Dr. Nathan Wright blinked repeatedly, his eyes struggling to cope with the studio lights as the makeup artist finished applying makeup to his face. Wright sometimes wondered about the need for so much makeup for a simple television talk show appearance. Sure, makeup probably was needed back in the early days of movies and television because of the primitive camera and lighting technologies in use at the time. But this was the second decade of the 21st century, for crying out loud. Wright owned digital cameras capable of taking very natural looking high definition videos and photos of people not wearing any special makeup. Why were the far more expensive studio cameras not capable of the same thing? He idly wondered if the makeup artists had a really strong union.

The make up artist finished with Wright and moved on to another guest. His eyes finally adjusted to the bright lights, Wright took the opportunity to scan the list of questions provided by the producers. Of course it was always the same thing...

As a distinguised professor of zoology and biological anthropology, Nathan Wright, Ph.D. was brought on these programs as the skeptic, the "real" scientist there to debunk the theories and findings of the cryptozoologists who were the featured guests. This was tabloid television, after all. The people with the sensational theories were the guests who got viewers to tune in to the program. The responsible scientists like Wright were there to rain on everybody's parade.

The subject of debate on the show that night was the existence or non-existence of Bigfoot, the legendary hominid creature known to Native Americans as Sasquatch. Most of the believers on the show were Bigfoot "experts" of widely varying education and experience. Some of these experts had their own reality show on another network where they actually ran around remote forests at night with infrared cameras strapped to their heads making lots of fuss about any noises they happened to hear out there in the wilderness. That show was long on breathless excitement and wild theories while being quite short on anything resembling real evidence.

Wright was frequently invited to appear on these Bigfoot-themed tabloid talk shows because not only was he a tenured professor of zoology and anthropology at a prestigious university, but he had grown up in the endless forests of southern Oregon. In fact he still owned his inherited childhood home and frequently spent summers there with his own family.

Wright was therefore able to not only dispute and debunk any "evidence" presented by the other guests, he was able to assure the host that in the course of several decades spent living in and exploring the supposed stomping grounds of these creatures, he had never personally seen any evidence of their existence.

The truly ironic part was that of all the people on stage in that studio that night, Nathan Wright, Ph.D. was probably the only one who knew for an absolute certain fact that sasquatches do exist....

Jackson County, Oregon - Summer 1972

"Nathan Bentley Wright!"

Uh, oh. Nathan could tell that his mother was really pissed. She never used his full name unless she was angry.

"Nathan! Get your ass in here! Now!"

Shit! She must be really mad. The only time his mother swears is when she's really, really pissed off. He stopped working on the cage he was repairing, trotted across the back yard and entered the house through the back door. "What's wrong, Mom?"

"I've told you time and time again to stop bringing these damned lizards in the house!"

"It's not a lizard, Mom," said Nathan patiently, moving through the house towards the sound of his mother's voice as he spoke. "It's a salamander, which is an amphibian."

"Don't get technical with me, young man," there was a dangerous edge to her voice. "It looks like a lizard to me. In fact I thought it was a snake at first, until I saw the legs."

Nathan entered the room where his mother was holding a small reddish brown salamander by its tail. He was shocked. "Don't hold it by the tail!"

"Why on earth not?" said Mom, as Nathan rushed over and gently took the nearly five-inch long creature into his hands.

"Well first of all the tail can detach if it gets caught by a predator." Nathan examined the salamander, which appeared to be none the worse for wear.

"I didn't bite it!" said Mom, disgusted. "The tail is slimy, just for starters."

"That's good you didn't bite it," said Nathan. "Cause that mucus the tail excretes is toxic."

"Toxic?" her voice was practically a screech. "It's poisonous?"

"Well, it's only a mild toxin. Just wash your hands and you should be fine."

"I never heard of a poisonous salamander," said Mom. She examined the slimy substance on her hand, looking slightly green around the gills.

