by Rod O'Grady
Though she had seen Dan tackle weeds from time to time, he clearly didn’t enjoy working in what had been her mother’s special place, and would quickly move on to do other chores.
A lot of the morning Minnie just lay on the grassy paths between the beds watching creepy crawlies or peering inside flowers at the beautiful shapes inside the petals. She could remember from school the words ‘stamen, carpel and sepal’ referring to parts of a flower but she couldn’t remember which was which. She grazed on juicy red tomatoes, peppery nasturtium leaves and sweet black caneberries. Reluctantly, and only because she was becoming really bored, she picked up the fork.
The soil was a very dark brown and heavy, and her arms soon began to ache. She lobbed the potatoes she dug up on to the path, each a yellowy nugget still dusted with the life-giving dark soil they’d fed off. Every worm she unearthed she collected up and moved to a safe spot where they wouldn’t be sliced by her fork.
After she’d dug enough potatoes she moved over to what smelt like the onion patch, but she couldn’t see any onions. She trod on something hard. It was a small wooden peg. She picked it up and rubbed the soil off it. One side was neatly carved flat with her mother’s handwriting on it. It read ‘Purple Stripe Garlic. Great sliced on a burger – see recipe 6’. Minnie searched for other pegs. She found two and suspected there were more hidden in the overgrown beds.
Each peg described the plant and what to do with it. ‘Parano Carrots – great juiced or in cake – see recipe 11’ and ‘Cherokee Purple Tomato – see recipe 9’. This thrilled her, and she immediately abandoned the digging, tossed the fork away and ran back to the cabin.
Up on the kitchen shelves were various recipe books, none of which Minnie had ever looked at, but among them she found what she was looking for. It was was a red ring binder. There, in her mother’s handwriting, were recipes, some with a laminated photo pulled from a magazine to show what it should look like, and each clearly numbered.
There were twenty recipes. Minnie pored over the words, hearing her mother’s voice in her head as she read. ‘Here’s what you do next – mix the chopped and fried wild onion with the breadcrumbs, the lean minced beef, the egg and the handful of Parmesan cheese by scrunching them together in your (washed) hands…’
‘Hey, Minnie! You ready for that hike?’ Dan called from outside.
A short while later Minnie and Dan were walking up the track towards Connie’s cabin. ‘You hear the wolves last night?’ asked Dan.
‘No. Sure they were wolves?’ asked Minnie.
‘Yes, I am. The wolf population north and over the mountain has just gone like, boo koo,’ said Dan.
‘Boo koo?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. It’s French for many. They eat a lot of meat. I hear they been killing the hell out of the big game.’
‘And with the fire on the other side…’ began Minnie.
‘Yeah, they’ve spread over this side. The one I heard was way north of here, but still.’
‘Billy!’ yelled Minnie.
‘Don’t yell like that. Knock on the door,’ said Dan, ‘you know, like a normal person.’
‘I always yell. For me that’s normal.’ Billy appeared at the screen door and Musto bundled out behind him, ever pleased to have visitors.
‘Billy-Bug, you wanna come? We’re going up to you-know-where.’
‘Oh, are you? Er, no thanks. I’ve got a math project to start, well, to finish,’ said Billy. ‘Well, I haven’t started it, but I need to finish it.’
‘Math project?’ asked Minnie.
‘Uh huh. Math. Big summer project,’ said Billy. ‘I like math.’
‘Math project my foot!’ said Minnie, stomping her foot on the deck.
‘Summer math project,’ mumbled Billy.
‘OK if we take Musto?’ asked Dan.
‘Please take Musto with you,’ said Billy. ‘He’s bored.’ Musto was wagging his tail so much his whole body bent in the middle, one way then the other.
‘Thanks,’ said Dan.
Minnie was giving Billy, her one and only playmate and very best friend, the ‘old skunk-eye’. Billy, knowing her so well, said, ‘I hate to disappoint, but…’
‘Well, ya did,’ said Minnie and she headed up the track.
‘See ya later,’ said Dan. ‘Let’s go, Musto!’
