[Crying]
Some years ago, one of my friends in Seward let me run out his cabin for cheap as a favor. It was only for a few days. I had told him how I'd been wanting to get away from home for a little bit, to relax, and to finish reading some books I'd been putting off. I'm not much of an outdoorsy kind of person, but I do appreciate the tranquility from time to time. I live in Anchorage, so it wasn't that far from home, either.
If I'm remembering correctly, this would have been in the first couple weeks of October. The days were getting shorter, and the weather was getting colder. Tourism was dying down, so my friend was happy to let me stay on the cheap. The cabin probably would have been empty otherwise. I drove out there on my own. I thought of inviting someone out, but decided at the last minute that it would be nicer to be alone.
I was still living with roommates at the time, so having a whole cabin to myself sounded great. Probably for the best, too. The cabin wasn't too fancy. One bedroom, one bathroom, and not a whole lot else. The drive-over was uneventful. I can't remember a lot of the details from the day that I arrived. I was just excited to be alone, reading my books, sandwiched between the shore and the forest. I remember it being frigid, but that wasn't surprising.
All the morts' hues to stay in with my books, after all. I left to the laughter breakfast, stopped for groceries in town, and I arrived in Miller's landing in the early afternoon. I settled in, made myself a late lunch, and cracked open one of my paperbacks. Well, I only mentioned this because it seems funny to me now. I had brought a few thriller and horror novels with me.
I told another friend of mine that I'm not one to scare easily, and she took this as a challenge, immediately thrusting a few Stephen King novels into my hands. That evening, in particular, I picked up pet cemetery. Turns out I scare easier than I thought. I was just so embarrassing to think that I got so jumpy at what was just words on paper. I lost track of time. I didn't even realize the sun was setting until I had to turn on the living room lamp in order to continue reading.
I was really into my book. More importantly though, I was really jumpy. Little sounds startled me. I nearly leapt out of my skin when I first heard the gentle pitter-patter of something on the window pane, only to find that it was the intermittent thaw of snowflurries. At one point I got up to make sure all the doors and windows were locked. I was seriously on edge. I kind of wonder if I would have noticed what happened that night had it not been for how skittish that book made me.
It's hard to say exactly what time it began, but it was sometime around sunset. I was still deep into my reading. I heard bear sounds coming from outside. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that bears are just a fact of life on this side of North America. We don't necessarily run into them on a daily basis, especially if you stay in town, but you're always at least a stone's throw away from a bear's stomping ground.
So when I heard the low growling of a bear from somewhere outside the cabin, it scared me good, don't get me wrong. But the moment I'd listened long enough to understand what it was, I breathed a sigh of relief almost immediately. Bears don't break into cabins. Bears generally want nothing to do with human life. I know that as of recently there have been more news of break-ins in what have you, but back then it just didn't happen.
And even if a bear did decide to break in, I always kept bear spray handy. This is all to say, the presence of a bear, especially one that was outside while I was inside, wasn't that big of a deal. It didn't even sound that close relatively. It definitely wasn't right next to a window or anything. The big deal though was the sound that followed. A sound I did not recognize. Because I heard that bear rumble and grumble and I said to myself, "Well, that's a bear." And I went back to my reading.
And then a few moments passed, and I heard another sound, something that seemed to respond to the bear sound in kind. And it gave me enough pause to put my book down. I assumed it would be another bear that two grislies were getting into each other's business and they were about to have a terrified about it. But the second sound did not sound like another bear. It sounded just different enough that I could not be sure. So I sat up and listened carefully, curious to hear more.
Again came the familiar loud territorial growl of a grisly. And then came the reply, something gutterall and higher pitched, though still resembling the bellow of a wild animal. I could not relax after that. I couldn't let it go. I got up and I looked through each of the cabin windows until I found one that looked directly at the source of the commotion. The largest window in the bedroom looked directly out into the forest, just barely breaching the tree line.
I had to turn off the light to get rid of the glare on the glass. And suddenly I felt very cold and alone as I sat there in the dark bedroom and peered out into the woods. I still had a squint to see what was going on. They must have been about forty to fifty yards away. But once I locked eyes on them, I couldn't unsee them. I watched as a grisly bear circled a huge creature, something that stood upright on two legs, and definitely was not another bear.
It was difficult to say for certain in the dim light of the dusk, but the other creature had darker hair all over its body. The grisly was still plotting around on all fours, so it was hard to say which one was bigger. It seemed that the other non-bear creature should have been taller. But it had the advantage of standing to its full height. When I looked out on the altercation, the two creatures were not moving much. They were in the middle of a stand-off.
Both were ambling and angling in either direction, hoping to get a jump on the other. Even from my vantage point, I could feel the tension mounting between the two. I may not have thought this in the moment as I was still stunned into a state of quiet observation, but I was looking at a turf battle between a grisly bear and a big foot.
At the time I still wasn't entirely convinced that I wasn't looking at another bear, and that it was my own deficiency in knowing how bears looked and worked that was to blame. And the longer I looked at that thing, the more bewildered I became as to what it was I was looking at. I think it's just as well. It seems reckless to me to just reflexively cry Sasquatch into these situations. But I'm much more certain now, of course.
