In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,53

us, and our own guide outfitter comes down. We just, well … we haven’t been successful,” he concludes, with a guileful smile.

“Who used to own these licenses before?” I ask.

“A man in Bella Coola named Leonard Ellis,” Brian says. “He bought up the licenses for a bunch of adjacent guide territories in an attempt to create a kind of hunting empire. At the time we started lobbying the government to end the hunt, Leonard experienced financial trouble with his business. So we bought his guide territories from him. He’s now making a living by running bear-viewing tours.”

It’s another serendipitous reference: I had come across Ellis while on my first trip to the area. I had rented one of his cabins in Bella Coola for a few nights, during which he’d mentioned the controversial nature of the bear hunt on the coast.

“Look! Over there!” Nate yells, pointing toward the trees. “Mama bear and cubs!”

We all reflexively reach for our cameras. On the edge of the water is a sow trailed by two of her young. We begin snapping photos. Nick steers the Zodiac closer. The bears weave through the thick brush at the water’s edge—headed toward camp.

Brian pulls out his radio receiver and informs the lodge of the bears’ movements. A flurry of VHF activity follows between people at camp as word spreads. We trail the bears slowly, until the animals, probably sensing us, vanish into the woods.

Everyone is elated, looking at camera display screens. Nate looks like someone who’s just won the lottery.

“The whole week I’ve been trying to see a bear,” he says, amazed. “And now, close to the last minute of the very last day, just as I’d given up, a bear suddenly appears.”

Brian radiates a knowing smile and places a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “That’s how it happens.”

Later that evening, I head to the ocean down a short path that leads from the edge of the lodge. The barnacle-covered rocks of the intertidal zone are exposed in a vivid display of textures and colors. In the distance, the western sky is bathed in a fiery, post-sunset light, silhouetting the adjacent islands of Fitz Hugh Sound.

It has been an intense week. It feels as though a month has elapsed since I arrived at Koeye—and many more months since the start of this journey.

The one thing that has caught me off guard, more than anything else, is the unbridled power of nature in this area—and its ability to wreak havoc upon the senses and emotions. It’s an exceedingly charged place. Exposure to these most beautiful and pristine faces of the Great Bear means allowing oneself to be bombarded by awe-generating stimuli. And like any positive stimulus, these can act in the manner of a drug whose pleasures generate cravings, culminating in a kind of addiction. During my day up the Koeye, and even now, amid this brilliant miracle of the intertidal zone with its pools of red sea urchins and colonies of painted starfish, I can feel my emotions well up. But excessive emotion can also lead to self-certainty and absolutism. I can see why those who are at the front lines of protecting these incredible places are invariably so vehement in their mission, so focused and unyielding—and also so successful.

Where the Sasquatch is concerned, things remain less clear. Weighing the Bigfoot data seems to produce the same trap as a pros-and-cons list. Often the information just accumulates on both sides without being really convincing one way or the other.

If the animals do exist and are indeed intelligent, nocturnal, elusive, fast-moving, sensitive, and adaptive to their environments—as well as wary of humans—we have the starting point for an explanation as to why they remain unclassified. This explanation makes even more sense when we add the impact of our own biases—especially those of us in a largely urban-minded world that is unaware of the extent of reports, unappreciative of the vast and remote habitat, and unfamiliar with what might pass as evidence, such as tracks. Add to that a closed-minded scientific establishment and the derisory media, and you might have a situation in which the truth remains deeply hidden. The creature’s rarity, due in part to its natural elusiveness, is increased exponentially by our own false assumptions.

It all sounds good and possible—alluring even. But in the end, it’s just a hypothesis.

As I walk along the rocks, taking care to avoid the anemones and mussels, a quote I’d once read and committed to memory pops into mind: Learn to be as