In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond

by John Zada

  Knowing the long history of Sasquatch sightings near the lake, the group worried that a Bigfoot mother with kids might be lurking somewhere nearby and decided to get out of the area. But before doing so, they left a green apple on the log as a friendly offering.

  I still think, mostly, that human children made the footprints during an anomalous jaunt through the bush and mud, and that Beth and Carl, already believers in Sasquatch, are wrongly attributing them to the animals.

  But the tracks are odd-looking—especially the long, narrow set. Could they be tracks of juvenile Thla’thlas? The more I think about it, the more attractive this idea becomes.

  The stories of monsters, the fairy-tale landscapes, and the novelty of travel mix to form an intoxicating cocktail. With each story I come across, I find myself more seduced by the mystery. The thrill of the chase is a high. And I want something to show for it. I’m falling prey to the addiction that has ensnared Sasquatch hunters and investigators like quicksand, condemning them to states of obsession that have at times consumed entire lives—sometimes at the expense of marriages and livelihoods.

  Hoping to get insight into the tracks at Old Town, I email my photos and a précis of the situation to John Bindernagel in Courtenay. He promptly writes back:

  Hi John,

  Many thanks for the photos and commentary.

  I find these tracks interesting. I can see that the big-name Sasquatch researchers, guys like Jeff Meldrum and Cliff Barackman, would not be very interested in these as I’ve tried similar ones on them before.

  On their own, these photos would be a hard sell as Sasquatch tracks—since even the more common larger broader ones are routinely rejected. I guess I would put them on my metaphorical shelf for now, awaiting evidence which more closely approximates to Sasquatch tracks as we think we know them.

  I recently spent a week in western Alberta being pressured by another researcher to agree that night bird calls we heard in the field were not actually northern Saw-whet owl calls, but Sasquatch whistles; that fallen saplings hung up in other trees were not natural deadfall but Sasquatch-related; and that indistinct impressions in the moss were Sasquatch tracks.

  So I am feeling worn down and a bit depressed as I wish to affirm evidence but am not always able to do so.

  Sorry not to be more helpful.

  Thanks and all the best,

  John

  Later that day, Alvina tells me she’s received a phone call from someone working at the Heiltsuk government offices, asking about me.

  “They want you to go down there tomorrow,” she says. “They wanna talk to you.”

  “Talk to me?” I ask, concerned. “About what?”

  “Dunno,” she says unconvincingly, disappearing around the corner and heading down the stairs.

  When I arrive at the offices the next day, I’m told to take a seat at a large conference table and wait. All around are posters and charts showing the locations of old village sites and various ongoing research projects. I am told that the office is the natural- and cultural-resources arm of the Heiltsuk government.

  Twenty minutes later I’m greeted by three people, a man and two women, and am politely asked to step inside a small office. I recognize the man as the older gentleman who had hosted the potlatch. I don’t know the two people with him: a younger woman and an older lady.

  We take a seat in the cramped office. Each of my hosts, with pen unsheathed and notebook at the ready, has a look of displeasure bordering on grimness. I feel cornered and quickly realize something’s hugely amiss. I have the awkward, uncomfortable sense that I’ve done something wrong. There is a long pause, before the gentleman, seated next to me, kicks off the proceeding.

  “I heard you were taking notes and photos at my potlatch,” he says, with a deepening frown, eyes cast downward. The two others look sternly at me.

  “I did take some pictures,” I say. “A lot of people did.”

  “There were parts of the potlatch that we asked people not to photograph or film,” the man continues. “And I’m worried you captured those. People came to me concerned, asking who you were. I didn’t know what to tell them. It was humiliating.”

  I feel a stab of commiseration and a pang of anxiety. In the minutes that follow, they demand to know who I am and what I’m doing here—although it’s hard to believe they don’t already know. Maybe they also think I’m an oil company or government informant. I tell them I’m visiting the coast to work on a travel memoir, but this brief explanation changes nothing. The older woman chimes in.

