A Sasquatch Voice

At a Parisian style cafe called “Adelaide’s” Caroline convinced me to walk into the forest alone.

“How much did you inherit?” She asked.

Being a sasquatch, my vocal chords didn’t work like a regular person’s, so I carried a little black notebook to enrich my communication possibilities. "20,000" I wrote on a page and held it so she could see.

“That’s a lot of very pretty pennies,” she said, her green eyes going wide as a forest canopy. “Your aunt must have been a millionaire. What are you going to spend it on?”

"Aunt was a high up at a bank. Mom says if I’m dead set on retiring like a human it would be good to invest. I think I might take a road trip first of all." I wrote quickly and sipped my black coffee. I hated the stuff. Maybe it was my sasquatch tongue, but I wanted to impress Caroline and it was what she was drinking. The bitter, to me, was a riot of a dozen different flavors, the textures and flavors clashing in a violent rush.

Caroline pulled my notebook toward herself and sketched in the corner while she mused on the possibilities, “Investing does sound like the smart move. But you never do anything for yourself. I say be impulsive. Take it to the casino and bet it all on one card.”

"Too many flashing lights," I wrote.

“Oh yeah, I forget your parents raised you in the forest. I bet the sounds and crowds would get pretty overwhelming.”

"Adoptive parents," I scribbled.

“What do you want then?” She asked.

I wasn’t not sure what I wanted besides to be with her, besides to be able to speak the same words as everyone else. "Microwaves. Stacks of microwave ovens as far as the eye can see," I wrote.

“A whole house of Kenmores, right? Out in the suburbs with two poodles and a driveway, and a Subaru Outback parked in the garage,” she said. Caroline knew about Sue and Jonathan, my well-intentioned adoptive parents. They found me swaddled in an extra large picnic basket outside their tent when they were camping at Mt. Ashtas. All it had for a note was a charcoal sketch on a napkin of a man and a woman holding hands with an enormous, hairy son. That was me.

I grew up mostly outside. Sometimes I would look out at the city skyline in the distance and make constellations out of the downtown lights that felt as far away as the sky. Centaur of the bank building. Jaguar of the city center. Postman of the houses on the hill. I’d wonder why I was so different from all the other kids, the homo sapiens children.

One day after school, I came home sullen, and Sue and Jonathan wanted to know what was wrong. "Why can’t a sasquatch live in a house? Why can’t a sasquatch have a television?" I wrote to them. They had a trailer that we stayed in through the week, but we really lived in the forest. Being a sasquatch in a homo sapiens world was already alienating enough. I didn’t want to spend my whole life foraging in the woods while all the other children got to play sports and have microwave dinners in front of cartoons.

Caroline chased her coffee with a shot of espresso, blaming the need for caffeine on her all consuming dissertation.

“Imagine. You’re free to do whatever you want. Your faux naturalist, back to the Earth parents can’t tell you what to do. You’re not in debt. Heck, you’ll always be able to find another job lifting heavy boxes over your head. Quit. Do something disastrous.” Caroline’s words came out accelerated from the espresso.

"There is one thing. I’ve always wanted to go to Mt. Ashtas and look for the other sasquatches. Or at least find some sort of answer." I wrote.

“Then go, you dingus. Seize the day. Excelsior. YOLO.” She said.

The cafe was rapidly emptying. Students all around us had packed up their bags and the staff were probably waiting on us to leave to flip the sign from open to closed. My mind simmered.

"Come with me?" I wrote, and immediately regretted it. It was too much, I’d never even mustered the nerve to ask her on a date. I’m sure I blushed beneath the thick layers of brown fur.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m about bursting out of my skin trying to complete this dissertation.” I looked down, feeling like a clump of hair in the shower drain. “There’s no way I can get away until I’ve presented. My professors are all a bit too eager to rake me over the coals for any inaccuracies in my measurements of the Hermit Thrush vocal range.”

She pointed at the sketch she’d made in my notebook. “Keep an eye out for them. They’re good birds, and their song is one of the prettiest in North America. It’s flute-like, melancholy, like if Bach were a bird.”

I walked her to her blue Chevy Cavalier and took the bus through the grey stacks of the industrial area to my one bedroom apartment. That night, I bought my ticket to Mt. Ashtas.

A few days later I boarded a beat down Greyhound bus line.

I drifted in and out of daydreams against the cool window, lulled by the rumbling white noise. I’d always wondered where all the other sasquatch were. I was proof they were out there, somewhere.

