I was sleeping in my own fluffy bed, inside the Hacienda, it was late February and kinda cold even for a Bigfoot like me, especially since my horny girl friends keep trimming my body hair short so that I look sexy for them. Masnia and Magga got trimmed too-- and, yes, they do look more sexy now --but they feel the cold more too. So we were all sleeping indoors, on a bed with blankets and pillows, living the decadent NokhSo lifestyle. Pile on two more naked human girls, Melly and Lissandra, and you start to get an idea of just how decadent and sexy things are in my corner of the world these days. A REAL Bigfoot is supposed to sleep on jagged rocks blanketed only by a layer of snow. I was awakened well before dawn by a Nokhon howl out in the woods near the Mother's Meadow. I could tell by the hands of the clock on my desk that it was 3:43 am. Actually, we all woke up, it was pretty loud, even though it had to come from a couple of miles away. Magga and Masnia knew what it was, but it scared Mel and Liss. I explained that the howl was a Nokhon greeting signal to make contact with other sasquatches, used to announce your presence. Like "Yoo-hoo, anybody home?" Magga went out onto the bedroom balcony and howled back into the night. Mel and Liss were shocked that she could make such a loud, wild sound. They'd never heard it before because squatches don't do it around NokhSos, not wishing to attract attention from humans with noisekillers. The howl was repeated, this time with a request to meet, but out in the forest, not in a NokhSo house of skesk and pø. The howl carried with it a vibration of authority that let us know it had to be a male and not a female who should-- who must respond. Not that it sounded arrogant, just very very proper. Of course, I wasn't the only male squatch in the area, Dabronat and Malasna lived in their little bakhl right next to the Mother's Meadow, I figured he would go meet with whoever the visitor was. But I should probably go out there as well, me being host to all our guest squatches staying in the Refugee Camp. I didn't put on any clothes, even though it was colder than I like it, strangers can be offended by a Nokh like me so deliberately violating Atli by wearing NokhSo artifacts, like jackets and shoes, or shining a flashlight in their eyes. And he'd sounded so proper, as mentioned, no use upsetting him. Besides, he'd also sounded really WISE somehow, if you can hear that in a howl. Dabronat was already there by the time I arrived, he's a pretty dependable guy. Our visitor was there too; and he was a pretty special guy. He looked like the God of Bigfoot: an absolutely gigantic male Nokhon, without exaggeration about 12 feet tall and weighing at least a ton, his hair as blond and golden as Melly's, but so long and shaggy that you couldn't see arms or legs, hands or feet; he was just a rounded MOUND of hair dangling down to the forest floor. He had to be very old, but his face looked almost babylike; no wrinkles, whitest perfect teeth, clearest greenest eyes. A holy man, without a doubt. He spoke a sentence very slowly, but I couldn't understand a word of it. Dabronat and I looked at each other to see if either of us had a clue as to what was being said. As far as I've ever known Nokhontli is the only language Nokhons speak and is universal because they all learn it from the Atli. I said, "I can't understand you, do you speak Nokhontli?" So the golden-haired squatch made a very slow long drawn-out gesture, which I finally comprehended as "talk slower". Eventually I realized that he'd been speaking standard Nokhontli, but so slowly that words didn't seem to hang together. It took a while to say anything. Dabronat gave up and went back to bed with his beautiful Malasna, but I stuck it out until we'd managed a conversation, by mid-afternoon. His name was Dat, the most basic name possible for a mature male Nokhon. He was very old (no way of knowing how many years, let's just say he's probably witnessed continental drift). Dat traveled around forests, up and down mountains, moving slowly, a master at passing through the world unseen. He was in touch with nature but out of touch with other Nokhons; his friends were trees. To communicate with them he had to think slowly, decelerate down to their cognitive pace, just a few "words" per day. Dat had come to me because he had learned that I was the Negotiator Dadamet, who spoke languages, and could communicate with the hairless NokhSo bastards who ravaged the world with their wicked skesk. Dat's best friend is a very old, very large Western Red Cedar tree standing in the Cascade Mountains, where greedy lumberjacks were even now encroaching upon the last remaining virgin growth on this side of the mountain range. Dat had come to ask me to negotiate with the lumberjacks and save his friend. I was sympathetic to his cause, but I haven't been on especially good terms with the lumber people. Being spokesman for the Nokon Nation Project automatically entails striving to get large parcels of somewhat-intact forest legally protected from the lumber industry. In other words, lumber folk really hated me. Dat could sense that I was hesitant to involve myself in this. Partly because I was not convinced that anyone could be actual "friends" with a tree. Oh. I understood that trees are living beings, that they experience their own kind of awareness, and that many Nokhons as well as Native American humans can have a semi-religious relationship with them. Some of my sha-haka training has focused on communicating with trees and other plant networks. But I myself have never discerned any personality or spirit that I could relate to. I feel more in common with the essence of my good old Chevy Camaro convertible V8, but then again, I was raised by skesk-loving humans. Honestly, it was also a reach to feel any kind of kinship to Dat, he was so much like a tree himself: gigantic, ponderous, slow-thinking, heavy, alien. I saw him more as an aberration of nature than as a fellow Nokhon. A lot like a beached whale, Moby Dick on land. "Would it help if you meet my friend?" Just that message took the rest of the afternoon. I was reluctant. Actually, selfish, I admit it: I had other stuff to do. And preferably at my usual speed-level: warp 9, being a modern high-tech kind of guy. Helping this molasses-minded Great Big Golden Bigfoot was going to take a lot of time out of my busy schedule. "Have you become a slave to time?" he asked me. But without sounding slow; something had changed. Also the frequency of sunlight was flickering differently, birds and insects were dangling almost frozen in the air, time had slowed down. So I said, "Ra, let's go meet your friend."
