Bigfoot Mountain

by Rod O'Grady

  Billy pondered this logic. ‘Less if you head straight up…’ He scratched his blond head. ‘OK.’

  ‘Good! You and me, up there! I have water.’ She hoisted her small red backpack onto her thin shoulders.

  ‘Smoke!’ Billy yelled, running straight up the trail towards the towering redwoods, pines and firs.

  Chapter Three

  They walked up the dusty hiking trail, hemmed in by dense forest either side. ‘Let’s cut up here,’ said Minnie and she jumped off the main trail and shot up a much smaller ‘game trail’. It was just a gap between scrubby low bushes and tall green grass made by animals pushing through the underbrush.

  Musto bounded on ahead. Their feet crunched on dry leaves and sticks that had dropped from the pine trees and redwoods around them. Stuff was always dropping from trees in the forest – bits of bark and sticks dislodged by birds and squirrels, dead insects floating down, loose pine needles blown by the wind. Minnie picked up a nice hefty stick from the trail. She bashed it against the nearest tree and it made a solid satisfying klunk. Somewhere in the woods she heard a woodpecker, making its distinctive drumming sound.

  ‘Ah hah!’ said Minnie, ‘the distant drumming of the yellow-bellied sapsucker.’

  ‘You’re a yellow-bellied sapsucker!’ said Billy.

  ‘No,’ said Minnie, ‘you’re a yellow-bellied sapsucker!’ This familiar exchange never failed to make them laugh.

  ‘You’re a yellow-bellied sapsucker,’ said Billy. ‘Is this a trail?’

  ‘Not a hiking trail, no,’ said Minnie.

  ‘Mom says I must stick to the trails.’

  ‘Well, it is a trail,’ said Minnie. ‘It’s a game trail. Look, deer prints.’ They stopped and examined the small hoof-prints in the soft ground.

  ‘They went that-a-way!’ said Billy.

  ‘Ya don’t say, Sherlock!’ said Minnie. They ran up the trail following the tracks. ‘Oh, a flutter of butterflies,’ said Minnie and they watched as the butterflies danced around each other, in a cloud of flittering, dipping, twisting white wings. ‘Flutter is the collective noun for butterflies, Billy, like a swarm of bees and a pride of lions.’

  ‘Mom says if a mountain lion approaches you should stop, stand your ground, make yourself big.’

  ‘Not much hope for you there, Billy-Bug.’

  ‘I’ll stand on a rock and roar like a lion!’

  ‘Reckon you could outrun a lion?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, I could!’ said Billy with his hands on his hips, feet planted wide like a brave warrior.

  ‘Dan says no lion’s been seen since people built cabins here,’ said Minnie. ‘They’ve got plenty to eat higher up.’

  ‘Ah, well, good. That’s good,’ said Billy, heading on up the hill. Minnie bent down, lifted a handful of pine needles and sniffed it.

  ‘Mm, I love this smell. Hey, Billy!’

  He stopped and looked back at Minnie who was now kneeling down with one ear to the ground.

  ‘Billy, do this.’ Billy did as he was told and knelt down putting his head to the earth. In the deepest voice Minnie could manage she said, ‘Stage coach passed by here, with … with four horses.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Billy.

  ‘Ask me how I know that,’ said Minnie, her head still pressed to the earth.

  ‘How do you know that? Can you hear their hooves galloping away?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Nope. It ran over my head!’ said Minnie. This made Billy laugh so much he rolled on his back, rocking from side to side holding his belly, cackling like a hyena. Minnie started to tickle him under his arms.

  ‘No! No!’ yelled Billy.

  ‘Woah there!’ Minnie stopped tickling him. ‘Billy! Look! What is that!?’ She pointed at the ground. Between them was a hollow in the dark-brown soil where the duff gave way to a muddy path.

  ‘Hey look. There’s something in this muddy path away from the duff,’ she said.

  ‘What’s duff?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Oh, Billy. Billy, Billy, Billy. Duff is this layer of old leaves, twigs, bits of bark and pine needles. You know, the brown stuff.’

