The Rainy Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
The rain has
been incessant today, and as James Joyce would say, “falling generally all
across” the Pacific Northwest. This dark
and dreary weather gives me pause to reconsider the relevance of Longfellow’s
line, “Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.”
This story
begins when I had just completed my degree in journalism from U. C. Sacramento
and was still filled with the zealous ambition to tell the truth as I saw it,
and with that truth, change the world.
Needing a place to ply my supposed life’s purpose, I took a job at a
relatively young news magazine, The Gate,
in San Francisco as a “staff reporter.” A
staff reporter meant I was the low man on the totem pole: no By Lines, no
Pulitzers, no fame, only a lowly writer of content fill. I was told that I needed to “cut my teeth” in
the real world of journalism, and that meant surviving at least a full year of
local political races, inconsequential city council and school board meetings, and
the requisite “pet-saves-the-day” feel good fluff. I was seriously considering a professional
change when I was finally offered what was proposed as a primo assignment. It would be, as it turned out, my last
assignment as a journalist, but the story would challenge me in ways I still do
not fully understand, and stick with me through all the frustrating years and
rejections of my career as a starving writer.
It would be
those unending, disquieting thoughts that led me to the research of the
probabilities of impossibility, Faith as it were. As to my conclusions and suppositions, I
guess you could call me agnostic. I
don’t know what I believe. I am writing
this because it is the logical thing to do.
I know there will be some who will use this as some sort of dissertation
on a definitive truth, and others who will laugh at my ludicrous premise and
unscholarly connection of seemingly incongruous events.
I found Eve
amid scores of yellowed missing persons reports in the archives of the Seattle
police department. Her first name was my
only “hit” in hundreds of hours of searching.
The police report led me to a few surviving newspaper articles to
supplement the scant investigative interviews.
Unfortunately, her few friends have scattered over the years, and her
parents are long deceased. So with the
little I had, I began to piece together what I uncovered and compare it to the
“facts” I knew, and thus this incredible story was compiled.
Granted, my conclusions are not
without flaws, and wholly dependent on a certain number of leaps-of-faith. In the end, I still don’t know if I believe
what I think, or even think what I believe, but this is my thesis of Faith.
Eve Sternum
was born March 13, 1948, in Wenatchee, Washington. Her father was an economics professor at
Central Washington University and her mother a high school science
teacher. Her Scandinavian heritage
blessed her with fine blond hair and (according to reports) striking blue eyes;
however, it denied her the stereotypical flawless beauty inherent of the people
of that region. She was, instead,
reportedly plain by most accounts, but also known as an intellect without
equal. Eve excelled in her studies and
graduated high school in her 16th year. Due to her youth, her parents kept her home
for the first two years of college, studying psychology at Wenatchee Valley
College. As her 18th birthday
neared, she applied to, and was accepted at, the University of Washington in
Seattle. Emancipated and on her own, she
redoubled her academic prowess, and earned her bachelor’s in less than 10
months. At that point she switched
majors and began to pursue studies in biologic pharmaceuticals for her graduate
degree. She was awarded her Masters of
Science almost six months early, on March 13, 1969. She apparently failed to recognize the
significance of the date so carefully orchestrated by her parents.
Eve was a particularly
non-social person. According to the surviving
interviews of her classmates, she was not anti-social, but preferred quiet,
uninterrupted study in her dorm over the din of campus life. Abstaining from the political and social
unrest of the era, and refusing to engage in debate or even the expression of
opinions on Nixon and the Viet Nam War, she was considered by many to be a collegiate
pariah, and shunned as such. Her
recreation was therefore, not found in the company of the co-ed males, nor was
it dancing, parties, raucous rallies or partaking in the varied intoxicants
prevalent in the mid to late 1960s. She
instead found her recreational pleasures in solo, exploratory hikes and backwoods
kayaking in the Cascades Mountains. It
is there where her story begins and ends.
Her 22nd
birthday had passed during a particularly late cold snap. Eve had spent the winter and early spring
working in a post-graduate fellowship on a derivative of a protein found only
in the furled frons a rare species of fern.
