they drew back when he plunged into the cold water.
The youth was not drowned. He found a road under the water which led him to the land of the herring; then, still following the path, he passed in succession the countries of the olachen, the steel-head salmon, the spring salmon, the sockeye salmon, the hump-back salmon, the dog salmon, and lastly the cohoe. Each kind offish dwelt in its own country, the cohoe salmon, being the last to reach the Bella Coola River, living at the greatest distance from it. Not long after his arrival in the land of the fish, the salmon boat, Noäkxnim, left for Bella Coola and on it the youth returned home. Owing to this experience he became in time both wealthy and famous.
—Traditional Nuxalk tale recounted in T. F. McIlwraith’s
The Bella Coola Indians
A thick patch of vapors chokes the high forests of South Bentinck Arm. Snippets of tree-lined mountainside appear teasingly through the clouds.
“The sun’s about to punch through,” our captain, a tall, heavyset man with curly hair and glasses, says to me. “We’ll stop in Green Bay now. Those Dutch ladies are dying to see some bears.”
The engines of the forty-two-foot Nekhani rumble to life, sending us on a northeasterly course. The water becomes siltier as we approach a bay at the mouth of the Nooseseck River valley on the mainland. When we arrive at the estuary, much of the morning cloud cover has dissipated. The valley glows in hues of gold and green beneath the thinnest swirls of mist.
Four women—two from Vancouver and a pair of older travelers from the Netherlands—and I gather our packs for a hike along the river. The captain, who has put on waders over his jeans, reaches into a nook just above the deck of the boat and pulls out a 12-gauge Defender shotgun—the same weapon I fired with the Guardian Watchmen along Owikeno Lake. As he loads the weapon, his manner becomes militaristic and dramatic, suitable for a Hollywood action film.
The six of us pile into an inflatable rubber dinghy, and the captain paddles us to shore. The Vancouver women and I, wearing gum boots, climb out and wade through the waterlogged edge of the estuary to the high bank. One by one the Dutch women, dressed in hiking shoes, are hoisted piggyback-style by the captain over the shallows. They coo and giggle, like teenagers as the man strains under their weight.
We tie the raft and wander single file, quietly, through an estuary bank thick with high grasses and sedges, following a web of animal trails. Our guide—the captain—surveys the ground ahead of us. He stops and points the muzzle of his gun toward exposed dirt in the grass.
“That’s another fresh grizzly dig,” he murmurs in a slight drawl, pushing up his glasses and looking around. “They’re here all right. They could be anywhere hidden in the grass.”
We enter the forest, walking parallel with the river, and push through thorny berry bushes and devil’s club. Large bear tracks appear in the soil, leading out of the woods toward the riverbank. We continue bushwhacking and finally emerge onto the wide, rocky bank of the Nooseseck River, which is flowing swiftly down from the upper valley.
“We’ll park on these logs and wait,” the captain says, leading us to a pile of driftwood on the river’s edge. The shallow Nooseseck splashes with salmon battling the current to swim upriver. A few half-eaten fish carcasses lie on the rocks in front of us, evidence of bear activity.
We’re interrupted by a rustling in the bushes slightly upstream. We freeze into a perfect tableau, breaths and heartbeats stilled as we look toward the forest edge. But the sounds fade away.
As the afternoon wears on, restlessness takes hold. Our guide urges us not to speak and scare off the bears he’s convinced are all around us, just waiting for the right moment to step out. His periodic sighs and grumbles are the only interruptions in what feels like an eternal stretch of present. When the first intimations of dusk appear, our guide stands up and declares that we’re throwing in the towel. The Dutch women look crestfallen, but we are all relieved. It has been a long day, and everyone is looking forward to getting back, to a shower, food, and some rest.
As we push back through the bush toward the estuary, I can see that our guide is disappointed. He carries himself languidly, almost spitefully, in protest to the world.
“You saw all those