  There was something curious about the shape of the hollow and Minnie crouched down to look more closely. She brushed some leaves out of the impression with her fingers and realised then what it was she was looking at – it was a footprint. It was a footprint of what looked like a human foot, but a human giant’s foot, because it was so very large. There was a big toe, and four distinct smaller toes. The big toe was about the size an imprint of a small lemon would leave if pressed into the mud. The pinkie toe was slightly spread away from the others like the foot had slipped slightly, and the toes had spread out for extra grip.

  ‘What is that?’ Billy asked quietly.

  ‘It is a footprint.’ They both peered at it. Minnie put her foot next to it. It was smaller than a third of the size of the print. ‘Wow. It’s huge!’

  ‘Minnie? Who made this?’ whispered Billy.

  ‘Dan?’ suggested Minnie.

  ‘Oh right, Dan.’

  ‘Must be Dan,’ said Minnie, ‘but I’ve never really noticed his feet were so big.’

  ‘Let’s run back and measure his feet,’ suggested Billy.

  ‘Yeah, we should,’ said Minnie, and Billy started off down the trail. ‘Wait, Billy! Let’s see if there’s any more!’

  They searched the trail. The forest was still. There was not a sound – no birds singing, no bees buzzing. Not a single creature seemed to be stirring. The wind had dropped to nothing and the forest was totally, totally silent. Billy took hold of Minnie’s sleeve.

  ‘So quiet,’ Minnie said. ‘Maybe a storm coming.’ They both looked up at the sky visible in patches between the towering pines. It was a clear pale blue and it seemed like the thundercloud across the bay had indeed blown north and not brought its rain to the mountain range.

  Minnie carefully stepped up the trail looking at the ground. About six feet up the trail she pointed to the ground. ‘Another one, left foot this time.’

  ‘Minnie, why would Dan walk in here with bare feet when there’s pinecones, and roots and ants…?’

  ‘And snakes.’ said Minnie.

  ‘I wanna go back now, Minnie.’

  ‘Here’s another one. Right foot this time.’ Minnie placed a long, thin stick next to the print and broke the end off in line with the big toe.

  Musto came running back to them from up the trail. He stopped, looked back the way he came, and sniffed the air, twitching his wet, black nostrils. He took a few steps backwards with his tail between his legs. Minnie noticed this somewhat odd behaviour but decided not to draw Billy’s attention to it as that might freak him out even more. Musto moved behind Minnie’s legs and she stroked his head.

  ‘Minnie, the hairs on my arms are standing up. That’s never happened before.’

  ‘Me neither.’ Minnie put a comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to mark this spot.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘So we can find it again!’ she said.

  ‘We don’t need to find it again. Let’s go!’

  Minnie pulled a twig out of the tall grass. It had a V-shaped hook to it and was stripped of its bark.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said, and she hung it from a low pine branch near the trail. ‘OK. Let’s go!’

  They ran back down the trail, leaping and bounding over roots and low scrub until they came to the main track down to the cabins. As they slowed to a walk, panting heavily, Minnie passed Billy the water bottle. He took a long slug of water, wiped his mouth on his arm and said, handing it back to her, ‘Minnie, did you get the feeling we were being watched?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ she answered. ‘Still got it.’

  ‘Run!’ Billy yelled, and they sprinted down the trail towards the cabins, squealing with a little bit of fear and a lot of excitement.

  They didn’t stop running until they reached Connie’s cabin. Minnie and Billy flopped down on the warm grass by the track, chests heaving, and didn’
t move until they got their breath back.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Minnie. They got to their feet and ran down past the garden and past Minnie’s tree to the cabin where Dan was working. Kneeling down and looking under the cabin, they could see just his legs on the other side. They crawled in under the raised floor, and they scrabbled across the dim and dusty space to the wall he was painting. Minnie reached out with the stick in her hand and tried to put it next to his boot to measure it. Just at that moment Dan climbed the ladder, and his foot was out of reach.

  ‘Shoot!’ exclaimed Minnie.

  ‘Hello? Where are you, Minnie?’ said Dan.

  ‘Oh, under the cabin.’

  ‘Why are you under the cabin?’

  ‘Because I have never been here before.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. And I fully intend to go everywhere!’

  Minnie had decided she’d work as a flight attendant while she was training to be a pilot. She thought this would please Dan, who used to be a pilot himself before he met Minnie’s mom, and anyway she wanted to see the whole world and flying is a good way to do that. When she was younger she’d wanted to fly transport planes and deliver things to people, like Santa Claus. Now she was older she liked the idea of delivering people to places, to reunite families and friends, in a superfast jumbo jet.