"I don't think they have anything like this back in New England, Mom. It's an Oregon Ensatina. The various ensatina species are only found in damp Pacific coastal forests from California up to British Columbia."

"I don't care what it's called! Get the stupid poisonous thing out of my house!" She headed for the bathroom to wash her hands. "Then wash your hands or I'll make you go cut a switch!"

"Okay, Mom," said Nathan as he carefully carried the ensatina out of the house.

"You're twelve years old now, Nathan," his mother's voice followed him out into the yard through the window screens. "When are you going to stop bringing all these dangerous critters into the house?"

Nathan rolled his eyes but held his tongue as he released the ensatina at the edge of the yard. His mother was being unreasonable, as usual, but she was also very angry at the moment. Since he didn't want to risk a pants-down meeting with a fresh switch he remembered to wash his hands at the outside water faucet before getting back to work.

___________________________________________________________________

"I'm very disappointed in you, Nathan."

"Sorry, Dad," Nathan was unable to meet his father's gaze, preferring instead to examine the ground at his feet. "It was just a plant."

"Just a plant?" said Dad, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Bentley Wright IV was a former trial lawyer who had become a judge, so he was quite adept at using his voice as a tool... or a weapon. "I know you love animals son, but the study of plants can be just as critical to understanding the life cycle of the forest."

"Yes, sir." Nathan knew he could not win this argument. His father had majored in Botany at Harvard before changing his career plans and getting a law degree from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, the oldest university in the Western United States. Though father and son shared a love of exploring the ancient forests of Southwest Oregon, his father always concentrated on examining the trees and plants, whereas Nathan was always on the lookout for birds and animals. Finally meeting his father's steady gaze, Nathan gave in to the inevitable. "I can go collect a sample now."

"Good idea," said Dad, his voice softening and a tolerant grin appearing on his face. "Just be careful, you said the vines were near a ravine."

"I'll be careful, Dad." As Nathan left the campsite and tramped off through the woods in the direction of the ravine, he silently kicked himself for ever mentioning the stupid vines to his father. What the parent doesn't know can't get the child in trouble. Especially when it came to vines.

Bentley Wright IV was the fourth in a line of Bentley Wrights that stretched back through more than a century of Oregon history. The original Bentley Wright had made and lost a couple of fortunes during the Oregon Gold Rush of 1852. The next two generations of Bentleys had spent time placer mining for gold as well, but they had also pursued other interests and eventually established the Wrights as one of the more prominent families in Jackson County.

Nathan was quite glad that his father had chosen to break the pattern and not name his son Bentley Wright V. Four Bentley Wrights were enough for any family as far as Nathan was concerned, though he had no objection to being given his father's name as his middle name.

Although Nathan loved living in Southwest Oregon, he wasn't certain that he wanted to spend his entire life here. There was so much else to see in the world. His father seemed content to read about life elsewhere, both real and imagined. His father's library included a complete set of the Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. So far Nathan had read the original Tarzan of the Apes and three of the sequels. He tried to read another every year, but with more than twenty novels in the series it was going to take a while to finish them all off.

Nathan and his father had avidly followed the 1966-68 television series Tarzan starring Ron Ely and still caught reruns of the show on occasion. His Dad's one major objection to that series (and to many of the Tarzan films) was the vines. The man found it hard to believe that so many vines capable of supporting the weight of an adult human being could be scattered around the jungle. The part Dad had the biggest problem with was how conveniently spaced out the vines appeared to be, enabling transit through the jungle canopy simply by swinging from vine to vine. Worst of all Burroughs had never mentioned travel by vines in the books.

Given his father's fixation with vines, it had been stupid of Nathan to report his sighting of some vines in the forest of Jackson County that morning. In fact as he trudged uphill through the forest back to where he had seen the vines, it dawned on Nathan how surprising it was that his father had not insisted on coming along to see the vines with his own eyes. He began wondering what his father was up to.

