a large heavy stone and held it swaying above him to let it drop silently and crush the skull of the beast, but his cowardice skewed his aim and the weight of the stone slipped and merely grazed the Great Ape. It was a little dazed and struggled more from the deep slumber of its sleep than the blow, but it was more hurt by what the man had done. The Great Ape held the man fast and gave him a liquefying stare, of anger and pity. Unlike the goat, the Great Ape's gaze flashed the entire animal kingdom as a prism from the crystal sapphire blue and whirlpool black centre of its eyes—it happened like a lightning flash—it was far too overwhelming for the man to contemplate. The shepherd shook in terror and broke out in a sweat of guilt from every pore.
The Great Ape released him and it spoke to him for the very first time:
Brought back from the mouth of Death
When you reached the other world.
Saved from one precipice
Thou has now fallen into another
Upon what ignorance is man driven to such vices and cruelties and chooses to bathe in such miseries.
The delusions you fixate that fall on the false hope of a misguided prosperity.
The pain of this blow does not aggrieve me as much
As the thought that on account of me
You have struck it
and plunged yourself into greater evil
From where I or no one else can rescue thee.
Nonetheless, the Great Ape did not kill the man; in its compassion and mercy it escorted the man to the edge of the forest so he could return to his fellow beings.
Time went on: the man suffered, he neither washed nor bathed nor cut his hair or nails. His goats that had remained chose to humiliate him. They no longer went feral and broke into his home and slept there. He became so miserable that he was shunned and expelled from society.
Excommunicated he ran from his world and back to the dense forest, where what remained of his dishevelled clothes dissolved. Naked, he skulked in the forest and hid from any disturbance, but still a coward, he clung to his life and barely slept, remaining fearful each night that a tiger may slay and eat him. One day a retinue of the king's hunters came across him in the forest hunting. Thinking they had found a strange beast, they wounded him and brought him before the king, who had camped nearby. Shocked, both he and his entourage thought they had been brought a strange monkey, until the naked, broken man spoke. Fatally wounded and near to death, the unrecognisable goat herder finally found the courage to repent and speak in the hope that, in his remaining breath, he might find some peace and redeem his soul. The king listened, astonished at his sorrowful tale, and was so moved he ordered the hunt to cease. He declared the forest and mountains a sacred sanctuary to the supreme mystery, to all its gods, to the wise and compassionate Great Ape and all that lived in its range. For any tree that was cut down, he ordered a strict sanction that ten must be planted in its place. He sent out a decree that large stones be set around its natural boundaries of rivers and plains and any and all trails that led to it, and that on the rocks should be carved images of the Great Ape. He did this so no man in the future could excuse himself of ignorance and insult this intermediary of the gods and thus defile this place again.
CHAPTER THREE
Eve at Bluff Creek
Bigfoot is real. Absolutely breathes, eats, mates, lives, and they are our brothers and sisters, they are not animals, they are human beings with a soul, just as all humans have.
—Red Elk, of the Blackfoot and Shoshoni Nations
‘Bigfoot is the white man's name, the locals call it See'atko, Skookum, Oh Mah, Sasquatch—but there are as many names for it as there are indigenous tribes of our ancient lands they call North America and these names have been here as long as we have had stories to tell of them, a thousand years and more before the invaders came. That's what Snowstorm, medicine woman of the Karuk peoples told me and I can tell you, if it is a hoax, it is a hoax like no other, and if it is real, it changes everything; either way it is beautiful, real or not.’
That is what Ross said each time he spoke of the scratchy faded colour film. He was a scientist and as rational as they come. He declared himself a sceptic, a believer in nothing. Ross did not even believe his own eyes, having seen an animal up by a creek on the Kalmuth River. It stood up, its back to him, then stepped—he said he thought he saw it take at least one to two steps forward—then it was down on all fours into the woods, disappeared from sight almost immediately. It looked odd, but he then managed to convince himself later it was a bear. But he knew being alone in the woods, amongst bear, coyote, mountain lion and deer, the sound of owls and unidentified bird call, one could easily listen too much to one's own power of suggestion. Sometimes things looked odd in the wilderness. People themselves also became odd, alone in such wild places. Even though Ross was a sceptic he talked endlessly of this film.
The film baffled him. I had never seen it, only heard him talk of it. Though a scientist, he would talk of it like a disciple would of a religious event, a miracle.
One day we heard something at a high elevation, a powerful ape-like whoop, up above the treeline in the high mountain, then a crashing through, into the woods below. The ground shook under the great weight of this something that seemed to be walking on feet, not hoofs or pads and claws, but heavy steps separated out in what seemed like giant strides down a precipitous side of the mountain. Yet we saw nothing. We had only the long list of all that was actually real in the forest and on the mountain, that we turned over and over again in our minds and in our conversation, in order to stop our imaginations running riot. I knew that once we got back to the cabin, I would go to the town and see the film that Ross kept talking about. Shot in 1967 here in Bluff Creek, just 20 miles from where we heard the commotion and where we slept uneasily that night. As we drove back down the old logging road in the truck, the radio was playing the song ‘A Girl Like You’.
Ross's cousin Ruth lived in the town and had an old projector that she used to show Bible Class films to the children at the local church. At real expense, Ross had managed to obtain a print of the original stock film and he said it would be the first thing we did once we hit town.
Ruth was an attractive, middle-aged woman. Even though she was five years older than me, she had this innocent look about her. She wore no make-up and was confident in her skin. She was a Southern Baptist who had not shaken her religious upbringing. To find the film, we had to go through boxes of Bibles, books on theology and numerous old prints of religious events from the Old and New Testaments. Those not in boxes or in piles on the floor were on the walls in frames or pinned or in rolls on the mantelpiece. I saw the furniture of Ruth's mind before I met Ruth. And if there was any doubt, we had arrived early evening and Eric said she would be out at church.
Every picture on her wall was religious—but with mountains. Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus in the desert mountains casting down Satan, Moses getting the tablets on Mount Sinai, Moses seeing the Burning Bush on the sacred Bedouin Mountain—then one that missed my Sunday school education—Ross had to explain it was Aaron being buried or taken up on a mountain in Jordan. He told me, even though, like me, he did not believe in God, that it was best to be respectful to Ruth, not just because we were guests that evening, but because she had been through a lot and this was how she dealt with it.
I was drawn to a particular picture, a print of an etching. It depicted a vast Jordanian desert down to the Red Sea with large mountains all around. Moses stood before his priest—a horizontal Aaron, with his hands held up to the sky, rays emerging from broken clouds. For some reason the picture gave me a feeling of vertigo, a feeling that had strangely escaped me from the real mountains we had just left, but was unexpectedly and dizzily present on this imagined range.
Grouped together, I was struck by how many apocryphal religious events happen in mountains. My mind returned to what we had heard and felt the night before. I was suddenly reminded and excited to see Ross’ film. The controversial 1967 short