In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond

by John Zada

  Tim grins. “And he knows everything about an AK-47 you’d ever want to know!” The whole saloon explodes in laughter.

  Bartender Bob taps me on the shoulder and points toward one of the people sitting at Tim’s table, a heavyset man with an enormous beer belly. “That guy over there in the baseball hat is Barrie. He spent some time in the Middle East. Hey, Barrie!” Bob shouts to the man, “maybe you and John here have crossed paths.”

  I ask Barrie where he’s been in the Mideast and what took him there.

  “Oil work,” he says. “I been all over. You name it: Baw-rain. Koo-wait. Eee-rak. Doo-bye. Saw-dee. And Aboo Dabee.”

  Rob lights up a smoke. “John here’s looking for the Sasquatch.”

  “If you wanna see a Sasquatch around here, have a few more of those beers and take a walk thataway,” Tim says, pointing to the door.

  More laughter greets the rabble-rouser’s comments.

  Bartender Bob takes a sip of his cocktail. “You’re not going to get much information in here,” he tells me.

  “I haven’t heard any reports so far.”

  “Well, remember there’s only a few dozen residents here. The average age is like sixty. Nobody goes into the bush. And everyone’s in bed by nine p.m. If there are Sasquatches, people here aren’t likely to see them.”

  “Makes sense. But there’s no older reports, either, as far as I can tell.”

  Bob shrugs his shoulders. “I wish I could help you.” He then goes quiet, deliberating for a moment. “Come to think of it, I did see something odd not that long ago. It happened about a year ago. There’s a couple of small lakes near town. We call them Twin Lakes. I was out for a long walk one day and reached the farther of the two. When I got there, I found footprints on the beach. Two sets of them—humanlike.”

  “How big?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. They were small. Smaller than mine. Kid-size. But they were strange. Funny looking. Splayed toes. Human—but not, somehow.”

  I quickly try to remember whether I’ve told Rob, or anyone else, of the small tracks I came across in Bella Bella. I realize I haven’t.

  “What’s the matter?” Bob says, noticing my reaction.

  “Nothing,” I say, trying to disguise my surprise. “Could it have been kids playing at the lake?”

  “Doubt it. This place is deep in the bush. No one goes out there. There’s few, if any, kids in town. Almost all the boaters who stop here are retired. And the tracks came right out of the bush at one end of the beach and walked along the sand into more tree cover. There weren’t any other footprints alongside them. Totally random.”

  “How does one get to Twin Lakes?”

  “Just follow the logging road out of town. You’ll need a four-by-four. Or you could walk, but it’s a distance. The road keeps going all the way to a place called Shack Bay, in Roscoe Inlet.”

  Roscoe. I’m thrown off by how close the inlet is to Ocean Falls. But then I remember that shortcuts abound in the Great Bear—like secret doors in a labyrinth. If you could trudge through valleys and over the mountains in any direction you’d find yourself in another inlet, watershed, or region considered distant if you were to travel by boat.

  “They built the road just before Ocean Falls closed,” Bob goes on. “When everyone realized how polluted the area had become. They were going to relocate the town to Roscoe.”

  Shack Bay is near where Mary Brown and her group of young campers say they encountered a Sasquatch—the one that had crawled under their cabin. The connections continue to pile up.

  Bob sees the wheels turning in my head. He reaches down and brings up another Lucky Lager, placing it beside me with a wry smile.

  “You’re lucky today is my birthday,” he says. “I’m almost never this talkative.”

  Ocean Falls was the quintessential company town in its heyday. The community was built, owned, and run entirely by “the corporation.” So when its last owners ended operations here, they chose to demolish their property rather than leave it behind for others. Though much of the town had been wiped off the map, some of the largest buildings, perhaps too costly to destroy, were left behind to rot.*

  I spend a few days exploring the dilapidated buildings, a kind of macabre tourism that in reality differs little from visiting any other archaeological site. I survey all five floors of the Martin Hotel, a gutted megalith of peeling paint and wallpaper and shredding asbestos, littered with books, papers, broken furniture, and antique machines left behind by earlier waves of looters. The ruins are a kind of sneak preview of the end of the world. All of it leaves me feeling slightly downcast.