As he stopped to take a swig from his canteen a bit later, Nathan looked back down the way he had just come. He thought he had heard movement back there once or twice as he picked his way through the forest undergrowth. But if his father was back there trailing him, the old man was doing a good job of being invisible. To hell with it. If Dad wanted to be cagey for some reason, let him. Besides, having just recently turned twelve Nathan was still young enough to feel a bit safer out in the wilderness with his father trailing along behind him, no matter what the reason.

___________________________________________________________________

By the time he arrived back at the vines Nathan had managed to convince himself that he was not being followed by his father... or anyone else. Nathan approached the vines and actually reached out to touch them, something he hadn't done when he first noticed them that morning. Hmmm.

Nathan was no botanist, but it was quickly apparent to him that these were not vines, or at least not the woody vines that he was used to seeing in the Oregon woods. They were stringy and hanging down from somewhere up in the canopy above. Each strand was thin and clearly not strong enough to hold his weight, or any weight really. In fact as soon as he put any pressure on a strand it broke off in his hand. So getting the promised sample was easily accomplished, but that still didn't explain what these things were.

The consistency was almost like a kind of moss, but Nathan had never heard of a moss that was so long and stringy. He moved around a bit to try and see how the strands were attached... and what they were attached to.. up in the canopy. The strands were incredibly long, perhaps 20 to 25 feet or more in length, yet only a half-inch or so in diameter. He wondered if they were some form of parasitic plant.

Nathan scanned the forest in the direction from which he had come, but there was no sign yet of his father's approach. At this point he was hoping his father would turn up. He was convinced that the man would be so fascinated by the sample and his son's description of the vines that he would insist on hiking back up here yet again tomorrow to see the vines himself. Hoping to avoid such boredom, Nathan decided to spend at least 15 minutes or so examining the vines and their environment. If his father didn't turn up he wanted to be able to provide the most complete description of the vines that he could.

As Nathan moved around, trying to see the upper end of the vine strands he got closer to the edge of the ravine. He was careful as he got near the edge, looking down into the narrow ravine. A small, rushing mountain stream ran along the bottom of the ravine, at least 30 feet below, headed down the side of the mountain where it must eventually join up with some larger tributary to the Rogue River. He looked across the narrow ravine and wasn't terribly surprised to see similar strands of whatever plant he held in his hand hanging down from the forest canopy on the far side of the gap.

Nathan knew just enough botany to be aware that some plants are more likely to grow immediately adjacent to waterways. He wondered if this incredibly long and stringy plant was one of those. As he stared across the ravine trying to see if he could spot where the far strands were anchored to the forest canopy above he became aware of slight movement down at ground level.

Human eyes respond automatically to movement, so he immediately focused on the ground level area directly across the ravine from where he was standing. Nathan quickly realized that someone was over there in the shadows watching him. His first thought was that his father had somehow managed to get over there to keep an eye on him but he quickly discarded that idea. Whoever it was, he was far too small to be Nathan's father.

In fact his next thought was that it was another boy about his own age, but wearing some kind of weird brown camoflage. He couldn't see a face, but from the general size and shape of the shadow it had to be another boy... or possibly even a girl. Eventually Nathan decided that this staring at each other from the shadows business wasn't really getting either of them very far so he decided to open hailing freqencies. He took a half step closer to the edge of the rim and shouted, "Hello? Who's over there?"

Nathan was able to see what looked like a slight amount of movement from the shadowy figure across the way, like it was shifting its weight slightly... but there was no other response. He decided to wave to the other boy. "Hello? I can see you over there in the shadows!"

The brought definite movement as the other figure stepped slightly closer to the edge of the ledge and out of the shadows. Nathan was stunned into speechlessness... the creature that appeared in the afternoon sunlight at the far side of the ravine was not human.