They walked quickly up the trail, with Musto running on ahead. The dog knew to peel off the hiking trail and follow the path they’d made through the brush to the footprints. Minnie and Dan followed Musto, striding up the meandering path beneath the pines and soon the three of them stood together looking down at the prints. ‘Shouldn’t we cast them?’ asked Minnie.
‘But they’re on a slope,’ said Dan. ‘Wouldn’t the plaster just flow out one end?’
‘Oh yeah. Unless we built like, a box around them.’
‘Good idea,’ said Dan as he knelt, taking a tape measure out of his pocket.
‘Oh, so you know about casting plaster prints of Bigfoots now, Dan?’
‘Suspected Bigfoots. I might have read something about it,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘And we have seventeen inches. Wow.’
‘Ha! Hey, maybe we’ll find some more on a flat part of the trail. Come on, Dan.’ They continued on their way. After about twenty minutes of following game trails up the slope they rounded a bend and it opened on to a small sloping meadow with about thirty pale, elegant aspen trees grouped near the centre. Beyond them the forest continued and it was darker and even denser than the part they’d just walked through. They strolled through the stand of aspens, their small flat leaves trembling in the breeze. Minnie suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Dan. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’
‘What are you seeing?’ asked Dan.
‘An X.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Don’t you see it? There, Dan.’ Dan peered into the shade of the tree line. And then he saw it. The slim trunks of two pine trees had together somehow formed a perfectly symmetrical X.
‘Nice.’
‘Nice? Nice, Dan? That marks the beginning. Follow me.’
Musto had already run on ahead into the trees and they could hear him crashing through the underbrush. ‘Musto!’ yelled Minnie. ‘He must be chasing a squirrel.’
They moved through the stand of white aspens. Minnie exclaimed, ‘Bender!’
‘Excuse me?’ said Dan.
Minnie had her notepad open. ‘Look. A bent-over tree or branch making a pinned arch, to indicate the way to go. Sometimes, but not always indicating the way to go. But here it does because … look!’
She pointed in the direction the bent tree was pointing and it was right at the X in the tree line. ‘According to my research, as we go futher up the mountain we will see more and more of these, Dan. Bender! Check!’
Dan inspected the slim white-trunked aspen. The tip of the tree seemed to have been bent over and another heavy dead branch had been placed on the thin end to keep it touching the ground. ‘A person could have done that,’ he said.
‘A person could have done that,’ said Minnie, ‘but why?’
They walked towards the X. Standing underneath the two crossed pine trees Minnie said, ‘Dan, if we go straight on up from here I guarantee there will be more Xs and tree structures. Are you ready for this?’
‘What is that smell?’ Dan said, looking down at the ground. ‘Oh. We’re standing on wild onion.’ He bent down and pulled up a green leaf, bit into it and walked over to the base of the trunk of one of the trees in the X.
‘This is just storm damage, and they’ve somehow fallen across each other and…’
‘What is it?’ asked Minnie.
‘There’s no root ball. No roots on it.’ He walked over to the other tree in the X. ‘And they haven’t been cut. They’ve broken in a storm maybe and then, somehow…’
‘Yes?’ said Minnie.
‘Somehow ended up here, in this … this X.’
‘See Dan, how the bark and the branches have all been s
tripped off,’ said Minnie, ‘Would or could men have done this, Dan?’
‘Erm… Yes, by lifting them with ropes and pulleys.’
‘But, again, why? What you don’t yet get, Dan, is that the same tree structures show up all over North America, wherever there have been sightings of Bigfoots. I expect to see the following…’
It was nearing evening now and under the dense shaded canopy of pine branches and cedars her notes were harder to read. She coughed to clear her throat then read out loud, ‘Xs, teepees, benders, leaners, tridents, breaks, blinds, glyphs and wallows. Not taking notes, Dan? OK. These are terms used by field researchers like me to name all the different structures that Sasquatches make.’
‘I don’t need to takes notes. I got this.’ Dan snapped a photo of Minnie, standing under the X, with his phone. She smiled as he took the picture. Dan looked up at the X and then past Minnie into the dense brush and trees behind her. He called out, ‘Musto! Where is that dog?’