Over the years I’d heard dozens of theories. Some were flattering, most were insulting, and surprisingly almost none felt neutral. More than once I was told I belonged in a circus, that sasquatch weren’t real, that I was a genetic anomaly, of skeleton, hair, and muscle. I had been told my species probably disappeared shortly after I was born, that they weren’t evolutionarily “fit” enough to survive. These theories I disliked. And I disliked the people who presented them.

One of my favorite coworkers, a light-hearted older guy named Chris, espoused a theory that sasquatch were psychic. They put up mind-fields that regular people couldn’t penetrate, and that’s why nobody could find them. I liked the idea. It was at least as plausible as my existence. But I didn’t feel very psychic.

My favorite theory was that sasquatch were an ancient species of hominid that made it to the space age a million years ago. They watched the whole arc of civilization from somewhere beyond the heavens. The sasquatch that people have seen in the forest were really on a pilgrimage to their ancestral home, maybe even trying to live naturally as their original forefathers. Basically they would be like my adoptive parents, only intergalactic.

The city of Mt. Ashtas was more of a tourist trap than I expected it to be, nestled on the flank of the mountain. Local legends detailed the mysterious powers of the place, some attributing it to an origin in Atlantis, others claiming it as the world’s most powerful spiritual nexus. On every block there was a different shop selling crystals. Maybe the sasquatch were Atleanteans. I was open to the idea.

A cab dropped me off at a trailhead and I made my way into the forest.

If a sasquatch lurked, watching from a hidden vista, I thought it would find me before I was able to spot it. Even though my parents tried their best to raise me in the woods as a sasquatch, I was not an exceptional tracker or naturalist.

That first day I hiked deep into the old growth, set up my tent, and built a fire. I waited for night and slept.

The next morning I awakened to birdsong and wondered if any of them were Caroline’s bird, the humble Bach of the forest. I waited and watched for a sasquatch to find me. Night fell, and I slept.

On the third day I decided to get out and wander the forest. I grabbed my little black book and set out to survey the different species of birds I saw while I was there. I didn’t know any of their names so I invented an artistic shorthand to sketch their most distinctive attributes: beak shapes, size, coloring patterns. Maybe as I wandered the forest the sasquatch would find me.

I didn’t have an end date in mind for my trip. Instead of planning in my small apartment, I’d stared at the ceiling and hoped. As I blinked my eyes open and closed against the almost white bumps of paint I thought about what I really wanted. I wanted to know who I was. I wanted answers as to where I came from and why my parents dropped me off in a picnic basket. I wanted a name I could speak with my own tongue.

This was the first time in years I’d spent a prolonged amount of time in the forest. At first, I was surprised by how quiet it was. Then, once my ears became attuned, I was surprised by how loud it could be. The birds sang non-stop. The squirrels skittered up trees and squealed in obvious displeasure to my presence. Even the insects yelled and hollered, forming screamo bands in their tight, exoskeletal jeans, kicking over the drums in their parents basements and avowing “I’m just a bug and life is a nightmare.”

I seemed to be the only one in the forest not screaming.

All the sitting, waiting, and listening to animals and the wind made my shoulders stiff beneath my thick fur coat. I left the city because I thought I could find something, if not my biological parents, then at least some answer as to why I felt so separate from the people around me.

But there, in the forest, in the chorus of leaves and the electric violining of the crickets, I felt as alone and separate from the world as I’d ever been.

That night, by the fire, I opened my mouth and wailed. I hollered. I shouted. I let the sounds pass through the trees and bounce off the mountain above. I let the broken saxophone of my voice touch each green pine needle and leaf, carried through the wind to the canopy, dissolving, at last, as part of the vast forest choir reaching into the infinite sky.

I babbled. I made new, indecipherable syllables shaped to a sasquatch voice. If anyone other than the birds listened, it must have sounded frightening and wild. But once I let my voice out, I found myself wanting to hear its sound.

I returned home without finding a sasquatch, but I still felt a sense of accomplishment. I’d found something equally important.

A couple nights later, I took Caroline to dinner. Was it a date? Was it not a date? I still wasn’t sure. I was sure that she was beautiful. She wore an emerald colored dress that shimmered in the neon lights of the university district, and I spent minutes barely breathing. She gushed about my bird sketches, calling them “simple and functional.” Eventually I got up the courage to tell her I’d started creating a language in words that only I could speak. I put down the notebook and looked her in the eyes.

She was the first person I told my name.