  I visit the old school, which has imploded and sprouted a grassy field inside the old gymnasium. When I step back outside, Glenna pulls up in her white van. The self-appointed custodian of Ocean Falls’ memory offers to give me a personal tour of the town, which starts, at my request, with a perusal of her legendary scrapbook of newspaper clippings. I spend hours at her place poring over the yellowing Ocean Falls pages of the Vancouver Sun—bound together in one epic volume thicker and heavier than the largest reference atlas. It reads like a parochial community newspaper, filled with minutiae, recording every happening, and teeming with names. Except for a few references to the school football team—called the Ocean Falls Bush Apes—I find nothing referring to sightings of hairy humanoids.

  “I told you,” Glenna says, with a self-satisfied smirk.

  Before I can say anything more, she hands me a blue paperback book, magically produced out of thin air, entitled Rain People: The Story of Ocean Falls, by a writer named Bruce Ramsey.

  “If any sightings happened here, it would be in this book,” she says, tapping the cover, “which of course it’s not.”

  Rain People looks and reads like a high school yearbook, except that it covers the better part of a century. It’s filled with old black-and-white photos of the community during various phases of its existence. I’d learn that Rain People is as revered in Ocean Falls as the Bible is by Christians. Everyone has a copy of the town’s official biography, first published in 1971 and reissued in 1997. It’s constantly being referenced and quoted by people around here as if it were holy writ. Apart from a little snippet in the introduction, which Glenna shows me, referring to an indigenous legend concerning a lost tribe of humans who turned wild and hairy, on nearby King Island (a site of many Sasquatch reports), there’s no mention of anything related to Bigfoot. I would read the book later and confirm this myself.

  I find the dearth of Sasquatch lore here fascinating and peculiar—especially when so much of it exists in nearby communities. There’s a similar and even more puzzling absence of reports from the hundred or so non-native residents who live on Denny Island, across from Bella Bella. Perhaps these outlier communities and their lack of reports support the idea that there is no Sasquatch. I wonder whether the wide discrepancy stems from Sasquatch lore being more ingrained in indigenous culture, so that people in some First Nations communities, like all of us, are interpreting their experiences through their preexisting beliefs. Or could it be that aboriginal residents are better equipped, perceptually, to see and feel the animals—if they exist—because of culturally and genetically inherited perceptual templates, and an overall sensitivity to the land?*

  Later that day I go for a walk in the Martin valley—where most of the town’s residents now live. I’m on a footpath that begins where the residential road ends and leads deep into the forest. The dark, narrow enclosure is peppered with a few old-growth Sitka spruces, dark spires towering over aging, moss-encrusted alders and berry bushes. The sound of rushing water from the nearby Martin River overtakes the pitter-patter of rain on my jacket as I continue along the trail, which becomes more overgrown with each step.

  Both walking and nature—separately but especially together—are conducive to thinking, and I find myself turning everything over in my mind. I feel I’m approaching another impasse in my attempt to make sense of this wild-man phenomenon. Of course, t
he journey remains open-ended. Anything might still happen. But wishful thinking, hoping for a new turn of events, is also dangerous, for it can seduce one into the same trap that has ensnared nearly every other hell-bent Sasqualogist: continuing with the never-ending quest, the journey that never quite bears fruit, whose cost is an ever-deeper, more consuming, obsession. Maybe the rain is bringing on this mood, but the specter of futility is now staring me in the face.

  I tell myself the Sasquatch is one of two things:

  It’s a physical being, an animal, which—through a combination of its intelligence, stealth, evasiveness, rarity, and environment, and our own psychological and cultural filters and blind spots—we are prevented as a society from seeing, identifying, classifying, or otherwise acknowledging. People who see it are simply lucky, in the right place at the right time.

  Or Bigfoot is a psychocultural or metaphysical phenomenon. It’s a symbol arising from a range of possible experiences, some explainable, some perhaps unexplainable. People who regard Bigfoot as real and who go looking for it, as well as eyewitnesses who become obsessed by it, are chasing a symbol, a mental representation of their own or someone else’s experience. That symbol is a “downstream” mental by-product of an experience stemming from known and/or unknown stimuli. Perhaps that’s why the Sasquatch can’t be found. It doesn’t exist as we know other things to physically exist.