  ‘It would be more helpful if you dug up some potatoes from the garden for supper,’ said Dan, ‘There’s a fully functional fork!’

  ‘Uh huh,’ mumbled Minnie, as she and Billy crawled out from under the cabin, brushing away the clinging spider webs. She raised the stick up towards Dan’s boot, but he climbed even further up the ladder with his paint can and brush. She nudged Billy with her elbow and they shot off towards the main cabin.

  Dan caught sight of them as they ran between cabins. ‘Minnie! Potatoes!’

  In the cabin by the front door was a small cupboard with shelves for all their footwear. ‘Hold your breath, Billy, or you will die a ghastly death by suffocating intoxication, otherwise known as sneakerissimus-stinky-bumbakissimus.’ Minnie opened the door to the cupboard with a flourish and with the stick lifted out one of Dan’s sneakers.

  ‘Stinky bumbakissamus! Ha!’ Billy laughed as she put the sneakers on the floor. She put the thin stick next to one of them. The shoe came up to just over half the stick’s length.

  ‘Oh,’ said Minnie. ‘Darn. Now we have a mystery on our hands.’ But she had an idea what they might be dealing with and she turned to Billy, wagging the stick at him, and said the word. ‘Bigfoot.’

  ‘Sure is,’ said Billy. ‘But whose foot is it?’

  Chapter Four

  It was dusk. The sun had sunk behind clouds beyond the hills across the bay and Dan was sitting outside the cabin drinking a beer whilst cleaning his rifle. The water, though a deep blue-green by day, turned black at twilight, with just a few sparkling lights from passing boats in the bay.

  There was a silvery-blue glow from the living-room window. Minnie was at the table gazing at the laptop screen. She had a notepad beside her and she scribbled notes in it as she read.

  ‘Isn’t it time you turned in?’ Dan yelled from outside. ‘You’ve been on that thing for hours.’

  ‘Could be,’ she yelled back. ‘You tell me, you’re the grown-up.’

  ‘It’s time to turn in. What you looking at anyway? Homework stuff, I hope!’ Minnie shut the laptop.

  ‘Yeah, er, it’s the habits of migrating elephants! Fascinating!’

  She heard Dan outside repeat the phrase ‘migrating elephants’ but she couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe her or just thought it was a strange thing to study at school.

  Minnie pushed the chair back and went outside. As she came out onto the deck Dan sniffed and wiped his nose.

  ‘Hayfever?’ she asked. Dan blew his nose with a piece of paper towel, and continued wiping the gun oil off the rifle in his lap.

  ‘Uh huh,’ he said, as she sat down on the wooden bench next to his chair. ‘Grass pollen. Your mom used to make me drink ginger and garlic tea for it. I did not relish the taste I can tell you that.’

  ‘Dan? Can we do something together tomorrow?’

  Her question hung in the air a while, until Dan cleared his throat.

  ‘Hmm. Um … what, like, after school?’ asked Dan.

  ‘It’s a Saturday tomorrow and besides, Dan, it’s first day of summer break.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Really?’

  She shook her head, unable to comprehend how Dan could possibly not know it was summer break tomorrow – the most glorious date in the whole calendar, after Minnie’s birthday.

  ‘Like, erm, like … like do what?’ Dan asked.

  Minnie leaned back casually with her hands behind her head and said, ‘Oh, you know, go for a hike in the forest?’

  ‘A hike?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And maybe we could do some foraging.’

  ‘Foraging?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Mom used to hike in the forest and, you know, forage.’

  ‘Yeah. She did,’ said Dan. ‘She did.’

  ‘Maybe you could show me where she’d go?’

  Dan scratched his bristly beard. ‘She’d come back with mushrooms, wild onions, berries. She was always hoping to find some honey,’ he said. ‘She’d follow bees.’ He looked out across the water, and for a few moments was lost in the memory. He smiled. ‘Good for hayfever, local honey.’

  ‘And way tastier than ginger and garlic,’ said Minnie. ‘Let’s see what we can find tomorrow.’

  ‘OK,’ said Dan.