I could feel myself holding my breath as I watched this hostile dance between the two of them, somehow still anxious that maybe just by witnessing this confrontation that I was somehow involved or in danger. And I don't blame myself for being nervous, seeing a fight between a bear and any other creature in itself would be an adrenaline rush. What I was seeing was both exhilarating and confusing. The two creatures continued their slow circle around each other.
Then the bear began to rear back, revving up for something big. It propelled itself onto its hind legs, leaping up to stand to its full height. From there I could see that the two were equally matched in length. If one was larger than the other, I couldn't tell very well. As the bear brought itself up into the air, it used the momentum to throw its weight onto the bigfoot, claws first. The bigfoot held its ground.
It guarded itself with its forearms, bracing itself from the bear's blow, and then barrelled into its opponent, knocking the grizzly backwards and into a tree. I couldn't believe my eyes. This was playing out like some kind of mythological combat between two titanic creatures. But I was invested now. I had in my nose pressed to the window pane, and my hands were closed around my face to block out any excess light. They were circling each other again.
It was hard to tell if either one of them was injured or even rattled yet. They strafed to either side, watching each other for the faintest movement, each one ready to pounce. With the bear on all fours, it looked like the bigfoot was having a tough time trying to figure out how to grapple it.
To bend down and get low to meet the grizzly might have been inadvisable, unless it had the strength to manhandle hundreds of pounds of prehybernation bear meat, and it was probably better for bigfoot to wait for the bear to rear up again. The grizzly, perhaps sensing this, tried to claw at the bigfoot a couple of times. It also tried to reach out and sink its teeth into the bigfoot's legs, but bigfoot he was way too quick on his big feet, and he shuffled away with ease.
He stepped into a corner, the bear once more stood up to meet the bigfoot in an upright position, throwing itself against its opponent once, twice, and then one final time, each time digging its claws into the Sasquatch. Each time it was hit, the Sasquatch let out an awful sound that was somewhere between ape and human roaring out in agony. I couldn't see blood, but I had seen the depth at which a bear's claws can score through something like solid tree bark.
I knew that if the grizzly was digging in at full force, that bigfoot had to have been badly injured at this point. Its posture certainly seemed to indicate this, before it had stood to its full height, which was somewhere between eight to nine feet, but now it was doubled over, holding one arm against its torso. The grizzly had gotten him good. It made sense that the bigfoot might be on the wrong foot to handle this fight.
If I'm assuming correctly, Sasquatch is not exactly known for having sharpened claws and teeth, like a bear. It seemed to me that the most bigfoot brought to this fight was pure brute strength and solid stature. Against most other animals, this would be enough. But against one of the biggest and baddest predators on US soil, bigfoot had met his match. Now worst case scenario was that this was a mother, and her cubs were somewhere nearby.
But who knows, maybe this bigfoot was in a similar situation? In any case, the final standoff was the tensest one yet. The bigfoot showed obvious apprehension. It clearly had stakes, but could not continue. They circled each other once more, moving so slowly that it was almost imperceptible from where I was sitting. It was getting darker, and it was even harder to see the battle between the trees.
Finally, the bigfoot shifted in the opposite direction, pointing its body away from the bear, but keeping its eyes on it. He began to back away, taking his time as if to say he wanted to keep fighting. The grizzly, however, was not impressed. It roared at bigfoot again, and the bigfoot led out an aggressive snarl that surely was all talk. There was no mistaking the saskwatches' slow retreat back into the Alaskan wilderness. I watched for a long time.
The grizzly kept its feet planted, and its haunches raised. The bigfoot made short steps backwards in a way. My eyes followed him until I couldn't see him anymore beyond the trees. The grizzly didn't move either. Shifted a little bit, maybe relaxed after a while, but it kept its eyes and its nose in the direction of where the bigfoot had retreated. Both the grizzly and eyes stayed just like that for a while.
I half expected for the bigfoot to return, if only because I was curious to see it again. Their fight had been far away and intense, so I never felt like I got a good enough look at it. I wish so badly that I had seen its face in more detail. But the bigfoot never returned, and eventually the grizzly and eye both decompressed. The bear didn't go anywhere. It kind of paced back and forth in the same spot, sniffing around and looking around.
It seemed to remain there, just in case any other dangers passed by. All sunlight was nearly gone by this time. "I'm not sure how long I stayed there. It became too dark for me to see the bear, and I finally backed away from the window. I went back to the living room. I had been so engrossed in my book before, but now the idea of sitting down to read seemed so boring compared to what I had just seen. The next day, while the sun was still out, I wandered outside with bear spray and toe, mind you.
And I approached the area where I had seen the fight. I tried not to get too close. Even with my bear spray, I didn't particularly care to meet any bears if I could help it. But my curiosity had gotten the best of me. I stepped around the perimeter where I'd seen the bear and the bigfoot duking it out. I was specifically looking for footprints. I figure if the guy lived up to the name that I would see his footprints clear as a day, but the underbrush was too messy.
Not enough soft dirt to leave any obvious indentations. At least none that I could see. What I did see, though, was almost as good. A trail of blood speckled across a cluster of large flat rocks, browned by time, and leading in the same direction that the bigfoot had walked away the night before. [BLANK_AUDIO]