  Though I’ve done my best to avoid choosing a contrived position based on false certainty, I still find myself caught between the either/or poles: “It exists” versus “It doesn’t exist.” Even if I bridge these explanations by saying, “It may be a bit of both,” that is still a superficial synthesis—a fusion of somewhat foregone conclusions. Using logic and deductive reasoning to choose between possible explanations doesn’t translate to a fuller, more robust knowledge.

  The walking trail fades ahead of me in a commotion of tall weeds and berry bushes. The narrow, mist-drizzled valley carries me gently upward in an ever-increasing tangle of wildness that feels deeply forbidden. The way ahead seems ungraspable, unfathomable even, and I stop in my tracks, a preamble to turning back. I stare into that defile of seemingly infinite chaos, marveling at its depth, inaccessibility, and paradoxical subtlety. And then a thought hits me: maybe the Sasquatch hasn’t been found, indeed can’t be found, because it resides in the place most difficult for us to find and navigate. A wilderness of an altogether different sort. A place where people seldom look, or are loath to look: in the subtler shades, the gradations between black and white—the middle ground between “this” and “that,” between “It exists” and “It doesn’t exist,” where the components of truth most often reside.

  I arrive back at the lodge and head to the dining area, where the guests are having dinner. It’s pizza night. Rob is rolling dough in the kitchen. Country music is playing from a hidden stereo. Corrina, also in the back, sees me, grabs a menu, and shuffles over. She has a big smile on her face.

  “You’re a popular guy around here,” she says teasingly, handing me the menu.

  Rob looks up from his dough roller. “You gotta hear this,” he says.

  “One of the residents,” Corrina says, “a guy named Don, came by earlier. He was asking about you—and what we thought of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “Yeah, like, what kind of guy you are. We told him we really liked you and felt you’re like family.”

  Rob scurries over, his hands and apron covered in flour.

  Corrina continues. “So the guy keeps saying, ‘Really? Are you sure?’ And we tell him, ‘Yeah, he’s great.’ Then he lets out this huge sigh of relief and says, ‘Thank heavens! Now we can stop checking the water supply!’“

  Rob breaks into a gut-wrenching cackle. Corrina chuckles with him.

  “I don’t get it,” I say, smiling, infected by the inexplicable humor.

  “Right?” Corrina says. “So I ask Don why they’re checking the water supply and he … hahahahaha … he tells me, ‘We thought your guest might have been an al-Qaeeeeda terrorist. We figured he was here to poison the reservoir.’”

  Rob and Corrina both double over in laughter.

  “A terrorist!” Rob squeals, eyes tearing.

  The other guests stare at us uncomfortably. Rob is one convulsion shy of collapsing onto the floor. Corrina can’t contain her mirth but manages, after a moment, to go on with her story.

  “So … so I tell Don he’s being ridiculous, and that you’d have to be a real genius terrorist to come all the way from the Middle East to Ocean Falls just to kill all two dozen of us—and then get caught while making your big escape on the Queen of Chilliwack ferry. Then Don said: ‘Well, he was in the Middle East. And he barely told us anything about himself. He only asked questions.’ And I’m like, ‘Duhhhh! He’s a writer. That’s his job!’“

  “Who is this Don guy?” I ask.

  Robs wipes the tears from his eyes. “Remember Tim? The guy at the saloon the other night with the eye patch who made those jokes? Don is Tim’s brother.”

  Corrina leans in, lowering her voice: “And the two men haven’t spoken to each other in about ten years.“

  “A decade?” I ask. “In a town of two dozen people?”

  Corrina nods, with a Yup, can you believe that shit? look on her face.

  “Just like Cain and Abel,” Rob says.

  Corrina smiles. “Welcome to Ocean Falls.”

  The sound of a downpour draws our eyes to the window. Rob takes a few steps over and stares excitedly outside. “Wow, look at it out there.”