  “A project like yours needs our official approval,” she says, eyeing me suspiciously. “There are still a lot of stereotypes and discrimination, and we can’t have people like you coming here and giving whatever impressions suit you.”

  I ask what she means.

  “A man once came here on an assignment for a magazine. He wrote about the eagles in the trees and described our territory as ‘the land that time forgot’—or some nonsense. It was silly and insulting. From our perspective, this place is the center of the universe—and not someplace forgotten by time.”

  “You just show up from out of nowhere,” the man adds. “You come to my potlatch without introducing yourself to me, or asking permission for the things you’re doing.”

  I remember introducing myself to the master of ceremonies at the potlatch on the first day but hadn’t thought to approach the host himself. When I put myself in his shoes, I see how that would be upsetting.

  I apologize, saying that I didn’t mean to cause any anxiety or show any disrespect by my actions. I add that I abided by the photo ban and took pictures only during permitted moments, as others were doing.

  “Those people were photographing their friends and family members,” he replies. “You don’t know them and have no business filming them.”

  The younger woman, who hasn’t spoken yet, chimes in: “And what about that notebook of yours? Why are you always scribbling in it?”

  “I’m a writer. I use it to record thoughts and research.”

  There’s a tense silence. I let myself breathe before again acknowledging my misstep. I say that the outcome surely couldn’t be as grave as they’re making out. Are they not being a bit heavy-handed, I ask?

  My words set the older woman off. “Listen, you: You think you know what you’re doing. But you have absolutely no idea. Zero clue. Even the approaches of trained anthropologists are problematic. Just because you have the best intentions, and you think you know what you’re doing, doesn’t mean you’re going about things in the right way.”

  They watch me closely. The older woman, who is now leading the charge, continues more calmly:

  “At the end of the day, we don’t know you, and gaining our trust takes time,” she says. “Just look at our involvement as a kind of process of reeducating you.”

  “Reeducating?” I say.

  “Yes, you—and others like you—need to be reeducated,” she says leaning forward.

  Though I understand the suspicion of my hosts, and the general public’s unconcern and lack of knowledge about indigenous issues in Canada, all of this strikes me as harsh for a misstep.

  I decide to relate some of my own experiences, so they can understand where I’m coming from. I tell them that, as a person of Middle Eastern descent, I’m well aware of racism, cross-cultural conflict, and misunderstanding—because I see it almost every day. Like them, I say, my ancestors were on the receiving end of violent waves of colonial imperialism going very far back. Ottoman Turk occupiers executed my great-grandfather with a sword, lopping his head off during a genocide perpetrated in World War I. Then came the Brits and the French, the Israelis, the Russians, and the Americans, I go on, with their bombs, the redrawing of borders, oil theft, cluster munitions, and depleted uranium. I may have inherited blue eyes from twelfth-century European crusaders, but I’m no white-man supporter of the status quo or of governmental exploitation.

  At the end of my brief monologue, the mood
in the room lightens. A glint of interest and recognition overlaps with expiring frowns.

  “Well,” the older woman says, cutting through the remaining tension. “Sometimes we just need to get everything out into the open and have these somewhat awkward and unpleasant discussions. It’s all a learning process, you know.”

  The gentleman gives me a commiserating look. “If you could come by tomorrow and show me the photos you took just to make sure they’re OK, my family and I would really appreciate it.”

  “Absolutely. Done.”

  Suddenly, it’s as if nothing had happened.

  “So, tell us. What’s going on in Cairo?” the older woman asks, referring to yet another postrevolutionary upheaval in the news. “Our deepest sympathies for the difficult situation there.”

  Although the meeting ended well enough, the brief display of anger leaves me a bit shell-shocked and with the impression that I’m now under more scrutiny than ever. Part of me wants to pick up and leave Bella Bella and forget everything.

  That evening I go for a walk to the water reservoir behind town to get my mind off things. The sun has set and a sky filled with swirls of wispy cirrus clouds is backlit by the receding yellow-orange glare.