Just then Minnie felt a kind of fizzing excitement in her chest, a feeling like being full of light, full of happy energy, and she couldn’t stop grinning and she couldn’t stop tears coming to her eyes. It felt like her mother was with her, right now in this most beautiful forest, the one that Minnie would always return to from wherever her spirit took her on her life journey. She felt as if the steps she was taking now, with the man who had made her mother the happiest she had ever seen her, were the most important steps she had ever taken in her twelve years on this planet. And she somehow knew that whatever was waiting for her further up this mountain, maybe today or another day soon, was going to teach her and Dan things that would affect their lives in a very deep way.
Then something flew past her head.
‘What was that?’ she screeched.
‘What?’ said Dan, quickly ducking his head.
‘Oh, hi crow,’ said Minnie with relief. It was a sleek black crow, its feathers shining in the low shafts of evening light. ‘I thought it was another pinecone!’
‘Me too!’ said Dan.
The crow had landed on a branch nearby and was looking at them both. It tilted its head this way and that, its beady yellow eyes still bright in the looming shadows as twilight closed in, wrapping the forest in a darkening blanket. The crow flew up to a higher branch and its caw caw, echoed through the trees.
‘Musto!’ Dan called again. Soon the yellow coat of the dog could be seen as he galloped through the trees towards them. ‘Let’s go.’ Musto ran up to them, wagging his tail joyously.
‘What you found up there, boy? You been making new friends?’ said Minnie. ‘Eeuw, Musto. You stink!’
‘Musky Musto! What is that stink?’ said Dan as he scanned the dense trees the dog just came from.
‘Listen,’ said Minnie. ‘It’s all gone very quiet.’ And it had – no birdsong, no buzzing, no squirrel chatter, no wind in the trees.
Just then a loud CLACK! rang out through the forest.
‘Yes!’ said Minnie, referring to her notepad, ‘Rock clacking. Cool!’ Dan was scanning the trees, standing perfectly still, listening.
CLACK! CLACK!
‘They want us to leave,’ said Minnie.
‘Ha! Right!’ said Dan.
‘Oh, I suppose you think that’s Billy and Connie yanking your chain, huh? They’re out there smashing rocks together, are they?’
Minnie could sense that Dan was uncomfortable. Though she’d have liked to go higher up the mountain she was content to turn back now, if that’s what the Sasquatches wanted, now that they’d found the big X and they’d heard rock clacking! ‘You want to go back, Dan?’
‘No! Why? We’re having a nice hike!’ Just then there was a series of quick loud cracks followed by a noise like splintering, breaking wood, then a whooshing and then a really loud CRASH! And a WHUMP!
Dan just stood open-mouthed staring up the slope. ‘We should go.’
They quickly turned to hike back down the trail.
‘What was that?’ asked Dan.
‘They pushed a tree down, Dan! They pushed a tree down!’
‘Run!’ he yelled.
‘Sorry, sorry, we’re going, we’re going,’ called out Minnie, grabbing Musto by the collar and dragging him away from the tree line. The crow swooped down past them and landed on a branch high in a pine. It kept flitting from tree to tree, keeping up with them.
Dan said, ‘It’s staying with us. That’s….’
‘Weird,’ said Minnie. ‘Wow! Rock clacking and a tree pushed over! We are so lucky, Dan.’
Dan stopped, turned, and looked back up the trail with his rifle raised to his shoulder. He scanned the trees and listened.
‘So, what do you think that was? Huh? Huh, Dan?’
‘Shush! I’m listening.’ After a few moments he said, ‘It was nothing. A tree fell in the woods.’
‘Oh Dan. Dan, Dan, Dan…’
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘You don’t wanna talk about it?’ asked Minnie.
‘Nope.’ And Dan just kept right on walking, occasionally glancing back up and around at the trees. The whole way down the mountain the crow cawed from a high branch and then flew silently on to its next vantage point, and cawed again, keeping with them until they left the forest.
They finally emerged into the cabin clearing at twilight. In the dimness the cabins were barely visible and the waters of the bay had turned a dark, dark grey.