  Corrina raises her order pad and pen, and gives me an ironic look: “So, are you gonna order, something, Mr. Sasquatch Terrorist Man?”

  I have a few days left before I move on from Ocean Falls. Though there’s been little in the way of Sasquatch reports I feel I’m coming close here to breaking down, or surmounting, a wall in my understanding. Another key kernel of information might propel me further.

  The downpour continues for days, drowning out all other noise and obfuscating everything. I suit up in my waterproof gear and step out into dusky air that smells of damp earth and soaked evergreen.

  I head in the direction of the Martin valley again, passing the boat-choked marina and the shuttered saloon. Across the shimmering inlet, where I know huge fjords to be, there’s nothing but an impenetrable haze. Sheets of water flow down the mountainside beside me, crossing the road at several points and emptying into the sea.

  I reach the residential area and approach a small, beat-up bungalow with a Canadian flag and a big picture of Bob Marley in the window. In the driveway is an aging sports car. The driver’s door is ajar. As I get closer I see a man dressed in shorts and sandals rummaging through the back seat. Darellbear emerges from the vehicle just as I reach the house. He closes the door, sees me, and breaks into a wide smile.

  “Hey, man! What are you doing out in this mess? I got some people over. You wanna join?”

  He waves me toward the front door. “Come on. I just grabbed me a couple of the hot Goo for the folks inside,” he says, flashing the small jars of salve as we enter.

  His place is dimly lit and toasty warm, reeking of must, candle wax, and incense. A Mexican flag and a Harley Davidson banner hang on faded walls above retro furniture, probably surviving pieces from the old Ocean Falls. Dream catchers and pieces of native art abound in the rest of the house.

  A young couple, in their early twenties, sit on chairs drinking Lucky Lager. The young man is Lucas, a family friend of Rob and Corrina’s, whom I’d met at the lodge. The woman with him is from Victoria and is visiting her parents, who own a summer home in town.

  Darellbear hands me a cold beer before taking a seat. He tosses Lucas and the woman the jars of Goo. “That’ll stop all the itching and clean up those bug bites right away,” he says.

  “That’s sick,” Lucas says, in an exaggerated surfer’s drawl, reading the label of the jar and then opening and sniffing it.

  “It’s powerful stuff,
” Darellbear says proudly, cracking open a beer.

  “This’ll be perfect after the hike up to the tunnel,” Lucas says to the woman.

  “Tunnel?” I say.

  “There’s a tunnel that connects Martin Lake at the head of this valley here with Link Lake in the next one,” Darellbear says. “It’s a six-hundred-foot-long hole through the mountain drilled back in the 1920s. It was an engineering feat. They brought in the Chinese to work on that. That’s why there’s so many opium bottles lying around here.” Darellbear nods at the woman: “She’ll tell you.”

  “Yeah, my mom’s got two thousand opium bottles,” she says, flatly.

  “Opium?“ Lucas says. “Are you kidding me?”

  The woman’s frown flickers into a brief smile. “She has a big treasure chest full of them. Sake bottles too. She finds them on the water where the bunkhouses used to be. We went and got them appraised. Some lady wants to buy them.”

  Darellbear asks about my investigations. I tell him I have no real leads apart from the small tracks Bartender Bob saw at the lake, along the old logging road to Roscoe. I add that I plan to go up there and poke around.

  Darellbear shakes his head. “Those animals just don’t wanna be seen.”

  “Are you hunting the Sasquatch, man?” Lucas says, looking at me wide-eyed. “If you’re going up that logging road to Roscoe, I’m coming with you!”

  The woman turns to Lucas and stares daggers at him.

  “You just got me thinking,” Darellbear says. “You know why it’s so hard to see a Sasquatch? Because it’s not just ‘right time’ and ‘right place’—it’s also right people. What’s the observers’ consciousness like? Will they be able to see the Sasquatch, if it’s there?”

  Before Darellbear can say any more the woman groans, rolls her eyes, and stomps out of the room. Lucas, momentarily stunned, looks at the two of us and gets up to go after her. There are muffled sounds in the back. The door opens and then slams shut.

  “I guess we freaked her out,” Darellbear says, wearing a puzzled expression.