But I couldn't just leave without saying anything. It was true I had stuff to do, but I can always delegate jobs to my faithful slave girls. To do that I had to restore my perception of time back to normal, easily arranged by Dat, and let everyone know that I was going on a trip for a few days. It's good to remind myself that I AM a wild and crazy Bigfoot and not some hairless little office human dork swamped by schedules and outstanding bills. I was tempted to load big old Dat into my Squatchmobil and zip out to wherever we were going, but together we weighed too much for the car and he couldn't fit inside it anyway. Besides, driving full speed down the highway with the top down might just give the holy old nokh a heart attack and that would be really embarrassing. So we went the traditional way, walking over hill and dale, through dense thickets, up rugged mountains, avoiding human settlements and major roads. Although we did see people along the way, it was as if they couldn't see us. You'd think an extra-extra-large Golden Bigfoot would attract a lot of attention, but he seemed to be invisible and me along with him. A sha-haka trick, of course, this old guy had to be well-versed in ancient magic. We avoided contact, but that was pretty easy to do, so we just kept going, undisturbed. At first it was a test of my patience to be so slowly moseying along beside big old Dat, trudge-trudging through the Cascadian foothills that I already knew so well. Whenever I hiked with Dagrolyt we usually ran full-speed, racing each other for fun, making our haka flow to charge us with more and more speed and power. Not that we'd be in a hurry, it just felt good to channel that kind of energy. Or with Mel and Liss, I would toss them up on my shoulders and go running and leaping over obstacles, almost flying, while they'd be shrieking "Faster, Addy! Faster!" Then we'd all... well, never mind. Even big fat old Dambaraggan could work himself up to a steady plod plod plod that would eventually get us there. But my perception of time changed again, due to my proximity to this Golden Bigfoot, so that the landscape seemed to whizz past us faster and faster, falling far behind. The sun also zipped down and sprang up again, so that it only felt like a short stroll before we quite suddenly arrived at a beautiful pristine lake at the foot of a snow-capped mountain, tucked into a nice old-growth forest of pine trees. And there it was, an enormous old tree: a Western Red Cedar, maybe 20 feet thick and no-idea-how high, but way up there. A long tall stalk reaching up to a pyramid of branchlets and leaves high above any other tree nearby. Let's guess it's a thousand years old. The fissured, scaly bark was still cinnamon-reddish but hoary with age and mummied up in webs of rain-gooshy moss set against a backdrop of ferns and vine maples, all dressed up in a zillion shades of green. As you can hear, my perceptions had gone psychedelic, weird enough to make me wonder if old man Dat had slipped me a hallucinogenic drug of some kind. It felt similar to that time Pokey and I had tried LSD, although this seemed a lot more... magical. Because all of a sudden I'm just plain stoned, high on something, completely confused and yet also very aware. But I hadn't ingested any food or drink since the day before. I even suspected that somebody might have infected me with a Ssysk once again. I finally realized that it was the tree itself. It had an aura and I was standing inside it. Hell, everything everywhere had auras, me too. Then it spoke... or at least I seemed to sense a communication, a greeting, but nonverbal. Big old Dat squatted before the tree, close enough to touch the roots, so I did the same and we experienced a communion. I guess we'll have to call it telepathic, akin to what happens at a kha-rat. I can't relate a conversation, since there were no spoken words, it was more like being offered a video of the thousand years (still guessing?) the tree had been standing there; growing, absorbing sunshine, drinking rain, producing leaves, generating oxygen. All I had to offer was a short, cute little blip of the 21+ years I've lived so far. Old man Dat had a much longer lifespan to present, perhaps more dignified, but it was also just a slightly bigger blip in relation to that tree. But we did have something to discuss: the danger that was approaching this formerly isolated forest. New roads had been carved into the area and the lumberjacks were coming. The tree did not seem to fear them but I did register an attitude of regret that its life would be ending so soon. Time being obviously relative: the sun set and rose three times during our short visit. Our séance ended when I realized that something was disturbing the quiet around us, pulling me back into "normal" time. It took awhile but I finally recognized the sound of chainsaws in the woods not far away. The lumberjacks were already here! I looked around; my Golden Bigfoot was nowhere in sight. But I knew he was still there. And what I was supposed to do. I had taken my little trek backpack along, as I usually do if