Once his mind started working again Nathan wondered if a gorilla had escaped from some zoo or circus, but that wasn't right. Barely taller than Nathan's own height of five feet nothing, the creature was covered in thick brown fur. Though it had long arms its shoulders were much narrower than a gorilla's and it seemed to have no more difficulty standing upright on two legs than did Nathan. The face wasn't quite human, but it was closer to human features than to those of one of the great apes.

Nathan began wondering about the local Indian legends of the Sasquatch, a huge man-ape creature that roamed the remote forests of the Pacific Northwest. But the Bigfoot, as he was called by European settlers and their descendants, was supposed to be gigantic. This creature was no larger than a 12 year old human boy.

Then Nathan noticed two things about the creature he was staring at... it seemed to be a juvenile male specimen of whatever species it was... and it had very large feet for a creature its size. Its bare, fur covered feet appeared much longer and wider than Nathan's - and his mother regularly complained about having to find size EEE shoes and boots for her son's ludicrously wide feet.

"Holy shit!" Nathan exclaimed when he finally realized what exactly he was seeing. This caused the creature across the ravine to grunt in alarm and step back into the shadows of the trees.

"No, wait!" yelped Nathan. He put up both hands, palms facing towards the creature... hoping that the gesture would be interpreted as friendly. "I'm sorry pal, you just startled me, is all."

What a bizarre situation Nathan suddenly found himself in. He quickly scanned his side of the ravine and the forest behind him, but could see no sign that his father had shown up yet. Maybe Dad hadn't been following him after all. Too bad he was missing this. Of course it remained to be seen what exactly "this" was... Nathan had no idea what to do next.

He could tell that the young sasquatch was still standing there in the shadows watching him. How to coax him back out into the light? Well, waving worked last time. He waved and said, "Hello there, my name is Nathan."

There was a hesitation, then the creature stepped back out to the edge of the ravine and into the sunlight. It raised its right hand slightly. It wasn't a wave as a human understands the concept, but it did seem to be a sort of acknowledgement of Nathan's wave.

The next 15 minutes were the most amazing quarter hour of Nathan's life. The two juvenile males worked together learning to communicate with one another in a primitive fashion consisting mostly of waves, salutes and grunts. It certainly wasn't a real conversation, Nathan would later be forced to admit to himself. But Sal, as Nathan came to think of the young sasquatch, was clearly as curious about Nathan as the boy was about him. It was also obvious that Sal was as excited by their communication attempts as Nathan was.

There is no telling how far their communication efforts might have gone if Nathan had not become a bit too complacent about the situation and forgotten the fact that he was standing on the edge of a ravine. He could never remember exactly how it happened, but one second Nathan was standing on the edge of the ravine engaged in a pseudo-conversation with Sal, the young sasquatch. The next second Nathan had slipped off the edge of the ravine and was desperately clinging to a tree root nearly five feet below the rim.

Nathan Bentley Wright was not the kind of boy who immediately panicked when things went wrong. He had a fairly good grip on the root he was hanging from. His first instinct was to simply find a way to pull himself back up to the rim to safety. This plan soon ran into a serious problem. There were no roots or other graspable protrusions on the ravine wall within reach of his current location. He was well and truly stuck.

A quick glance down at the rushing stream at least 25 feet below led Nathan to the conclusion that now might be a good time to panic. "HELP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!"

"HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!"

Crap! It was quickly clear that Nathan's father was not within earshot of his screaming son. If he had been the boy was certain his father would have been calling back to reassure him as he came to the rescue. This situation was really starting to suck.

"HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!"

"HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!" As each round of screaming was met with silence in response, Nathan became more terrified and convinced that he was about to die.

"HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!" The thing that annoyed Nathan the most about his situation was that the death now staring him in the face was stupid... not to mention pointless.

"HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!"

As he caught his breath between screams, Nathan became aware of a grunting sound below him. He looked down and was astonished to see Sal at the bottom of the far ravine wall. As the boy watched from above, the juvenile sasquatch carefully began to wade across the fast moving mountain stream. It was apparent that Sal intended to rescue him!

