It Was Darn Near 58 Years Later

 

 
            The director certainly had a bee in his bonnet or a flea in his ear, to indulge in a couple of adorable Americanisms.
            He had been hearing about the old Patterson-Gimlin film of the mythical Bigfoot since childhood. And he was amused by the fact that Americans still clung to this particular piece of folklore as if it were somehow factual. Sure, the biggest economy in the world, a tremendous landmass, but some of the most guileless people on earth too!

            It occurred to the old dear that to send Trevor and I to the best known hot spot, the nexus, of the whole relic hominid story, Washington State’s woodsy west side, to expose the foolishness of the whole thing, would be  a wonderful send up of the whole story. And it might just put paid to the whole thing, since the Beeb still has buckets of credibility, even with the credible.
            And so it came to pass, that Trevor Smythe, boy reporter, and I, Claudia LaMotta, a real pro, as these same Americans like say, found ourselves on a British Airways flight to Seattle. We landed, tired and feeling long-flight scruffy late in the afternoon. We got through Customs with no difficulty, gathered our bags at the carousel, and went in search of a room and a car rental. Of course we didn’t checked our backpacks full of precious electronic equipage. Those we had kept in the overhead compartments in the plane.
            Trevor had driven in countries where one drove on the right side before, so he was elected to be James. We ended up with a rather large Mercury. Trevor crept out of the car lot hesitantly, just getting the hang of the thing before seriously entering Seattle traffic, which, by the way, is horrific.
            Since our goal was much to the north, we decided to seek a couple of rooms for the night in a small city nearer to our destination. Lynnwood looked like it would do, so Lynnwood it was.
            Like so many things in America this place was on a large scale. But it was shelter, and an adequate breakfast was included.
            All fresh and beamish in the morning, Trevor and I gathered up all, and set out once more in the mighty Mercury. Soon we were on the motorway and on our way.  
            The further north we drove, the smaller the towns became and the larger the forests grew. We continued on, leaving the freeway for a smaller highway. The GPS was taking us into the Cascade Range of mountains. Soon the landscape looked wild and remote.
            Our first stop was a certain Ranger Station of the Forest Service in a huge parcel of forested land known as the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.
            I began to feel as if our director had given us quite a lot to accomplish. Things didn’t seem so quaintly amusing once traveling through this wilderness. A send up of the Americans had seemed like an easy and amusing project back in the comfort of London while sitting around the director’s desk.
            The Ranger Station proved to be a quite small official looking building at the end of a lesser paved road which diverged from the highway. It huddled in among tremendously tall and stout evergreen trees. There was a small paved parking lot abutting that phenomenal forest.
            I looked over at Trevor, and suddenly he looked wildly out of his element. I wondered where that notion had come from. He was the same stocky young fellow I had known since he started working in the same office with me, but maybe it was the expression on his face more than anything else. He looked more hesitant than I had ever seen him look.
            “Well, Trevor, I suppose we must press on,” I said. He nodded.
            “Claudia, I’m apprehensive about this whole thing,” said Trevor. I nodded.
            But we exited the big white Mercury to make our first contact, the ranger in the office, if  he was there, rangers being rangers who range around and all of that. There was a man sitting behind the desk poking at a laptop computer. If anything he seemed glad of a distraction.
            “Hi, I’m Rick,” he said. “What can I help you with?”
            “Hullo, Rick,” I said. “We’re on assignment from the BBC. We’ve been sent here to locate and document the elusive American Bigfoot. Apparently, this is the place to start looking!
            “Oh, this is my cameraman, Trevor Smythe and I am Claudia LaMotta.”
            Sometimes one must prevaricate a bit to get the story. Yes?
            “Ma’am, Ms. LaMotta, I’m afraid somebody sold you nice people a bill of goods. There are no Bigfoots here. In fact, there is probably no such creature, here or anywhere else.”
            I took a few moments to recalibrate. This was not the attitude we had expected to meet. We had expected rather a lot of enthusiasm instead of this blank denial.
            “I understand an official statement when I hear one, Rick. No problem. According to our information, this is the place to look. Is there any official or legal reason that we shouldn’t explore the forest here round about?” I countered.
            “No, Ma’am, there is no reason that you can’t explore the forest as long as you like. And good luck to you,” said the ranger. I remembered that statement later.
            Trevor got his camera ready, and I had my recorder ready. He locked up the Mercury and into the trees we walked. The most traveled looking path seemed to be located by a large trash receptacle. Well, no matter. This was the wild and woolly American west. Like lambs, off we went down the path.