  As I walk the road to the reservoir, an old Heiltsuk man approaches from the other direction. The wizened senior, wearing a baseball cap, is slightly hunched over, his face animated in thought. I hear the sound of laughter in the distance ahead of me. I stop to greet him.

  “There’s kids playing up there by the dam,” he says, turning back to look. “Kinda worried one of them animals will get them.”

  “What animals?” I ask.

  “Bears,” he says. “Or maybe Sasquatches.”

  “Sasquatches?”

  “Yeah. You can hear ‘em sometimes screaming from the mountain behind the reservoir. They take that back trail over there into town and look into people’s houses—like a peeping Tom—looking at women.”

  The man and I part, and I look around, wondering whether someone is playing a joke on me. As I crunch along the gravel road it dawns on me how surreal things have become. For a moment I feel lost, without bearings, set upon a fruitless, meandering trajectory in search of rumors and visions.

  By the time I return to Alvina’s, a thick fog has rolled in, turning the star-filled crispness of night into an impenetrable soupy bog. I crawl into bed, and as I lie there, the coastal ferry, alerting all to its presence, blasts its powerful horn. For half a minute, the horn’s long echo resounds through the deep labyrinth of valleys and channels, an emptiness that seems to stretch forever.

  I have set myself on an impossible mission, a fool’s quest, I think to myself.

  * The Heiltsuk population at one point dwindled to 250.

  * In 2017, an ancient archaeological discovery made on Triquet Island, just southwest of Bella Bella, placed it as one of the oldest sites of human habitation in North America.

  * To be fair to the Heiltsuk, in 2013 the mainstream, media revealed that the domestic intelligence arms of the Canadian government had been spying on indigenous activists who opposed the big energy projects slated for the west coast.

  * Mount Saint Helens, an active volcano in the Cascade Range in Washington, has long been considered an important node of Sasquatch activity. When the mountain erupted cataclysmically in 1980, much of its northern face was obliterated. Apocryphal stories emerged afterward that US Army helicopters venturing into the disaster zone were airlifting out Sasquatch corpses to undisclosed military facilities.

  * Somewhat to his credit, Beck wrote in his manifesto: “No one will ever capture one, and no one will ever kill one… . These questions cannot be answered by expeditions. It can only come by man knowing more about his true self and more about the universe in which he dwells.” See http://www.bigfootencounters.com/classics/beck.htm.

  * Messner’s thesis was even backed by Ernst Schäfer, the German zoologist, hunter, and erstwhile Nazi SS officer who spent much of the 1930s in the Himalayas at Heinrich Himmler’s behest, looking for evidence of a proto-Aryan race of giants. Schäfer told Messner that he too was convinced the Yeti was no more than the Tibetan bear, two of which he had shot and brought back to Berlin as specimens. Schäfer added that he kept his Tibetan bear thesis to himself out of fear of being executed by the Nazis, since it contradicted notions at the time that Yetis were Aryan ancestors. See Chamberlain, Ted. “Reinhold Messner: Climbing Legend, Yeti Hunter,” in National Geographic Adventure, May–June 2000.

  * One Nisga’a First Nation carving from the Nass River valley of northern British Columbia, made in 1914, is widely recognized by Sasqualogists for its monkey-like appearance, with high brow, deep-set eyes, and thin lips located far below a flat nose. Aboriginal stone carvings of heads found in the Columbia River basin in the United States have a similar primate-like appearance.

  † To pronounce Thla’thla, place your tongue where your front teeth and inner gum line meet and speak the word through your cheeks. Interestingly, the name Thla’thla has the same root as the Heiltsuk word for strength or power.

  * The copper shield is a symbol of wealth and is also considered a living entity.

  5

  KOEYE

  (KVAI)

  We begin to see in them the possibility of a consciousness quite different from our own, of a being that may be very close to us in hominid origins, but that may have evolved in mysterious ways. We imagine an animal that somehow has understood the world more deeply than we have, and that thus inhabits it more comfortably and freely, while eluding our self-involved attempts to capture it.

