In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,78

in its heyday. The community was built, owned, and run entirely by “the corporation.” So when its last owners ended operations here, they chose to demolish their property rather than leave it behind for others. Though much of the town had been wiped off the map, some of the largest buildings, perhaps too costly to destroy, were left behind to rot.*

I spend a few days exploring the dilapidated buildings, a kind of macabre tourism that in reality differs little from visiting any other archaeological site. I survey all five floors of the Martin Hotel, a gutted megalith of peeling paint and wallpaper and shredding asbestos, littered with books, papers, broken furniture, and antique machines left behind by earlier waves of looters. The ruins are a kind of sneak preview of the end of the world. All of it leaves me feeling slightly downcast.

I visit the old school, which has imploded and sprouted a grassy field inside the old gymnasium. When I step back outside, Glenna pulls up in her white van. The self-appointed custodian of Ocean Falls’ memory offers to give me a personal tour of the town, which starts, at my request, with a perusal of her legendary scrapbook of newspaper clippings. I spend hours at her place poring over the yellowing Ocean Falls pages of the Vancouver Sun—bound together in one epic volume thicker and heavier than the largest reference atlas. It reads like a parochial community newspaper, filled with minutiae, recording every happening, and teeming with names. Except for a few references to the school football team—called the Ocean Falls Bush Apes—I find nothing referring to sightings of hairy humanoids.

“I told you,” Glenna says, with a self-satisfied smirk.

Before I can say anything more, she hands me a blue paperback book, magically produced out of thin air, entitled Rain People: The Story of Ocean Falls, by a writer named Bruce Ramsey.

“If any sightings happened here, it would be in this book,” she says, tapping the cover, “which of course it’s not.”

Rain People looks and reads like a high school yearbook, except that it covers the better part of a century. It’s filled with old black-and-white photos of the community during various phases of its existence. I’d learn that Rain People is as revered in Ocean Falls as the Bible is by Christians. Everyone has a copy of the town’s official biography, first published in 1971 and reissued in 1997. It’s constantly being referenced and quoted by people around here as if it were holy writ. Apart from a little snippet in the introduction, which Glenna shows me, referring to an indigenous legend concerning a lost tribe of humans who turned wild and hairy, on nearby King Island (a site of many Sasquatch reports), there’s no mention of anything related to Bigfoot. I would read the book later and confirm this myself.

I find the dearth of Sasquatch lore here fascinating and peculiar—especially when so much of it exists in nearby communities. There’s a similar and even more puzzling absence of reports from the hundred or so non-native residents who live on Denny Island, across from Bella Bella. Perhaps these outlier communities and their lack of reports support the idea that there is no Sasquatch. I wonder whether the wide discrepancy stems from Sasquatch lore being more ingrained in indigenous culture, so that people in some First Nations communities, like all of us, are interpreting their experiences through their preexisting beliefs. Or could it be that aboriginal residents are better equipped, perceptually, to see and feel the animals—if they exist—because of culturally and genetically inherited perceptual templates, and an overall sensitivity to the land?*

Later that day I go for a walk in the Martin valley—where most of the town’s residents now live. I’m on a footpath that begins where the residential road ends and leads deep into the forest. The dark, narrow enclosure is peppered with a few old-growth Sitka spruces, dark spires towering over aging, moss-encrusted alders and berry bushes. The sound of rushing water from the nearby Martin River overtakes the pitter-patter of rain on my jacket as I continue along the trail, which becomes more overgrown with each step.

Both walking and nature—separately but especially together—are conducive to thinking, and I find myself turning everything over in my mind. I feel I’m approaching another impasse in my attempt to make sense of this wild-man phenomenon. Of course, the journey remains open-ended. Anything might still happen. But wishful thinking, hoping for a new turn of events, is also dangerous,