by John Zada
“For what?” I ask. “Ghosts.”
Glenna smirks again.
“We haven’t actually seen them,” Corrina adds, looking a bit embarrassed. “But strange things have been happening here.”
Rob sits back down with his coffee. “When we closed after the first season, we left all the room doors in the lodge open,” he says. “We came back and found them all closed. And many of them were locked. That’s one story.”
Corrina runs a hand up and down her bare arm. “Look, I’m getting goose bumps,” she says.
“I’m not,” Glenna says. “If I can’t touch something, I don’t believe in it.”
Corrina leans over the table toward me. “Did you know that this lodge used to be a hospital?”
Glenna cuts in. “They made this building the new hospital in the 1970s after the old one closed. That driveway leading into the back was for the ambulance.”
Corrina’s voice tapers to a near whisper. “And behind me where the baking pantry is—that was the morgue.“
Rob sees me cringe, slaps his leg, and keels over, cackling. Corrina leans back into her chair and nods at me, eyes wide open.
“Well,” Glenna says, “maybe you ought to change the topic of your book.”
“No, no,” Corrina tells her. “All he needs to do is speak to a few more people. Who would you recommend?”
Glenna’s face goes stone cold. “No one.”
“Come again,” I say.
“Nobody here knows anything about this place,” she says. “People here invent stories. They make things up as they go along.”
“Are you calling the people who live here bullshitters?”
“With the straightest faces you ever saw. It’s the gospel truth coming out of their mouths.”
“But you don’t mean the original residents of Ocean Falls?” I ask her.
“Mister, I’m the only person originally from here. The rest are people who came after Ocean Falls was shut down, burned, destroyed. They’re the new people. This is their town now. And so their stories are whatever the hell they want.”
If I can’t touch something, I don’t believe in it. Glenna’s words echo in my mind. Could it be that what many people are seeing by way of a Sasquatch is not a rare, flesh-and-blood animal but instead some nonphysical, incorporeal entity? An apparition? After all, we know that there is a wider reality than what we can perceive through our specifically tuned senses. And that what’s “out there” is so different from what we feel and experience every day that we simply would not believe it if it were presented to us.
Discoveries in the area of quantum physics demonstrate that things are truly not what they seem, and that the universe, at the subatomic level anyway, operates far differently from how it is known to most people.
For instance, the world appears to be composed of separate objects with clearly definable boundaries, which we slot into categories of space and time. We evolved to see the world in terms of separate objects partly in order to distinguish the things that could either help or hinder us. But this view is more apparent than real. On a fundamental, subatomic level, nothing is fixed or separate. Objects that appear to us as solid, static, and separable—whether atoms, apples, or asteroids—are in fact made up of transient particles that are continually appearing and disappearing. They occur in no fixed time and space but only show tendencies to exist and occur. There are no objects, only processes—fluid bundles of energy, patterns of relationships, that ebb and flow in an ever-shifting web of interconnectivity. Fundamentally—and in total contradiction to what we know at our scale of day-to-day experience—all things meld into all other things. We just can’t see this. It’s an almost impossible thing to wrap our minds around.
Experiments conducted by the late Arthur J. Deikman, an American pioneer in the psychology of advanced states of consciousness, reinforced the above ideas. The ability of humans to perceive the full richness of life around them, he said, is constrained by an almost default state of mind he called “action mode” or “survival mode”—one characterized by a focus on objects. Mental postures involving greed, acquisition, consumption, excess logic, analysis, preoccupation with time, and the use of categories and language fall into the survival mode. That mind-set’s capacity to appreciate wider reality, he said, was like a hand trying to grasp water by making a fist around it. The closing hand can’t retain the liquid.