  Minnie climbed into her bed and lay there looking out of her window at the half moon that had just risen. It cast a silvery hue across the starlit sky and the walls of her room.

  She soon fell asleep. She dreamed about the day she and Dan had scattered her mother’s ashes out in the bay from canoes, while her mom’s friends stood on the jetty and watched. Then Dan had paddled off on his own, not looking back. In her dream, when she paddled back there was no one there on the jetty, and she had never felt more alone. And that was how she’d felt on the day, even with all her mom’s friends there – completely alone.

  While she stood on the jetty looking out across the bay, there came from the highest slopes of the mountain behind her, the loudest, longest howl, that echoed and echoed across the water. She woke up. The moon had moved round, and her room was dark, but that howl still echoed in her mind. Minnie climbed out of bed and stood at the window looking up at the mountain silhouetted against a million pinpricks of light in a curtain of night.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning Minnie was up early and was chomping on some toast and drinking a glass of fruit juice through a straw when Dan came out of the bedroom dressed in his usual jeans and a T-shirt. ‘Morning. Why are you up so early on a Saturday?’ he asked. ‘And first day of summer break?’

  ‘To get ready for our hike.’

  ‘Oh right. Our hike. You still want to go?’

  ‘Er, yes, I still want to go. When I decide to do something, I do it.’

  Minnie’s mom had always said, ‘Minnie if you decide to do something and it feels right in your gut, then do it!’ And hiking with Dan back up to that place felt right.

  ‘And how ready are you?’ asked Dan as he grabbed the glass coffee jar from the shelf and twisted it open. Minnie scribbled a final note in her little pad and flipped it shut.

  ‘Completely so,’ she said.

  ‘OK, well, let me grab some coffee,’ he said.

  ‘OK, but…’ and with a thud Minnie dumped a large red thermos flask on the table, ‘make it to go.’

  The blazing sunshine had warmed the earth and with the heat rose up forest odours of piny resin, flowering sweet-scented clover and earthy mud from the game trails. There was a slight breeze blowing in from the bay shifting the tops of the huge redwoods, pines, cedars and firs. Leaf litter and dust blew down from the trees at an angle and caught the sunlight like a shower of golden flakes falling in
slow motion. Dan and Minnie walked up the trail, both carrying small backpacks. Dan carried his rifle.

  ‘Why did you bring your gun, Dan? It’s not hunting season.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Mountain lion?’ she asked. ‘Bear?’

  ‘Just habit,’ he said. ‘Too low down for cat or bear.’ They walked on.

  ‘Is it true you can hear pine-cones popping open on a real hot day, Dan?’

  ‘White pines open to disperse the seeds when it’s warm and dry, then the cone drops. You can hear a cone drop on dry pine needles if you listen hard.’ They stopped and listened.

  ‘Wrong time of year,’ said Dan.

  ‘Let’s go this way,’ said Minnie, stepping off the main trail up the smaller trail she and Billy had taken the previous day. Her feet crunched softly on the leaves and pine needles under foot.

  ‘Some jack pines hold their cones for ten, twenty years, waiting for a fire,’ said Dan.

  ‘Won’t the fire burn up the cones?’ Minnie queried as she threw a pinecone at a tree.

  ‘Forest fires are driven by wind,’ Dan said. ‘The cone opens in the heat and the wind blows the seeds away, sometimes miles.’

  Minnie was looking down at the ground as she walked, and up in the trees. She slowed and stopped by the V-shaped twig she’d left hanging from the branch.

  ‘Fires are scary for animals,’ said Dan, ‘but they help clear choking underbrush for, you know, fresh healthy growth.’

  ‘Let’s take a break,’ she said, pulling the backpack off.

  ‘Here?’ asked Dan. ‘We just got started.’

  ‘Yup, I’m thirsty.’

  Dan was looking around warily at the trees, up the trail, all around.

  ‘Let’s sit, Dan. Here. Let’s sit here.’ Minnie sat down right where she was, by the first massive footprint, opening her backpack.

  ‘You sit. I’m fine,’ said Dan.

  ‘Come on, Dan.’ She patted the ground next to her as she took a swig from her water bottle. He looked at her quizzically. That’s when he saw it, right in front of Minnie, inches from her foot. He stared at the massive footprint.