In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,83

no neck. The darker conifers on the higher mountain slope (and their mirror images in the lake) form wide shoulders that jut out from behind the head. Higher yet, the rising slope of the mountain curves to a level ridge, creating the impression of hanging arms. The image is of a humanoid being, bulky, hairy, and muscular. It’s somewhat abstract but has an unnerving presence and edge—and a stolid personality. Its power is equal to that I perceived in the ghostly faces I saw in the shoreline reflections while traveling up the Koeye, which I likened to beings on a totem pole.

I’m jolted to the core when I realize that I’m staring into the eyes of what looks to be a Sasquatch—one of my mind’s rendering—hewn from the mountain and forest and radiant with the presence of the surrounding wilderness. I’m transfixed and stare at the creature as the mist around it roils.

I’m mindful that I’m seeing what I’m seeing because I want to, that our minds are adept at generating images from our surroundings, especially images that consciously occupy us. But even though I know that this creature is just a mountain and its reflection in the lake, something about the image feels real to me. The image is expressive, its detail convincing. It’s saying something, speaking to me. It may as well be real. It doesn’t matter that it’s literally not.

And this is what changes my entire perspective. For although this symbol is an object lesson in the psychology I’ve considered, it also reframes that knowledge: rather than thinking of perception as just our senses distorting reality and thereby somehow separating us from nature (implying a kind of error or falsehood), I see now that our creation and interpretation of symbols is also part of our nature—an aspect of nature itself. There’s something normal, even essential about this process. Our minds work this way not just because they evolved to do so over time but because these functions help us fulfill a very human need.

I think of all the Bigfoot sightings. Whether they’re real, pattern mismatches, or phantasms deriving from an altered state, they must, I realize, all resonate equally in the observer—evoking sentiments that deepen life and make it and more enriching. Take the relationship indigenous peoples have to Sasquatches. The attitude of some First Nations peoples yields far more because these people see the animals as a combination of physical being, spirit, story figure, symbol, and teacher. There is a definite takeaway, with manifold social and psychological benefits for both the individual and the community. All that many of the rest of us can seem to muster is the possibility of a physical ape-man and the impoverished, binary either/or debate about its existence.

And perhaps this is what Darellbear, in his idiosyncratic way, was trying to convey the other night: that beyond the obsession with the rational question of whether the Sasquatch physically exists, there is a whole other field of inquiry that is being neglected, an ether of subtler possibilities—his Noble Beyond. What can the Sasquatch and our pursuit of it tell us about ourselves, about our motives, individually and as a culture, about what we deeply and truly yearn for?

Perhaps I’d find out in Bella Coola.

* Or perhaps it just seemed that way, given that rainfall wasn’t being measured across most of the uninhabited coast.

* In 1986 a counterterrorism unit of the Toronto Police came to Ocean Falls to test its weapons and pyrotechnics on the derelict buildings, temporarily making the town look like a smoldering action film set.

* When I hiked with eyewitness Clark Hans on my previous trip to Bella Coola, I could scarcely believe the details he picked up in the forest that were initially invisible to me. Once he pointed them out, deer rubs on the bark of trees, faint animal impressions in the moss, and banana slugs partly concealed by foliage were all revealed in an instant.

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BELLA COOLA

(Q’UMK’UTS‘)

Long, long ago, there lived a lad who was so poor that all he had for clothing was a rough goat-skin blanket. He was so miserable and friendless that he made up his mind to commit suicide. The ice was breaking in the Bella Coola River at the time, and large cakes were floating down to the sea. The lad leaped out upon one block, then sprang to another, and finally into a clear patch of water. Associates seeking to dissuade him had followed him from one cake of ice to another, but