Deikman also observed experimental subjects in another, complementary mental state he called the “receptive mode”—one characterized by intuition, openness, and an attitude of relaxed allowance. Subjects in that state reported holistic sensory experiences with more vivid details and colors and a blurring of boundaries between physical objects. They also claimed to experience a sense of connectedness to their environment. Deikman wrote that while a person was in the receptive mode, “aspects of reality that were formerly unavailable” and “new dimensions of the total stimulus array” were able to enter his or her awareness. He compared the receptive mode’s capacity for appreciating reality to a cupped hand scooping up water. The hand is able to retain the liquid.19
The science concurs with what mystics in traditional cultures have always known: that the reality underlying appearances is not accessible to our conventional senses. In Middle Eastern and Islamic cultures, to use one example, groups of mystics known as Sufis have often referred to a hidden reality, of which our world of appearances is but a partial manifestation. According to them, our survival-oriented brain and culturally conditioned mind narrow our vision, thereby preventing us from seeing a much wider reality that functions more holistically. But unlike most contemporary scientists, Sufis have always known that when those constricting mental postures are loosened or relaxed in a certain way, it is possible to get a glimpse, or more, of that bigger picture. This same psychological knowledge was systematized by the Sufis, as well as by mystics in other cultures, adjusted for the local context, and taught as science. The important point is that according to traditional psychologies, even though we are usually cut off from the bigger picture, it is still possible for us to tap into it—even if for most of us it’s often just a random flash in the pan.
Might there be a link, in some cases, between the emanations of the unseen universe, its fits and starts, and the things we occasionally feel, see, or experience that are out of the ordinary? Could it be that what some people register as a Sasquatch is a mental signature, a blip, representing an impulse from that reality beyond? A frequency to which the mind is open in certain states and which it interprets, symbolizes, and personifies as a hairy wild person—especially when we’re in or near nature?
If a mind that is somehow rendered “receptive” enough comes across a flicker of stimulus for which no innate pattern exists as a match, the brain would naturally search for another pattern that comes close enough under the circumstances: in this case a Sasquatch. This might explain why Bigfoots are most often seen by accident but are never deliberately found or captured. The late scientist and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer René Dubos once wrote: “Man converts all the things that happen to him into symbols, then commonly responds to the symbols as if they were actual external stimuli.”20 Perhaps Bigfoot hunters and investigators are chasing the symbol, the mental representation that is generated in the minds of Bigfoot eyewitnesses—the Sasquatch itself—after the fact. When people who see a Bigfoot in a transcendental way then choose to search for the creature afterward, they are really looking to relive, or recapture, a moment of expanded awareness that has long since vanished.
If rare and elusive physical Sasquatches exist, Deikman’s ideas still hold. Deliberate sleuthing, investigating, and chasing after the Sasquatch would be “survival mode” activities that narrow our perception—we see less overall as a result. By contrast, people who see or experience Bigfoots by accident (the vast majority) seem to be, more often than not, in a more receptive mode—something that exposure to nature can definitely engender. Even hunting, which is otherwise
a survival mode activity, can involve many hours of sitting in tree stands and perhaps getting into a meditative, or receptive, frame of mind. Many hunters report seeing Sasquatches under those very circumstances.
It’s just as William Housty said to me at Koeye: as with anything in life, if you try too hard to find something, you’ll be hard-pressed to succeed. But as soon as you stop trying, your odds suddenly change.
I meet another member of the Ocean Falls congregation outside the lodge in one of those intermezzos between downpours—intervals characterized by a testy, tepid rain that makes fat polka dots on your clothes but doesn’t come down hard enough to drench you outright.
“The name’s Darell Becker,” the man says, “but I go by the first name Darellbear.”
I offer my hand, which he takes in a rock-hard grip.
“The Bundjalung people in Australia gave me that name during a music festival when one of them saw the bear energy in me.”
“Bundjalung?”
“Aborigines. They knew I was coming. They said it was a prophecy.”
Darellbear looks to be in his mid-fifties. He has a mop of wavy, now rain-drenched, brown hair and striking blue eyes. He is solidly built and wearing a light khaki rain jacket over shorts and sandals. A white crystal hangs around his neck. He comes across as a wizened retired surfer transplanted into the mountains.