It was her belief, according to several people who assisted her, that by
splitting this protein she had identified, and combining it with an inherent human
amino acid, she could produce a biologic receptor that would inhibit the growth
of metastatic melanoma. Her ultimate
goal was to find a bridge that would correlate this receptor with other
cancers. She carefully documented her
discoveries in copious detail, bound in notebooks that were never found outside
her guarded possession.
By early
April, the air had warmed and the snow had receded enough for her to pack a
three-day supply of food and water, some necessary sterile vials, her carefully
annotated lab notes and a jar of the refined solvent necessary for the protein
extraction. It was a Saturday when she
headed into the high bush country in search of the tender spouts that promised
a medical breakthrough.
But as I
said, this is both the beginning and the end of her story. Eve never returned from her hike. Air and ground searches continued for three
weeks without any positive results. By
the end of the summer of 1970, Eve Sternum and all of her potential, was
relegated to the annals of the lost hikers of the Pacific Northwest.
And then
came the infamous “Fastiff video.”
When I was
assigned to interview Charlie Fastiff, trust me, I did everything possible to
weasel my way out of it. It may have
been offered as a primo assignment, but the topic was not of particular
interest to me and I had no desire to indelibly tie my virginal reputation to
such a fiasco. Even in light of the
remarkable story that eventually unfolded, this is still a case where I believe
the mystery would have been better off left a mystery; my life certainly would have
had a different outcome.
The magazine wanted to cover the
popular, quote, Bigfoot phenomenon, end quote, from every conceivable
angle. The magazine wanted interviews
from every kook and every official, from witnesses and hoaxers, from biologists
and cryptozoologists; my editor wanted every piece of
tangible evidence, and of course, he wanted Charlie Fastiff’s video.
I met
Charlie at his house, a tiny ramshackle clapboard trailer surrounded by a yard
full of discarded appliances, toilets and rusting car bodies. He resides just off Highway #7 in British
Columbia on the outskirts of Hope. Oh, I
was so tempted to make a joke about his circumstances and the nearby town’s
name, but out of social etiquette, I kept quiet. I guess I’ll leave it to each of you to
devise an appropriate punchline for yourself.
Charlie was
not someone I would categorize as a typical North Woods mountain man. He was short, rotund and had a ruddy
complexion betoken of the hypertension that he likely garnered from his poor
diet, abusive beer consumption, and evident lack of exercise.
We met and shook hands at the base
of the weather-worn wood steps that led into the trailer. I asked if he knew who I was, and what I was
there for. He acknowledged the scheduled
interview, but demanded his negotiated stipend before he would allow me
inside. I counted the U.S. currency as I
laid it out on a rusted washing machine; he refused to help me retrieve my
equipment from the car, but did graciously hold the door open as I toted my
tripods, recorders and cameras into the mobile home.
Inside, his home was dingy and dark
with an odiferous air of mildew, stale beer and urine, but mixed with a
sweetness that knew, but failed at first to identify. I placed a voice recorder atop a stack of moisture
stained Field and Stream
magazines. I glanced around hoping to
spot one of our titles, but from the age of the periodicals I saw, I doubt my
esteemed employer was even being published when Charlie had bought his last
subscription. With the recorder on, I
set about placing the video cameras and lights for the main part of the
interview. While I busied myself, I
began the “soft stroke” questions designed to promote confidence and ease of
conversation.
I learned that Charlie was
collecting disability from a short military stint, and made other money trading
junk metal and doing odd jobs. He had
been married once and had a child; neither his ex-wife nor his son had spoken
to him in over 15 years. His life, he
claimed, was pretty much solitary since his best friend, Steve, had been
recently killed in prison. He boasted
that he and Steve used to enjoy bird watching and hiking in the mountains; my
cursory inspection of the miniscule hovel proved there wasn’t anything that
could possibly substantiate those as active hobbies. When I asked about the dangers of being alone
in the woods, he produced a 44 caliber handgun, saying he was not stupid, no
bear or mountain lion was going to get him.
He said, “This here might not kill a bear, but it sure as hell will
scare ‘em off.” I simply smiled as if I
agreed.
I rearranged the room so that there
were two chairs directly in front of the old Zenith 27” console TV with its RCA
VCR on top. In the corner, I noticed
several plastic milk crates full of cassettes.
