In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,49
crew have arrived safely back—and that Nick and Megan lost sight of the whale in the choppy waters of the sound. Neither they nor the DFO people were able to relocate it.
No sooner has word gotten out of their return than another drama fills the evening’s growing void. Audrey and her small team of researchers have gone back up the Koeye to spend the night at the fish weir so they can get an early start on mapping work the next day. She radios to the camp in a panic, saying there is crashing in the bushes and loud vocalizations all around them. In a repeat of the other night, Larry requests Achiever Mobile to fetch the women. This time it’s a lightning-quick extraction. When they arrive back at camp, I watch as a shell-shocked Audrey, holding back tears, tells someone: “I’ve never heard a noise like that in my entire life. It was like a roaring scream that went on and on and on. I can’t even describe it. It was so horrible.”
Koeye’s guard dogs bark up a storm at the edge of camp the entire night.
I’m invited to join William Housty, Jess’s older, thirty-two-year-old brother, in long-line fishing for halibut out in the sound. Jess and others tell me that William, more than anyone else, is the man to speak to among the Heiltsuk about traditional culture. He also knows, I am told, about Sasquatch.
On a morning as thick with fog as any I’ve seen on the coast, we depart in William’s twenty-seven-foot converted aluminum herring skiff. Three Heiltsuk teenagers are with us. Within moments of turning north out of the bay, we’re lost in a mist-choked void of gray punctuated by phantom intimations of evergreen. The ocean is remarkably, almost frighteningly still, like a tepid, vaporous River Styx. A squadron of mergansers flits into view. The ducks race their reflections inches above the water before vanishing back into the ether. William maneuvers slowly, methodically, to avoid colliding with driftwood.
Though generally a man of few words, William is among the most active and vocal figures on the coast, a storyteller, a repository of culture, and a leader in the science of conservation, in charge of keeping track of the territory’s salmon and bear populations. He often spends his summers at Koeye counting the area’s fish and managing a bear DNA collection project, for which grizzly and black bear hairs are extracted from barbed-wire traps and analyzed to track the animals’ health and movements. In 2014, William made international headlines after publishing a Heiltsuk study about Koeye’s grizzlies, in which he wrote that the animals travel along ancient multigenerational ruts in the ground he called “bear highways,” stepping into the same track impressions over and over again.
At six and a half feet tall, William is big, burly, and imposing. During my time with the Heiltsuk, I’ve seen him jovial and playful as well as critical and brusque—speaking out against meddlesome outsiders, politicians, and industrial interests. He’s proud of his culture, unencumbered by fear, and speaks his mind without mincing words.
By the time we arrive at our fishing spot, the sunlight has started to drill through the fog. William kills the engines and goes to the front of the boat, where he and two others prepare the longline, tying a weight to one end that will sink the line to the bottom of the ocean. Attached to the other end is a floating buoy, which will allow William to return later and find the line. William sits on an upturned bucket beside two containers holding about a hundred big, baited hooks, and begins attaching them along the length of the line. One of his assistants, holding the weighted end, slowly releases the line into the water.
“Halibut love salmon,” William says in his deep voice, engrossed in the work. “But I’ve thrown in some octopus this time, which they love even more.”
“This must be something most men learn to do growing up here,” I say.
“Everything we do has been passed down from our elders,” he says, adding another hook to the line. “Both the old knowledge and the new. My own grandfather taught me a lot.”
“Is that why you have so much respect for them in your culture?”
“We take care of our elders because they’re our link to the past. They’re the ones that can validate information and reaffirm knowledge. They’re the source of strength for everything that we do. So you look after them.”