Chapter Eight
The next morning Connie, Billy, Musto, Dan and Minnie were sitting on the small wooden floating jetty that jutted out in to the bay. It was designed so that it rose and fell with the water, resting on pontoon posts when the tide was out. Minnie looked out at the bay and thought of the many times she and her mom had fished off the end of the jetty when the tide was in. They’d catch lake trout, brown trout and sometimes dolly vardens – beautiful silver fish with grey and pink spots down their flanks. Trout was her favourite to eat. When the tide was out they’d gather the shiny mussels that grew tightly packed in clusters, like dozens of black, grey and brown oval jewels, on the rocks and posts under the jetty and eat those with the trout.
As the tide slowly receded, lengths of slimy greeny-brown seaweed were left draped over the rocks along the shoreline and Minnie gazed, mesmerised by the thousands of black flies dancing and buzzing in clouds above them.
There were two small green rowboats moored at the jetty. Billy climbed down and sat in one of them. They were drinking lemonade poured from a large glass jug packed with lemon wedges and mint.
‘The crow is a sentinel,’ said Minnie.
‘A what?’ asked Billy.
‘A sentinel. It reports back to the Bigfoots. They’re friends. They cooperate. We could learn a lot from them.’
‘How do you know all this, Minnie?’ asked Connie.
‘How do you think?’
‘Oh. Right. Internet. Well, that’s why they called it Howler Mountain. Used to hear howling, yowling, screeching and yelling like you wouldn’t believe. And not from wolves! A bigger, louder, resonating sound like a lion or an elephant. A bellowing bass growl that rolls and rises and echoes through the night.’
‘Er, thanks, Mom.’ said Billy.
Connie continued, ‘The tribal elders say the Sasquatch used to be down here. Right here. Living by the shore. They’d feed on the mussels, limpets, seaweed. They were here even before the tribes came.’
‘Down here?’ asked Billy.
‘Yup, in the old days. Cos this here, it’s a tidal inlet so, you know, it’s all sea water.’
‘We know, Mom,’ said Billy.
‘So there’s all manner of life here. Clams, crabs, oysters, snails, sea urchins, mussels. Even better on the other side, on the island there, so much protein just sitting there at low tide. That’s why we say, “When the tide is out, the table is laid!”’
‘Good one,’ said Billy.
Connie smiled. ‘But when people moved in here the Sasquatches, they moved up the mountain. The
n when people started logging up there, the Sasquatches they gave up and moved on over to the north side there. Didn’t like the noise we made.’
‘And didn’t like having their trees cut down, I’ll bet,’ said Minnie.
‘Yes, I’ll bet,’ said Billy in agreement.
Minnie pointed up the mountain at the pale grey cloud of smoke. ‘But the fire… So they’ve moved back on this side again?’
‘Could be,’ said Connie.
‘Oh please! We don’t know that,’ said Dan. ‘Connie, you can’t be filling their heads with this stuff!’
Connie protested, ‘But Dan…’
‘But no one’s going into that forest,’ said Dan. ‘Not without me and a gun.’
‘But Dan, you don’t believe in Bigfoots. Or have you changed your mind?’ asked Minnie.
‘Wolves,’ said Dan.
‘Bigfoot ain’t dangerous,’ said Connie. ‘They want nothin’ to do with us unless we start bothering them.’
‘You’re a dreamer, Minnie,’ said Dan, ‘and dreaming gets you into trouble.’
‘I’d rather be a dreamer than a scaredy-cat,’ she replied.
‘I ain’t no scaredy-cat!’ yelled Billy, standing up in the boat so quickly it started to wobble under him, so he sat straight back down again. ‘I have a math project!’
‘I’m not talking about you, Billy. And my mom was a dreamer! She dreamed she’d have a cabin by the water and she got six of them! Seems you’ve got a lot to thank dreamers for, Dan!’
‘Minnie! Hush!’ said Connie, standing up.
‘I have work to do,’ Dan said, getting to his feet. He walked off the jetty and headed up towards the rocky outcrop where the wind turbine stood.
Connie crouched down next to Minnie and said, ‘I think you need to apologise to Dan.’
Minnie pushed her hair back and looked into the distance. She felt bad. She stood up to go but Connie took her by the shoulders, looked her in the eyes, and said, ‘You two have to work out your differences. He loved your mom too, Minnie. That is the important thing, the thing you have in common. Use it. Use it to help each other.’