I commented about the number of movies to which he replied, he didn’t
get television out here, it was too expensive, but those, indicating the cache
of tapes, were mostly, “You know, adult stuff.
Fuck films.” His admission made
me reconsider sitting on the soiled upholstered chair, but I had made it this
far, and I figured, a new pair of jeans would not kill my budget.
I placed his now infamous video
into my high speed tape-to-tape duplicator so I would have the negotiated full
copy to bring back to San Francisco, and while that spun, I checked the camera
angles in order to have face shots of both him and me to edit together. Plus, the two mic sources would assure the
best possible audio recording.
Charlie went to the kitchen and
returned with a cold can of Natty; he
didn’t offer one to me. We began the
interview talking about why he went up on the mountain alone. He again offered the same lies about bird
watching and hiking; I was not there to judge, so I allowed him to prattle his overly
detailed and extensive fabrications without interruption or challenge.
With the suspect prologue recorded,
I asked if we could start the video. He
offered to cue it up to the exciting stuff, but I insisted that I needed to see
the entire film. Almost from the
beginning, where there was an obvious edit, I could detect two whispering voices
and an occasional shadow that could not have come from Charlie, who was holding
the camera.
I allowed the farce to continue
making notes based on the blue timer readout of the VCR. At 18 minutes 52 seconds, Charlie indicated in
a voice that sounded like over-emoted fear, that this is where it
happened. The progress of the “hike”
slowed considerably as if Charlie, while shooting the video was either setting
something up or awaiting some off-camera cue.
The view on the tape panned around
a large boulder where three creatures jumped
to their feet; two very large males, and one significantly smaller and lighter
colored female. This was the image of
the supposed Sasquatches I was sent to collect.
Charlie stood and stated, “I don’t
want to watch this part.” He hobbled
towards the kitchen with the probable purpose of fetching another Natural Light.
The video image shuttered like the
camera was being held in unstable hands.
The motion caused the auto-focus to drift in and out without capturing a
clear image of the Bigfoot creatures.
The audio, as I am sure you have seen and heard numerous times, was
unblemished by the Blair Witch-type
cinematography. Charlie’s voice is heard
stammering, “Oh my God. Oh, my God! It’s okay.
It’s okay. We won’t hurt
you. Really, it’s okay.”
There were guttural grunts and
hisses from the two larger “animals,” but the smaller female remained silent,
tilting her head like a curious child. In
a very human-like fashion, she took four steps toward the camera, paused, and
pointed an index finger at Charlie. He
spoke again, more calmly than I would have expected, “It’s okay; I won’t hurt
you. My name is Charlie.”
The female pointed her finger at
her own chest and vocalized some sounds that many proclaim sound like, “Me -
Eve - Momma.”
As if by some prearranged cue, the
two large males screamed in a high-pitched coyote-like howl and ran in the
direction of the camera. Charlie and his
undisclosed companion also screamed, and that is where, as you know, the video
ends.
“That’s where I dropped the camera
and broke it.” Charlie was standing
behind me, emptying another blue and silver can. “I went back two days later; they must’ve
fucked with it, because it was a good ten yards from where I dropped it. I’m just glad the tape was still there.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I smiled, “You have always claimed you were up
there alone. You weren’t. Who was with you, Charlie?” The question seemed to catch him off
guard. “Come on, it’s obvious, man,
there were two of you there.”
Charlie’s shoulders slunk, “It was
Steve. Me and him were together, but
don’t write that, okay? I ain’t be sharing
no money with his damned low-life kids. I
ain’t got nothing, nothing but this tape.
So if you don’t mind, you just say it was only me up there, okay?”
It was about then that my sensory
memories kicked in and I finally identified the other odor that hung in the
air. “You had a grove out there, didn’t
you?”
“What the fuck do you mean? A grove?”
“You and Steve were growing pot out
there, weren’t you? You aren’t bird
watchers; you don’t take a video camera bird watching. You aren’t hikers either; look at you, man. And I can smell the weed, Charlie. That’s what you were doing, right?”
Charlie looked genuinely nervous,
even scared this time.
