlier, a buddy in the Coast Guard helped rescue a stranded hunter who almost perished from the cold and damp.
He didn’t want to look at his watch but couldn’t help himself: 7:00 a.m.—at least an hour before the first glimmer of day. More time inched along and Mark figured the temperature bottomed out. He stood, dropped the space blanket, and straightened his cramped body. Mark’s teeth chattered until the muffled stamping of his feet and windmilling of arms returned a modicum of circulation. Time for a fire.
A cloud of exhaled breath was visible in the lighter’s flare. Light! His eyes adjusted and he placed the fire starter and kindling in a tiny lattice. The spruce sap bubbled and flickered as it ignited the branches. A reassuring crackle told him it was time to add a few more pieces. Mark huddled around the seething flame, rubbing his hands over it, knowing he didn’t have enough wood to burn more than ten minutes. The warmth crept through his arms, diffused into his core, and down his legs. It was the light, though, succoring him and lifting his spirits. The fog of an almost-sleepless night faded with each passing minute.
He held his bare hands over the dying embers, pulling the last of its warmth into his fingertips. It was time to move and he allowed himself the meager reward of a last granola bar and Hershey’s Kiss. The heavy swoop, swoop of raven’s wings coursing through the canopy a harbinger of the coming dawn.
Making his way to the meat cache, he was relieved to find it intact. Mark stuffed the meat into his empty backpack, swelling it to the brim. There was no room in the pack so he strapped excess gear to the outside and shoved loose items in his pockets.
The pack was overloaded and unwieldy with its load of meat. He got on the ground, slipped his arms through the shoulder straps, and rolled-twisted until he stood upright. As soon as he made out the outline of the nearby trees, he started walking, even if he could only walk to one tree before making out the next 20 feet ahead of him. It was as if he were crossing a creek on stepping-stones. After each step, the unkind pinch of straps reminded him of the painful slog back to camp. The act of moving and sensation of his muscles uncoiling from the long night dulled the discomfort.
Going uphill, he bent over for breath, calves burning. Downhill was worse; Mark took care to not tip over and pitch head-first, and used any tree he could find for support. With a rifle in one hand, his other hand clenched a thick branch for a walking stick to brace his descent. At one steep stretch, Mark elected to scooch on his ass, the slickness of his rain pants sliding over the moss.
Arriving at the base of a ridge, Mark recognized the small stream he knew to follow back to the cabin. The up-and-down of the hike was behind him. Muddy patches stiff from the cold crunched as he traversed them. Mark paused to lean against a tree and saw daybreak’s sluggish encroachment into the woods. His mind wandered back to the moment he pulled the trigger, a fateful decision forcing him to hunker on the edge of hypothermia in the pitch black. Mark staggered with each stride, his pack squeezing his shoulders. Now, it was as if he had shed his skin like a snake, leaving part of him behind forever.
Clearing the dim woods, he was renewed, absorbing the life beating within the forest. He splashed across a stream rimmed with ice. The faint light of day, slivering the gray sky, illuminated the way. A dull glow from the cabin’s lantern emanated from the window across the clearing. For a second, Mark looked back over his shoulder at the somber shadows in the woods, and forged ahead.
Move to the light. Always move to the light.
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Originally from the suburbs of New Jersey, Ken worked for the Forest Service in Alaska for 40 years. During the long, dark winters, He writes short stories.His fiction has appeared in descant, Cirque, Red Fez, Underwood Press, Poor Yorick, Woven Tale Press, descant, and Kansas City Voices. Ken’s stories have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. His collection of short stories, “Greyhound Cowboy and Other Stories,” is published by Cornerstone Press.
© 2026, Ken Post
Halfway Down the Stairs 