A Hairy Encounter With a Canadian Wilderness Legend

Something’s been here

Here, where there is never anything but me.

The beach isn’t mine. It doesn’t belong to anyone, which means it belongs to everyone. But it’s only me who comes here. In the Canadian winter, this huge lake is free of ice and free of people. When I visit to drink in the silence, I remain undisturbed. The firewood I keep in a cave is always ready for me to use on my next visit. The fine pebbles are unscarred by footprints. The beach may not be mine. But it feels like it.

Not today. Today, a trail of footprints stretches across the stones. The pebbles crunch like snow under my boots. Whatever it was, it was much heavier than me. And I’m technically obese.

It dug a hole in the dirt near the edge of the water. It tore apart a rotten tree, scattering insect-laden wood across the beach. Then, it lumbered back into the forest, leaving tracks behind for me to find. Like Crusoe on his island, I stared at the prints for a while, my mind racing as I reconstructed what had happened.

We have a deal with the bears. It’s February. They’re supposed to be asleep, dreaming of honey and berries in the reeking warmth of winter dens. They’re not supposed to be strolling along beaches and intimidating solitary travelers.

They’re not supposed to be on this beach. My beach. But the fresh footprints don’t lie. Not enough time has passed for the wind to soften their edges. This happened recently. Maybe even today.

My back to the water, facing the trees, I can feel invisible eyes watching me from the darkness. That’s the thing about the forest. You never really know what’s out there. I’m no more capable of admitting to being afraid than I am of asking for help. But I am — well, you could call me concerned. Deeply concerned.

Bears are a fact of life in Canada

British Columbia is home to around 120,000 black bears and an estimated 15,000 grizzlies — a quarter of the world’s population. Just this summer, on a back road not far from this beach, I startled a black bear that sprinted into the forest at the sight of my approaching car. If you’re going to go out into the wilderness, you‘re going to see bears.

Sometimes, I look for them. In the deep forests of remote Bella Coola, I watched huge grizzlies feast on spawning salmon. On the slopes of Whistler Mountain, I saw black bears forage on berries doomed to disappear under several feet of snow within a few months. There’s something magical about encountering wildlife in its natural habitat. As though you can feel the world looking back at you.

It’s one thing to meet a bear when you’re in a car or surrounded by other people. It’s different when you’re alone and isolated, with no one close enough to hear you scream.

The beach is close enough to the city to get cell phone reception. That doesn’t help much if your phone doesn’t work. And in the best horror movie cliché fashion, my phone started to throw a fit as I tried to take pictures.

I’m not the screamy blonde girl destined to survive. I’m the idiot guy who promises to be right back and gets killed early in the second act.

Maybe it wasn’t a bear

After all, this is Sasquatch Provincial Park. In the mythology of the Sto:lo people, sasquatches frequent the shores of the lake, passing like ghosts through the trees on their way to whatever events mythical creatures attend. Unicorn raves. Ogopogo orgies.

Every year, the nearby town hosts a Sasquatch Festival. A carved wooden sasquatch welcomes visitors to the town. The hairy creatures are everywhere, on road signs and bumper stickers, on coffee mugs and keychains. This is sasquatch country.

I’ve seen those Finding Bigfoot shows, and they never find shit. From a scientific perspective, the Sasquatch is ludicrous. We are the only apes on this continent. And if the forest contains a healthy breeding population of large hairy humanoids, how do we keep missing them? No unequivocal photos. None of the thousands of game cameras set up in the woods has ever captured one. No one has hit a sasquatch with their car. Or found their droppings. Or picked up a clump of hair.

British Columbia is twice the size of California and close to three times the size of the UK and Ireland combined, but more people live in Washington DC than in this massive province. Yet even with all that wilderness, it stretches credulity to imagine these huge creatures could still be completely undetected.

But of course, according to the aboriginal people of the area, the Sasquatch is no mere baboon.

Sasquatches are powerful spirits

Just their presence is enough to cause sickness. One legend claims that to look in the eyes of a Sasquatch at close range is immediately fatal, like some hairy Canadian Gorgon. They can take the form of any other creature, proclaims a sign in town with straightfaced gravity. It would at least explain why no one has managed to get a clear photograph.

In 2002, one of the last speakers of the Sto:lo Halq’emeylem language recorded a story to preserve the sound of the ancient tongue of her people. It shows the importance of the creature to her culture that the story she told was about the sasquatch.

Because there are different kinds of truth in this world. Science tells us how incredibly unlikely it is that there are giant apemen roaming British Columbia’s forests. But the stories of the people who first walked the land say something else. They warn of the dangers of the forest, dangers that can take many forms. Including tall, hairy ones.

The sasquatch is no villain in the Sto:lo stories. It is a powerful protector of the sacred forest. The same silent forest I come here to experience. Maybe sasquatches are just something I have to put up with, like the wakes of boats and the changeable weather.

If so, the least they could do is pose for a photograph. My Instagram feed needs some work.

I’m not giving up my beach

Not for winter bears or for stinky sasquatches. I do some of my best thinking here, and the sunlight is medicine, and the silence is profound. I’ll sit with my back to a cliff, my ears open for anything that isn’t the whisper of water on rock or the coarse call of crows.

It’s not my beach, and the footprints and digging and torn-apart log are there to remind me that this is not my world. This is the realm of sunlight and storms and animals whose names I don’t know. The eyes and ears and snarling teeth of the forest.

But as long as they don’t come too close, I’m willing to share. I just hope my neighbors are polite. And if I get the world’s first sasquatch selfie, you’ll be the first to hear about it.

© Ryan Frawley 2021.