“Look, Charlie, I’m not the cops; I
don’t give a damn about the marijuana. I
am only here about the video and how you came to shoot it. The rest can stay your dirty little secret,
honest.”
Charlie sat defeatedly into his
chair. He dropped his face into his
hands and whispered, “Someone was fucking with our plants. We were going to get them on film; maybe kill
‘em. I don’t know. It was all Steve’s idea.”
“Was the whole Bigfoot stunt
staged?”
“Hell, no! Those fucking things scared the shit out of
us.” Charlie stood up and switched the
VCR off, killing the static. “Anyone
that goes out there alone is just plain fucking nuts.”
He sat hard again into the
chair. He appeared lost in thoughts for
several minutes, and finally added, “Steve went back up there to harvest the
plants. He’s the one that got the
camera. I ain’t never going back up
there. He got caught coming back down;
that’s where they busted him. The camera
was in his PBs at the jail. I guess he
listed me as the emergency contact, ‘cause they gave me all his shit after he got
hisself shanked and died. I did give his
watch and money to his kids, but I ain’t never told them about the camera.”
When I got back to San Francisco, I
ran another copy of the tape to keep as a souvenir. With that done, I gathered the interview
tapes and the magazine’s equipment and headed downtown to meet with my
editor. The meeting didn’t go as well as
I might have expected. He was seriously agog
over the video, ranting about it being the first definitive evidence that
Sasquatches exist. I attempted to get
him to listen to the “other” facts, but he wasn’t interested in Charlie’s
confessions. I argued that the truth
behind the Bigfoot encounter was nothing more than a preposterous hoax
perpetrated by a couple of marijuana growers to deter people from hiking near
their crops. I beseeched him that the video
could injure the magazine’s reputation if we were to propound it as anything
other than just another fraud. In the
end, I was politely, yet sternly, admonished that as long as I worked for The Gate, I would have no say and offer
no opinion as to what the magazine would or wouldn’t do with its content;
furthermore, it was his job, not mine, to decide what was truth and what was
farce.
Truth, as it turns out, whether it
is broadcast as news, printed in books and magazines, preached from a pulpit, or
posted on the Internet, is nothing more than an editorial decision. No definitive paradigm exists. To paraphrase an old saying, one man’s truth
is another man’s folly. I sadly
discovered that journalism is a sham unless you are willing to accept the truth
as it is interpreted by the powers that be.
I did agree with him about my obligations as a magazine employee. But I was tired, I was disheartened, and I
was disappointed by the realities of my chosen profession. I quit.
Later that evening, alone in my darkened
apartment, I contemplated this new and unplanned slant on my future. My copy of the Fastiff video lay on the
counter where I had left it; I decided to watch it again. I hoped to reassure myself as to the
conclusions that ended my short and quite un-illustrious journalism career. But as the video ended, I was left as empty
as I was at the beginning. I stared, mesmerized
at the static and snow of the empty tape, wishing I could find some small
solace for my actions. Life changing
events are rarely fraught with joy and confidence; this was no exception.
Depression sat heavy on my chest, and
I decided to self-medicate the pain and lubricate the “I quit” words still lodged
in my throat. Pouring a straight four
fingers of Kentucky Gentleman, I
started towards to the TV to quiet the white noise when at 28 minutes, 51
seconds, I heard something else.
I rewound and listened, and rewound
and listened, over and over until I was certain that there was something more
than just blank tape noise.
For more than a week, my mind
twisted in turmoil as I considered the possible consequences of this discovery. I vacillated between going public and the destruction
of the evidence. Truth had again morphed
in my conceptual mind. If what I had
heard turns out to be “true,” it could, in fact, change the world. Now I was the editor.
I set about recruiting help. I would need substantive and verifiable tests
done by reliable and creditable authorities.
And all of this needed to be accomplished with a bank account that held
little promise of a replenishing paycheck in any foreseeable future. I cashed in every favor I ever amassed until
at last, one of my professors from the University called with a possible lead. She had an associate who was currently
engaged in audio reconstruction and analysis for the government. Apparently he and she once had something more
than a casual friendship, and she thought she could entice him to study the
tape without charge.
