In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,91
driven to physically go out and look.
“Let’s go on an expedition,” I blurt out to Leonard Ellis, who is showing me around the valley for the day.
The cacophony at the crowded Bella Coola farmers market recedes ever so slightly. Leonard stops dead in his tracks and turns to look at me as if I’d just uttered a magical phrase. He breaks into a smile that is almost mischievous.
“What are you thinkin’?” he asks.
“Hike up the Necleetsconnay.”
Leonard becomes pensive. He looks disappointed. “Necleetsconnay will be a heavy bushwhack. Also, lots of bears in there this time of year because of the salmon.”
“But there are bears everywhere right now.”
“Bigger risk in there,” he says. “It’s a narrow valley, so we’ll be squeezed in pretty tight with them. More chances of a run-in.”
I nod, not knowing how to counter that.
“I’d have my gun but … yeah … it’s not the best scenario.”
The conversation ends there. But I can see the gears turning inside Leonard’s head.
“You know, instead of Necleetsconnay we can hike up to my cabin for a few days,” he says, weighing my reaction. “It’s pretty remote. About as remote as you’ll get anywhere around here. It’s a difficult hike even for me, and not something I do with tourists—anything can happen. So you’d have to really be up for it.”
“Where is it?”
“Stillwater Lake. The cabin used to belong to Stanley Edwards—the son of Ralph Edwards. You’ve heard of the Edwards family, right?”
I had.
Ralph Edwards was a famous homesteader from North Carolina who in 1913 settled on the shores of Lonesome Lake, deep in the valley of the Atnarko River—a tributary of the Bella Coola. Battling seemingly insurmountable odds, the self-taught woodsman, fisherman, and farmer hacked down a tract of old-growth forest, built a complex of cabins and a farm with electricity, and raised a family there, living in seclusion for decades. Pioneering and self-sufficient, the family survived on knowledge culled from a vast library of how-to books lugged, with everything else, into the wilderness. Ralph is best known for building an airplane and for saving the last population of trumpeter swans, a critically endangered bird species living at the lake, from extinction—for which he was awarded the Order of Canada.*
His exploits were made famous in a 1957 biography, entitled Crusoe of Lonesome Lake, by American Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Leland Stowe. The cabin and property Leonard owns had belonged to Stanley Edwards, Ralph’s son, an eccentric offshoot who had settled and lived a hermit’s life at neighboring Stillwater Lake.
“I bought the property after Stanley was found dead in an outhouse several years ago,” Leonard says. “One of the bridges on the trail to the cabin got washed out in a big flood a few summers back, and I haven’t been down there since. The bridge was just rebuilt. I need to go check on the place.”
My enthusiasm for Leonard’s idea, an otherwise hugely tempting offer, is somehow dampened by my desire to go up the Necleetsconnay.
“Well?” Leonard says, sensing my hesitation. “Are you up for a few days in the bush with the old man?
I smile and reluctantly put aside my other plans. “Let’s do it.”
Plans begin to take shape. But before anything happens, tourists stampede into town and sign up for Leonard’s bear tours. He tells me his remaining free time is being snapped up—and that he’s not sure if, or when, we’ll make it to his cabin.
Frustrated and still wanting to explore the rain forest, I decide to look for a replacement guide. I seek out Clark Hans, the Nuxalk artist who, on my previous visit, had showed me around the confluence of the Necleetsconnay and Bella Coola Rivers. But Clark is away, working on Vancouver Island, and no one knows when he’ll be back.
Unsure of what to do next, I head to the banks of the river on the edge of town. I sit at a picnic table and watch the silt-heavy river coursing like a runaway lava flow. The sky, earlier blue, is covered with dark roiling clouds riding a blustery wind. Dozens of agitated gulls are aloft, circling high over the town.
“Looks like a storm blowing in,” a voice says behind me.
I turn around and see a short, middle-aged man wearing a blue bandanna on his head, beige overalls, and kneehigh brown rubber boots. The muzzle of a rifle sticks out of a canvas bag thrown over his shoulder. He looks like a cross between an early twentieth-century hunter and a beatnik hobo.