grizzly is coming at you, and it’s going to kill you, the slug will usually stop it in its tracks.”
That hypothetical scene plays out in my mind. An all-consuming chill runs down my spine, and I quickly shake the thought.
The ride home along the lake’s north shore is a blur. I’m tired. I barely notice the two cabins, sites of alleged Sasquatch attacks, that we pass at different creek mouths.
We barrel again toward the sun, now hanging over the western end of the lake, and pass high precipices of dark, shiny granite with small trees growing in their clefts.
We approach a narrow valley whose entrance is elevated above the water. Alex and Archie slow the boat down and in unison crane their necks and look up at the slope leading to it from the water. Contorted trees, deciduous and coniferous, tangle at its entrance. The men, skittish, speak into each other’s ears, look at me, and then throttle the boat’s engines.
Acting on a hunch, I tap Alex on the shoulder. He turns and looks at me as if caught in a secret act. I jerk my thumb backward, from where we just came.
“Hoo-doo?“ I yell, over the sound of the engines.
He stares at me for a moment and then nods, conceding. I see he wants to say more, but the engines are deafening. It has been a long day. His eyes implore me to leave it alone, to let it go.
I nod. We both turn away. And neither of us mentions it again.*
* The German American cultural anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942), who spent forty years traveling through northwest coast communities and documenting traditional tales, wrote of the creatures: “The Dzonoq!wa have black bodies; eyes wide open, but set so deep in the head that they cannot see well. They are twice the size of a man. They are described as giants, and as stout. Their hands are hairy. Generally, the Dzonoq!wa who appears in the story is a female. She has large hanging breasts. She is so strong that she can tear down trees. The Dzonoq!wa can travel underground. When speaking … [her] voice is so loud it makes the roof boards shake” See Boas, Franz. Bella Bella Tales. Boston: American Folklore Society, vol. 25, 1932, pp. 142–45.
* There’s a remarkable epilogue to my attempts to find out about the strange events surrounding the so-called Hoodoo Valley—proof that all stories find their ending. See Addendum 2.
7
OCEAN FALLS
(LAIQ)
Sasquatch is a fulsome liminal symbol, containing fundamental paradoxes of being and non-being, mind and matter, life and death. It straddles and incorporates boundaries that we consider absolute, that are fundamentally required by our system of rationality. To the extent that it is as it appears to be—a being of the mind which leaves footprints in the earth—Sasquatch remains absolutely inexplicable, a genuine mystery.
—Marjorie M. Halpin, Manlike Monsters on Trial
Tales of haunted valleys. Hairy mini-men with a bad attitude. Shaggy colossi shaking log cabins to their foundations. James Bond–style speedboat adventures. Bear politics. Environmental wars. At most I had been expecting just a handful of Sasquatch reports. Instead the floodgates had opened, sweeping me along in the deluge. There is simply too much to digest at once.
I book myself a spot on the Queen of Chilliwack, a three-hundred-foot passenger ferry that carries me, slowly, methodically, and soberly, to the next precinct of this adventure. I forgo the action-hero dramatics of floatplane and speedboat, opting for something calmer, less kinetic. I need an interval of perspective.
My next stop is the all but abandoned pulp and paper mill community of Ocean Falls, located in Heiltsuk territory at the head of Cousins Inlet. The ferry journey, beginning in Bella Bella, is a circuitous, full-day affair, first heading north along the Inside Passage route to the village of Klemtu, in Kitasoo/Xai’xais territory, before doubling back and then turning east through the upper channels of the inlet system toward Ocean Falls.
Earlier, in Bella Bella, snide remarks had followed any mention I made of taking the ferry. The government-run ferry monopoly is widely considered overpriced and inefficient, the product of an inept bureaucracy. Though many locals depend on its services, it’s reviled with the intensity of an oppressed people’s hatred for their dictator. But I have a fondness for ferries. Having spent my early travel years plying every possible ferry route in the Mediterranean, often sleeping on the deck, I learned to appreciate their austerity and patient plodding. The slow-rolling vistas and the sense of impending arrival set to the