“I was in Australia for thirty years playing professional baseball and hockey,” he says. “Now I spend the warm months here.”
“What do you do?”
“Mostly hang out on my boat and go fishing. But I also sell miracle ointments for knotted muscles, cuts, and abrasions. I call it ‘The Goo.’“ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small jar, handing it to me. “That’s the hot Goo,” he says. “Great if you have aching hands or an aching neck.”
I turn over the red-labeled jar, trying to remember the last time I had aching hands.
“There’s cayenne in it. So don’t have a piss or touch your dick after using it. Or you’ll get a hot rod. Then you’ll need the cold Goo to put the fire out—and I’ll make a double sale.”
I hand the jar back to him.
“So, what brings you to this charming dystopian settlement in the middle of paradise?” he asks.
I tell him about my research.
“The big fellah, huh? Well, I haven’t seen anything around town. And no one living here has either, as far as I know.”
Darellbear’s answer adds to the collection of blank stares and shrugged shoulders I’ve accumulated in the last few days, seeming to confirm Glenna’s claim that the Sasquatches, if they exist, have neither stumbled upon nor ever intended to come to Ocean Falls.
“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” I tell him.
“The only Sasquatch stories I know are from the outskirts. A guy I know has a small cabin way behind Mount Baldy over there,” he says, pointing to a rounded, rocky peak in the distance. “It’s a bushwhack to get in. Super remote, secret spot. One day he found the place broken into. Stuff moved or taken that no bear could get to.”
“Thieves?”
“Thieving Sasquatch, more like. Human thieves rob jewelry stores and embezzle from taxpayers. They don’t point to an empty spot on the map and then go wandering there hoping to get lucky. A chopper pilot I met once who worked on a logging show in that same area saw snow tracks in the alpine. Massive. Huge stride. Absolute middle of fucking nowhere. Do you know what people told him? They told him: Maybe it was someone snowshoeing.“ He breaks into a chuckle, shaking his head.
“It could also have been that,” I say, without intending to be skeptical.
“Buddy,” he says, becoming serious, “take a look around. This is no weekend recreation area. These are big, dangerous mountains around us. Ranges upon ranges of them. Grizzly Adams territory. No one’s out wandering or going snowshoeing up there.”
The rain’s pitter-patter transforms into a steadier shower. We begin to get drenched. Darellbear starts shaking his mop of wet hair and laughing.
“Yeah baby! Now we’re talking! Wooo! Wooooooooooo!“
I crack a little grin. When I don’t join him in his hooting, Darellbear cuts his laughter short and puts a concerned expression on his face.
“People told you about the rain here, right?”
If clock time and calendar time become opaque in the Great Bear Rainforest, they effectively stop dead in Ocean Falls. They’re replaced by a suspended animation whose silent symbol is the whorls of vapor rising from the mountains.
Ocean Falls thwarts my expectations. It’s upside down in relation to the rest of my journey. For one thing there is rain here, where previously there was none. And it is no normal rain, with a beginning, middle, and end. It starts and stops in whims that are nonsensical, bereft of logic, and without a real prologue or epilogue. When the rain does stop, there is no knowing when it will return. But invariably it soon gathers itself for another discharge at the same moment you watch, marveling, the sun illuminating another rainbow.
In dealing with the rain, there is no planning or waiting things out or consulting the weather report. You just live with the downpour, surrender to it, cavort in it. And forget umbrellas—here they are mauled by the rain, outflanked by it.
As awe-inspiring as the rains have been, they’ve only slightly resembled the legendary rain-forest torrents of my mind’s eye. When I say this to Ocean Fallsers, they chuckle. But then, in a more sober, ominous tone, they inform me that, yes, I have seen nothing yet.
In Ocean Falls, one of the smallest communities in Canada—a place tucked into the back of a maritime cul-de-sac no one’s ever heard of, and condemned to crushing isolation as if in a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse—there is a bar. Or it is what one might be tempted to call a bar—but is, by name, a saloon.