there's a chance that I need to talk to human people, containing my checkered shirt and white pants. "Civilized" people get upset by nudity, even though my hairy Bigfoot body doesn't bare much skin. So I dressed up for company and headed down the hill toward the rasping noise of screaming chainsaws. I'd never been exactly there before, but it resembled a protected State or National Park: there was a well-marked hiking trail through thick rain forest, lots of old-growth mossy trees, no sign of any previous large-scale cutting. So I wondered how lumberjacks could be working there, it should be illegal. I came upon a clearing where a logging truck was parked and four men with hard hats and climbing boots were felling a big old Western Hemlock, Washington State's official state tree, if that matters. I waited for it to fall before interrupting them, so that they didn't drop it on me. When they saw me there was the usual "Holy shit, is that a Bigfoot?" panic, then noticing my clothes they could figure out who I was. And then it was "Shit, it's that NNP eco-activist Bigfoot, Adam Save-the-Fucking-Forest troublemaker!" Like I said, I'm not popular with the lumber industry. One of the lumberjacks came to intercept me, a grizzled guy in his 50's, chainsaw turned off but ready in his hands. A defensive threat. Then again, I could smell how afraid he was, me being almost twice his size and his professional enemy. Understandable. I tried to be polite: "Hi, I'm..." "We know who you are, you're that tree-hugger Bigfoot who wants to put us out of business." "That's not true, I only want to keep you guys from cutting down EVERYTHING. Especially where it's not allowed. Isn't this a protected area?" "Yeah, well, it was... until recently. But now Olympia's given us permit to cut here-- and you've sure as Hell got no say in it..." I could hear that he wanted to finish with an offensive word insulting my parentage, but didn't quite dare. Two more lumberjacks approached, also bearing chainsaws, but they stopped short, hanging back, not quite as brave as their spokesman. I could check out the validity of his permit later, but for the moment I tried to be diplomatic, "I'm here to ask you to not cut down a certain tree." "Really? Now that sounds pretty reasonable, just one particular tree?" "Yes, a Western Red Cedar. I could show you where it is, up on this hill..." "That's okay, I think we already know it. Big cedar, old, up by the lake, nice scenic view of Puget Sound?" "Right." "Yeah, well, that's about 2500 cedar planks, or it will be when we rip it down. I think we'll get right on it today." "I can't talk you out of it?" "How dumb are you, monkey-man? You and all your eco-friends in the fucking NNP have caused us a lotta grief. Comin' here, threatenin' to steal our trees, stoppin' our work, sabotagin' our jobs. Well, we ain't afraid of you, Sas-quatch, no matter HOW big an' ugly you are." "I'm not threatening anyone," then I noticed old man Dat standing slightly uphill from us, his shaggy blond hair sparkling in the mottled forest sunshine, so I pointed at him and said, "I'm just negotiating a request for a friend." The lumberjacks turned to look, but evidently couldn't see the gigantic Golden Bigfoot standing right there no matter how brightly he was shining. He must have been invisible to them. They turned back to me, "Well, you go tell your invisible friend he can go fuck himself." Another added, "And all your bushy Bigfoot buddies too." Dat called to me. "You don't need to translate, we can go now." "I can destroy their skesk," I told him, "they will not be able to harm your friend without it." That might get me in trouble with the law, but after having spoken with the tree I was not going to allow it to be murdered. "No, they will only send others and we would have to stand guard forever. You have negotiated with them and they have shown no respect, so they deserve the curse that shall befall them." "Curse? What are you going to do? I can't condone harming anyone..." "Harm? Nor can I," the old wise man said, "But inconvenience, yes. Whenever they try to attack my friend with their skesk they shall instead void their bowels and bellies constantly and repeatedly. No harm shall come to them, but they shall be too miserable to do any harm either." So we left those unfriendly lumberjacks behind on that hillside, assured that they had won against the evil NNP, stood up to a Bigfoot bully and gotten away with it. And best of all, they would cut down that big old Red Cedar to show who really rules the woods in the Great Pacific Northwest. Big old Dat went on his way, wandering through the wilderness without ever being seen, I went home to my duties and my ladies. I have visited that area a few times since then, just checking. The tree is still there, not chopped down. Surrounded by lots of amusing remnants of dried-up vomit and defecation. I've never been able to slow my perception of time down enough to contact it again, at least not yet, but I'm always glad to see it looking so hardy and healthy for its age.
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