            I walked behind Trevor, so that if he saw anything interesting he could get it in frame quickly. Plus, it was for safety’s sake. After all! There could be bears, or mountain lions here. I was momentarily unhappy that we weren’t armed.
            The nice broad path narrowed almost immediately. Various bushes of unfamiliar types pushed in from the sides of the path. It was pretty scratchy going. There were sounds. I didn’t know what was supposed to be out here, so I wasn’t sure if these soft whispers and whistles and chirps were normal.
            “Are you hearing all of that, Trevor?” I said.
            “Yes. Uh, Claudia, I thought we were supposed to be proving how silly the American believers were. They don’t seem very silly right now. Anything could be out here, including some kind of giants,” muttered my cameraman.
            “Why don’t you just film this whole trek, Trevor? It’s bound to be good for something,” I said, in spite of mounting unease. “I’ll get the sound. Just in case.”
            A sort of mist or fog rose up from the forest floor. We kept walking. There were small sparkles of light in the mist. Do fireflies fly in mist, I wondered. Surely not, but I didn’t know. Soon the vegetation vanished from view. We were almost walking blind.
            But the mist cleared soon and we kept walking. This was better! The path widened. I could see some sunlight among the trees. I kept up with Trevor.
            In a moment we walked back out by the trash receptacle, facing the same parking lot and the rented Mercury. Somehow we had gotten turned around. Well, the day was young, and we could try again. So, we did. We went right back in.
            It looked like a different path. The underbrush diminished to almost nothing. Huge trunks pressed around us. There wasn’t much sunlight in here. I heard distant laughter, and I thought I got it recorded too. I had become unsure of why Trevor and I were walking this trail. The sense of the project became vague in my mind. My vision and my waking mind were all taken up with the grandeur of this forest. A wonderful dreamlike sensation came over me.
            “Do you feel that, Trevor?” I asked.
            “You mean like being a little high?” he said, and laughed quietly.
            “I guess you could call it that,” I said. And I laughed too, as we toddled along the pretty path among the trees. As we walked a huge black bird flew over. I had to guess it was a raven, but had no idea they were so large.
            At last our walk ended at a huge dead log lying on the forest floor. It seemed special somehow. With what was left of my good sense, I wondered where these ideas were coming from.
            “Are you looking for me?” said a voice so low that it was almost out of my range, but I did hear it. I hoped that my recorder was getting this.
            “Who are you?” said Trevor, as if this were some sort of pantomime joke.
            “I am who you seek,” said the voice, perhaps continuing the joke.
            “How do you know whom we seek?” I said, laughingly.
            “It’s easy to hear your thoughts, Lady,” said the almost sub-audible voice.
            “Alright. That’s fair, I guess. Are you a ghost?” I quizzed the voice.
            “No ghost. Though in a sense I am the spirit of this place. Natives called me one thing, and others have called me various things. My mother named me a name your tongue could not say,” he said.
            “Are you flesh and blood then?” I said.
            “I have flesh and blood. I am not flesh and blood,” he said, sounding rather pleased at the notion. “I will show you, if you can bear it.” He waited for an answer.
            “Yes,” said Trevor. “We can bear truth.”
            “Yes, show us,” I said.
            And there he was. Sitting up on the massive old log, as if it were his sofa. There he was, the end of the search, and the destruction of our project for the Beeb.
            There he was, maybe nine feet tall and so many stone of weight that I had no way of estimating it. He was dark brown, covered except for his face and hands in soft wavy hair. His eyes were brown and twinkled with the elation of joking with us. He looked healthy and strong, but in a way very old. There were many crinkles around his eyes, and he had two white streaks in his beard. The effect was beyond majestic.
            “People just call me Ralph,” he said. I could hear him more clearly then. I don’t know if he was speaking in a slightly higher register or if seeing him helped me to hear him.
            “I decided that I should introduce myself to you. By the way, cameras and sound recorders don’t work out here. I’m sorry. There is no way you can prove you met me. Just the way it is!” said Ralph.
            “Yes, I can see that,” said I.
            “I hope you can salvage something from your trip across the world,” said Ralph.
            “It won’t be the story our director wants, but yes, we can salvage something,” I told him.
            “I’m glad. If you just turn back the way you came you can walk right out of here, with no fog or anything this time,” he said.
            Back at the parking lot, Rick was getting into  his service vehicle, but he stopped first.
            “Did you two find what you were looking for,” he asked.
            “Just a lot of trees,” said I
            “That’s right,” said Rick. “Just a lot of trees." But he was smiling. “Safe trip home, Claudia and Trevor!”
            In the car on the way back to SeaTac, I happened to think of the date. October 20^th. I just shook my head.
            “Trevor, I don’t know what we are going to tell the old man. Maybe we’ll both get fired!” I said.
            “Maybe we will,” he admitted.

            

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