Saggo’s Saloon, Rob and Corrina tell me, is like no other drinking establishment on the planet. For one, it’s open only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings—and from only four o’clock to seven o’clock at that. Unless, of course, its owner, thirty-six-year-old Bartender Bob, the youngest person in Ocean Falls, is having a bad day and decides to kick everyone out. Or unless the place runs out of beer, in which case everyone will still have to leave. The saloon’s burgundy shag rug, from the age of disco, wafts the aroma of cigarette smoke—as smoking is still unofficially permitted there.
The day after my conversation with Darellbear I find the no-frills watering hole—an old brown wooden bungalow located down the road from the lodge. Apart from a small, hard-to-read sign beside the door, there is no indication that the former Standard Oil fuel station is now Ocean Falls’ reluctant tavern.
Inside, the place looks and feels like an unmaintained legionnaire’s hall from the seventies. Several people, a mix of older men and women, sit at roadhouse-style chairs and tables, the kind you often see in bar brawls in movies.
I find Rob Darke sitting at the bar, which is manned by an uncomfortable-looking man who, I conclude, is the owner, Bartender Bob. The portly and somewhat swarthy gentleman is hunched over the bar, sipping from a straw in a tumbler glass. “Black Magic Woman” plays from an old television set behind him, tuned to one of those cable TV stations that run generic music round the clock. A few old and nearly empty bottles of liquor line the shelf behind him. A shredded dartboard, a sickly pair of mounted antlers, and a derelict billiards table complete the tableau.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Rob says.
I take a seat at the bar beside Rob and make eye contact with the bartender, who’s wearing a wide smirk on his face: a smile tinged with cynicism and something bordering on contempt. Rob introduces me to Bartender Bob and tells me it’s Bob’s birthday. I shake the barman’s hand, wishing him well.
“Thanks,” he says. “Want a beer?” He reaches below the counter and extracts a generic-looking can, placing it on the countertop with a loud thud. The label reads “Lucky Lager.” I notice that everyone else in the bar is drinking it. “Five bucks,”
Bartender Bob says.
“Just put it on my bill,” Rob says, and Bartender Bob gives me another questionable look and marks the sale in his notebook.
Saggo’s owner remains uneasy and slightly combative with everyone, until a few other locals come into the saloon bearing mood-altering birthday gifts: potato salad, sausage rolls, cashews, and those small liquor bottles you get on airplanes. As the loot accumulates, Bob’s temper changes for the better.
An older man with a black eye patch stumbles in. He’s wearing a blue T-shirt, ripped around his stomach, with “Christos Glass” written on it.
“How long till last call today, Bob?” the man asks.
“It’s my birthday, Tim, so I’ll probably keep her open for an extra half hour today.”
“Bullshit! Gimme three of whatever you got,” he says to Bob, before noticing me and approaching, coming to within inches of my face.
“I know I got an eye patch on right now and it looks like I’m blind,” he says, pointing at his patch. “But I’m just getting my eye fixed.” With that, he grabs his three cans of Lucky in a fat choke hold and carries them over to a table, where a barnacled old man greets him with a yellow-toothed smile. The old man snatches one of the beers and cracks it open to a hail of protest from Tim.
Rob whispers that the man who stole Tim’s beer is “Nearly Normal” Norman Brown, the infamous pot-smoking, opium-eating curator of the Ocean Falls junk museum. “Norm used to date Janice Joplin,” Rob adds. “He once cooked and ate a wolf someone had shot.”
Bartender Bob leans in. “So I hear you’re a journalist and that you worked in the Middle East.”
Before I can reply, Tim, who has overheard Bob, swivels in his chair to face us. “He’s a terrorist, don’t you know.”
Tim’s words are spoken in such a way that they run perfectly down the middle between seriousness and humor.
“Actually, he’s a writer,” Rob jabs back.
