In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,51

people here too. They’ll say, ‘Ah, that’s bullshit. They don’t exist. There’s nothing out there.’ But some things just can’t be explained. I used to do electrofishing for a logging company when I first finished school. One day in late November we were dropped off in a helicopter twenty-five miles inland along a creek. There was a white guy working with me. It was really dark, rainy, and cold. We were following the creek downhill, when it forked, going around this little island. He went down one side; I went down the other. I got to the bottom before he did and reached this patch of snow and gravel by the riverbed. I found humanlike tracks there, sixteen or seventeen inches long, that went through the snow, into the river, and back up the other side. When that guy made it down I showed him, and he was in total denial—he wouldn’t believe it. He was shaking his head, saying: ‘Nope. There’s no way. It doesn’t exist.’ I said to him: ‘You tell me who was up here with feet that big walking around with no shoes on, buddy! We just got dropped off in a helicopter, for God’s sake! No one’s out here wandering around barefoot!’“

“So why do you think no one’s been able to find or catch one?” I ask him.

“They’re intelligent,” he says. “They’re just like you and me. They’re smart about how they act and where they go.”

“Smarter than the humans looking for them?”

William laughs. “A lot smarter. Which isn’t saying much. Those people that go running around in the bush trying to catch them aren’t smart. They’re being disrespectful. Over here we don’t go looking for them. If you see a Sasquatch out on the land, it’s meant to tell you something. You were supposed to see it. You don’t go looking for it just for the sake of seeing it. If you do, you’ll never find them.” William holds my gaze for emphasis.

“It’s just like in life: when you try too hard to find something, you can’t. But then as soon as you stop looking, stop trying, you become more likely to find it. That’s exactly how it is with the Sasquatch.”

Characters and personalities are legion at Koeye. But the protagonist, the unrivaled character, the one so deceivingly simple to overlook is the river itself.

Koeye Lodge and the camp are perched at the river’s mouth—where its waters meet the sea. That final section of the seven-mile-long waterway is different from the river farther upstream. Concealed at arm’s length, beyond the camp, past a hard and virtually invisible bend in the river, are a broad, grassy open swath, usually referred to in and of itself as “the Koeye estuary,” and the legendary river’s less-visited upper reaches.

There is no overland trail leading from the camp to the estuary. To get there requires a boat. And even then, traveling is subject to the on-again, off-again nature of the tides. If the tide is not high enough, especially in times of little or no rain, gravel bars and exposed riverbed will obstruct the way.

Because of that, the unseen Koeye is spoken of as if it were another locale: far-flung, a place apart, taking on nearly mythic connotations. When it is mentioned, its beauty is invariably cited and spoken of with reverence. In a sense, the farthest reaches of the river are its most sacred. There’s a trail through the old growth that starts beyond the estuary and leads past the salmon weir (where Audrey and her associates were rescued), continuing all the way up to the lake from which the river flows. It’s a daylong trek to get there, requiring an overnight stay. Few people have made the journey to the lake, and stories about the area always seem to be second- or thirdhand.

An air of profound mystery hangs over the river, ironically, since the Koeye is not a long or treacherous waterway. Yet the awe it evokes locally—as powerful as that of the world’s great rivers—derives from its deeper, intangible qualities.

My micro-journey up the Koeye comes on our last full day at camp on a balmy, cloud-filled afternoon. We leave on Achiever‘s Zodiac as soon as the tide is high enough to allow us entry into the hidden estuary. Five members of the ship’s crew and I are piled into the raft, which tows two canoes and one kayak carrying Captain Brian. First mate Nick commands the vessel. In silence, we drone past radiant conifers, the camp