  —David Rains Wallace, The Klamath Knot

  Several weeks of molasses-slow island life are broken by the rumbling of a trio of 330-horsepower Volvo engines. Our boat pulls out of the government dock, bathed in fog and sun. After taxiing, the engines rev in a frothy explosion of sea, and we’re thrown back in our seats as though in a jet plane during takeoff. We roar south through Lama Passage.

  I’m on a sea bus packed with provisions and two dozen people, heading to a youth camp at the mouth of the Koeye River, some forty miles south on the mainland coast. The camp is run by the Qqs Project Society, a Heiltsuk cultural and environmental nonprofit.* Since 1997, the organization has hosted a series of weeklong summer camps at Koeye, where grade-school kids from Bella Bella are taught a mix of science and traditional culture. The camp programs engender both learning and a sense of belonging, and have led to a generation of healthier, more resilient children—and to a ripple effect of community renewal.

  Koeye (pronounced Kway and meaning “bird sitting on water”) is considered a kind of Eden by the area’s First Nations. The river valley, a protected conservancy, is one of the most intact ancient forest ecosystems on the British Columbia coast, hosting a mind-boggling array of flora and fauna, including a healthy population of grizzly bears and every denomination of salmon. Several villages with thousands of years of history were once located at various points between the mouth of the river and the remote inland lake from which the Koeye flows. It is a sacred geography so pristine and brimming with cultural and historical significance that it has fallen at the center of a territorial dispute with the neighboring Wuikinuxv First Nation.

  Although I haven’t visited the area before, I had the good fortune to fly directly over the Koeye valley at the end of my previous trip to the Great Bear. As I looked out the window of the plane, I noticed an area that seemed to vibrate at a frequency different from everything else around it. The juxtaposition between Koeye and the surrounding forest was almost as stark as that between Vancouver Island and the Great Bear itself. Not only did the river valley look like a bed of thick moss, it glowed with a mesmerizing, otherworldly fluorescent green that I’d never before seen. The estuary, upstream from the river’s mouth, swirled in patterns a few shades lighter in color than the conifers at its edges.

  I’d first heard about Koeye on that same trip, in the context of its connection with a recent Sasquat
ch encounter that had caused panic at the youth camp. Three of the camp’s teenage counselors had claimed to see a giant, broad-shouldered humanoid watching them in the light of the full moon, just eighty feet from their cabin. The creature stood on two legs and stared at them, transfixed, for almost a minute. When they realized it wasn’t a bear, the teenagers became terrified. One of them ran into the cabin and emerged with bear bangers—cartridges that issue an explosive sound—which he fired to scare the animal away. Rather than turn tail, the creature stood its ground and continued to stare. It watched them for several more seconds before it casually turned around and sauntered down the hill, the sound of its footsteps echoing behind it. Prior incidents had also occurred at the camp, going back years, involving howls, tree knocks, and loud stomping late at night.

  As the sea bus reaches the southern end of Lama Passage between Denny and Hunter Islands, we veer into the wider waters of Fisher Channel. Up ahead, the massive and enigmatic King Island, with its mist-drizzled horizon of lonesome peaks, looms in silhouette. We turn south into the channel toward the mainland, passing a handful of commercial fishing boats along the way. Half an hour later, we arrive at the edge of a small bay with a crescent-shaped golden beach flanked by lichen-draped conifers. The fog has completely cleared. The mouth of the Koeye looks as resplendent from the sea as it did from the air.

  I walk up to the boat’s cockpit to get a better look out the front windows. The pilot is sitting on his high, cushioned captain’s chair.

  “There she is,” he says, steering the boat carefully into the bay. “Ever see a beach that pretty this far north?”

  As we draw up to the floating pier, the ten restless kids on the boat begin to raise a loud ruckus.

  Our first day at Koeye is spent setting up camp. The kids and a few of the counselors stay in cabins located in the old growth behind the beach where the river meets the ocean. The rest of the staff members occupy cabins or tents in and around the main lodge area, which is perched atop an escarpment with a commanding view over the bay. The Heiltsuk ceremonial big house sits on the driftwood-strewn beach between the lodge and the kids’ camp.