In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,88

low for him to pay off his debt, let alone make a living.

“It was just a kick in the teeth to be knocked down to two bears a year,” Leonard bitterly recalled, “They may as well have just signed my papers to go bankrupt.”

Ellis and McAllister each claim it was the other who suggested the sale of Leonard’s guide territory. In either case, the outcome was the same: Leonard decided to give up his operation. Raincoast managed to raise the $3.5 million sale price agreed to by the parties after two years of negotiations. The money allowed Leonard to pay off his remaining debt and keep a small portion, which he used to start his bear-viewing business.

Since then, life has been a struggle for Leonard. He complains that tourism work provides little more than a hand-to-mouth existence. And as the battle now rages to stop all trophy hunting of grizzlies in the Great Bear, Leonard remains a potent symbol of the hunt. Some people on the coast dislike him and believe that he continues to hunt grizzlies in the shadows, something Leonard vehemently denies.

I turn my attention back to the Tred Barta video. The hunting posse close in on their black bear, which the barking dogs indicate is up in a tree. I glance back at Leonard, who’s sitting on the edge of his chair and watching with a grin as he and the other guides carry Barta’s wheelchair to the base of the tree. Barta draws in his bow and fires several arrows in succession at the black bear, felling it. Cheers and hugs erupt as music for the closing credits comes up. Barta turns to the camera and declares this experience to be the greatest in his hunting career. He profusely thanks Leonard, who is smiling beside him.

After a few more words about the valor of hunting and spending time outdoors, the camera zooms in on Barta. The show host locks his gaze to the lens, assumes a celebrity pose, and delivers the signature mantra that closes every episode of his series:

“If I can do it—you can do it.”

The next day, I leave my cheap riverside motel in Bella Coola proper and ride up the empty highway on a rented bicycle to the Four Mile reserve—a Nuxalk residential community located that distance up the valley from the main town site. It’s an idyllic day, one of those perfect, temperate end-of-summer afternoons, with swirling horsetail clouds and a cool breeze blowing in from the ocean and filtered through evergreens.

I turn onto a side road and enter the reserve, riding leisurely past homes situated on spacious, unfenced lots separated by swaths of bushy overgrowth. The placid neighborhood is alive with groups of romping children. From Four Mile, the view looking up the Bella Coola valley is crystal clear. An adjacent side valley, the Thorsen, beckons with the mist-obscured, sugar-icing-coated glacier at its head.

I’ve reached the supposed ground zero of Bigfoot—the waking version of the lofty wilderness of my daydreams as a kid. It’s hard to downplay the links and associations with Sasquatch here. Because of that, the idea of looking for the physical animal is tough to resist. For, in a real sense, Bella Coola is Bigfoot.* For Sasquatch enthusiasts, the town’s very name, its contours of sound, evokes the creature’s spirit. Whereas Bigfoots are said to appear occasionally in neighboring communities, they are omnipresent here, constantly flitting between hidden recesses and blind spots. Residents allege the animals are bolder here than anywhere else on the coast—so much so that they’ll walk through your front yard if need be.

Reports span the length of the Bella Coola valley and all adjoining creek and river systems. Ask around and you’ll hear incidents of every variety, involving howls, whoops, screams, loud crashing in the bush, and road crossings; figures standing or crouching in the open at night, peeping into windows, banging on houses, throwing rocks, throwing sticks, and knocking on wood; and putrid lingering odors and tracks in the mud or snow. Some reports are just weeks old. Others have been circulating for more than half a century.

The majority of encounter sites cluster in and around the town of Bella Coola and Four Mile reserve, as well as on the highway and adjacent river running between the two communities. Drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians on the two-lane road have reported seeing Sasquatches crossing it in both directions. Fishermen on the river have seen the animals on its shores.

Nothing strikes me as particularly significant about