For security purposes, I was not
allowed to enter the secretive lab, but after four days, he called late at
night and asked for a meeting. The next
morning at a downtown coffee shop, he presented me with a filtered version of my
tape where he had segregated the subject noises from the background
interference. His linguist had agreed to
analyze the sounds and had concluded that it was, indeed, some sort of vocalized
communication. To his surprise, although
the source was undoubtedly animal in origin, there were syllables that appeared
to be constructed in English.
He provided a short transcript for
me to compare to the sounds on the filtered tape.
Female
voice: (unintelligible) No (unintelligible)
Momma
First
male voice: (unintelligible)
Second
male voice: (unintelligible)
Female
voice: Together -- Eve (unintelligible)
Second
male voice: (unintelligible)
Female
voice: No hurt (unintelligible)
First
male voice: (loud, but unintelligible)
Female
voice: No - Please (unintelligible)
Then the female voice is then heard
crying and fading away from the damaged microphone.
Could this all be part of the same
hoax? Yes, sure it could. But then why doesn’t Charlie make everyone
listen to that part of the tape too?
Like I said, I’m agnostic; I don’t know what I believe, I don’t even
know what I think. My guess is that this
is where Faith has to enter the picture.
I once heard it argued that George
Lucas successfully suggested the existence of God by writing the prequel to the
Star Wars Trilogy twenty-five years
after the original movie’s premier. The
argument goes that an omnipotent God who presents Himself in Faith, and then
challenges mortals to maintain that Faith in the face of free-will and cold reason,
could, and in fact, would write the known
geologic, paleontologic and archeologic evidence as tests of our Faith. And therein lies the conundrum of vindication. It was proffered that should one man trust his
Faith over reason, and Faith is never vindicated, the consequences are minimal;
however, should another man choose empirical evidence over Faith, and Faith is vindicated,
the consequences are beyond comprehension.
Logic defies logic.
There are many who have a faith
that Bigfoot exists, but their faith is not as yet provable. Is Faith truth? Is truth Faith? Or are Faith and truth irreconcilable?
No one has ever found a Sasquatch body,
nor has anyone captured a live specimen.
And as many as there are, every picture of the beasts is either grainy or
out of focus. Does this lack of evidence
prove they do not exist? I really don’t
know; I have no truth other than Eve. She
is not much of a truth other than my aforementioned ludicrous premise and
unscholarly connection of seemingly incongruous events, but there also is the
Fastiff video and the noises at the end.
I keep telling myself that only a fool would believe. This is where unvindicated Faith and
undiscovered evidence must be reconciled.
I still attempt to say I am agnostic, that I don’t believe what I think,
or think what I believe, but then I did hear that voice, and I felt the Spirit.
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining…
Eve.
A couple of weeks ago, just as the
first sign of the slowdown manifested, my friend Sandra and I took off one
afternoon and drove through the Pigeon River Gap into Tennessee. She wanted me to see Cades Cove in the park
from the Gatlinburg side. It was a
thoroughly enjoyable day of leisured driving and wildlife watching. From the
moment you approach the park, you know you are entering a special place, full
of history and wondrous sites. 
fawn came out for a
picture shoot. Unfortunately someone
stepped in front of me before I could get a clear picture of the fawn. My dog, Sebastian,
mostly either running at full pace or
too deep in the shadows of the woods for to get a good photograph, but one guy
did come out just in front of our car, and allowed us to watch as he snacked on
the wild berries of a low hanging tree. 
Yesterday, in return for Sandra’s
treat of taking me in from the Tennessee side, we packed the 
car with Subway
sandwiches and plenty of cold water for both of us as well as Sebastian and
started into the park from the Waynesville side towards the scenic and historic
Cataloochee Valley. I knew we were going
too early to catch our now famous reestablished herd of Appalachian elk, the
road through the pass into the valley is treacherous at best, and in the
evenings there can be as many as five hundred cars negotiating the one lane
road that is the only way in or out. 
shadows of the dense forest stepped two
elk does, one yearling fawn, and a velvety spiked buck. What was truly remarkable was that although
the elk were at least 100 yards away, Sebastian 