Sal had longer arms than Nathan, so he might have a better chance of negotiating the roots and outcroppings of the ravine wall. At this point the terrified boy was willing to accept help from anybody. But even with Sal coming to help, no reason to stop advertising. "HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!"

At that point things began to happen very fast. First of all Nathan heard his father's voice calling from above him and fairly far away, "Nathan! Where are you?"

Before Nathan was able to answer his father he heard a loud yelp from below him and looked down just in time to see Sal being dragged down the streambed by the rushing water. Clearly his friend had lost his footing and been overcome by the rapidly flowing water. Just before the young sasquatch was swept out of sight he grasped a rock with a strong hand and managed to stop his uncontrolled progress downstream. Sal took a deep breath and issued a mournful howl of distress that raised the hair on the back of Nathan's neck. "HOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLL!!"

"HEEELLLPPP!! DAAAADDD!!! HEEELLLPPP!!" "HOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLL!!" For a remote mountain ravine, it was getting quite noisy in there.

"Where are you, Nathan?" Dad's voice was a lot closer this time.

"I'm in the ravine! Hanging from a tree root! HELP!"

"I'm coming, son! Hang on!"

"HOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLL!!"

His father's voice was closer every time he spoke, "What the hell is making that racket?"

"Ummm, my friend Sal!"

"Sal?"

"Yeah, he's in trouble too!"

"Hang on! I'm almost there!"

"HOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLL!!" "Whooooo...ooop! Whooooo...oop!"

"What the hell?" Dad's voice was directly above him.

Nathan looked up and sure enough his father had arrived at last. But the man was not looking down into the ravine at his son. Instead he was looking across the ravine at.... Nathan turned his head... a full grown male sasquatch that was climbing down the far side of the ravine. The huge sasquatch called to the youngster down in the stream. "Whooooo...oop!"

"Is that Sal?" said Dad, pointing at the adult sasquatch, who was approximately nine feet tall and was using his long arms and sturdy legs to swiftly climb down the far side of the ravine.

"No!" said Nathan. "Sal is his son... I guess... he's stuck down in the stream at the bottom of the ravine. Help me, Dad! My arms are getting tired!"

"Right!" said Dad. He sized up his son's position on the ravine wall. "Do you have enough strength left to grab a rope if I throw it to you?"

"Sure!"

"One rope, coming right up! Or down, I guess."

Feeling enormously relieved now that his father was there and working on his rescue, Nathan looked down and watched Sal's father wade swiftly down the stream and grab his son, pulling him up into his arms. The father roared and the son squealed with delight at being rescued. Sal placed his arms around his father's broad neck and rode piggyback as the adult climbed back up out of the ravine on the far side.

Then a rope smacked Nathan right in the face. "Head's up, son!"

As he transferred his grip from the root to the rope Nathan said, rather sarcastically, "Thanks for the warning, Dad."

"I did warn you about this ravine," the man said through clenched teeth as he pulled the boy to safety. "Do you know how lucky you are to be alive?"

"I know, Dad," said Nathan as he was pulled safely back up to the rim of the ravine.

His father immediately gathered him into a fierce bear hug. "When I heard you screaming...." the man was practically choked with emotion. "I was so afraid I had lost you, Nathan."

Nathan's voice was ragged with emotion, "I was afraid you had too, Dad."

Their tender father/son reunion was interrupted by anquished squeals from across the ravine. They looked across the gap and saw that Sal's father had pinned the youngster's upper body under his left arm and was swatting Sal's furry behind with his right hand. Poor Sal squealed and kicked as the spanking continued.

"Hmm," said Dad, "that's a really good idea." Nathan was too stunned to protest as he was stood up on his feet. He watched in morbid fascination as Sal's spanking proceded on the far side of the ravine. Meanwhile the man undid the boy's belt and pulled his jeans and briefs down below his knees. Nathan did not help his father strip him for punishment, nor did he protest or interfere with the process. In fact the boy was not able to find his voice again until was he lying over his father's knee with the man applying strong open-handed swats to his bare, white and non-furry bottom.

Soon the remote mountain forest and the intervening ravine echoed with the sounds of distress made by two quite different sons as they howled, squealed, cried and kicked in reaction to the pain of discipline administered in an ages-old fatherly tradition. How many sons had nearly gotten themselves killed over the millenia and ended up with nothing to show for it but extremely sore backsides provided courtesy of the terrified and angry fathers who had rescued them? Whatever the number, add two more to the count.

In fact it was hardly the most painful spanking that Nathan had ever experienced. But given the emotional rollercoaster of the previous thirty minutes when first he was elated to make contact with another humanoid species and then he experienced the terror of nearly dying stupidly, his raw emotions caused the boy to yelp, howl, kick and cry real tears. It was hard to tell if Sal really cried the way Nathan did, but the young sasquatch was whimpering loudly enough to be heard across the ravine after his father finished spanking him.

After the spanking was over Nathan's father hugged him as he cried himself out. Looking over his father's shoulder as the man gently rubbed his back in a comforting manner Nathan saw, through tear stained eyes, Sal being comforted by his father in a similar fashion. After he stopped crying the boy sincerely apologized to his father, and the apology was accepted. Since Nathan was uninjured apart from a bright red and aching bottom they would never mention the incident to his mother. She worried more than enough about her only offspring as it was.

The sun was getting lower in the western sky as the two pairs of hominids took their leave of one another. Sal and Nathan were both still subdued and nursing sore bottoms, but they saluted each other across the ravine. Dad waved to Sal's father, who responded with a slight wave of his right hand, effectively mirroring Sal's earliest attempts at communication when the youngsters had first met.

Dad remembered to take a sample of the vines, which he eventually determined to be a form of tree moss that was rare in Oregon. The two humans made it back to their encampment right around dusk and experienced no further incidents on that camping trip.

___________________________________________________________________

Nathan and his father agreed to never tell anyone about what had transpired in the ravine that day. They agreed to make any efforts they could to help preserve the wild forest environment that Sal and his family needed for their survival, and to help them remain safely hidden.

Bentley Wright IV took early retirement as a judge with the Jackson County Courts. He went on to become a leading legal and political activist for wild forest preservation. To the best of Nathan's knowledge his father never had another encounter with a sasquatch.

Nathan Bentley Wright had gone on to become trained as a zoologist and biological anthropologist, eventually teaching at a major research university in the Pacific Northwest. He did everything in his power to thwart the popular media "Bigfoot hunters" and prevent them from disturbing Sal and his kind.

In the late 1980s Nathan developed the habit of visiting that ravine again on the same day of the summer when the first encounter had occurred. Usually he saw nothing special, but on one occasion in the mid-90s an adult male sasquatch had appeared on the far side of the ravine. The giant creature resembled the adult male from the first encounter. Nathan was certain it was Sal, since the creature readily engaged in the same kind of waves, salutes and grunts that Sal had on their original meeting. Their second meeting had lasted nearly an hour before there was a distant call on the far side of the ravine. Sal had saluted Nathan one final time and disappeared into the shadows.

Sal had never appeared at the ravine again and after a few years Nathan ceased his annual visits. But the serious scientist vowed to spend the rest of his life preventing the pop "scientists" from proving the existence of sasquatches. Sal and his kind would be far safer living in the shadows as legendary beasts rather than as scientically proven and cataloged creatures in the megawatt glare of the tabloid media culture.

Author Note: The preceding is entirely fictional. The author has never seen a sasquatch, a yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, or anything weirder that the humans he has to deal with on a daily basis. While the author doesn't know for sure if any of these legendary creatures exist, he wouldn't be surprised if they did.

The author welcomes comments from readers. You can contact Bobby Watson by e-mail at: mrbwatson (at) gmail.com
Please be patient - Bobby doesn't always check his e-mail every day.