Pacing or Paralleling

Around March 2023, an outdoorsman in his early 60s named Hank was walking his black Labrador retriever along a remote shoreline within the Prince William Sound region. Two miles into the beach walk, Hank discovered a large, fresh pile of shellfish and clams that had all been freshly broken open, accompanied by massive, ambiguous depressions in the sand and gravel. Turning back as the sun began to set, the dog suddenly exhibited unprecedented behavior, running in frantic looping circles and barking wildly into the air.

An indigenous village hunter embarked on a multi-day backcountry moose hunting trip miles away from his community. On the third or fourth morning, while scanning the open landscape, he spotted a large brown form moving on all fours across the tundra, initially assuming it was a bear. Through his binoculars, he watched the creature travel over several tundra ridges until it suddenly stood completely upright and continued down a slope, leaving only its massive head and shoulders visible over the crest.

Around February 15, 2019, an experienced outdoorsman and former law enforcement officer named Mark Frank was exploring a remote seismic trail roughly five and a half miles down Oil Well Road near Ninilchik. Glassing through his binoculars in a low-horizon winter landscape with four feet of snow, he spotted what initially appeared to be a hunter crossing the path 150 yards away. Mark gave a friendly hand wave, and the entity immediately mirrored the identical gesture with its right hand.

In late August, a long-distance runner named Russell Bradshaw traveled to the Denali Highway near the MacLaren River to support a caribou hunting group, opting to stay behind in a rental RV. During his routine morning jog toward Paxson, Russell paused about two miles out to observe a flock of ptarmigan get startled from a 50-yard willow slough. Dropping into an S-curve washout, he spotted what he assumed was a large black bear stalking the birds through the six-to-eight-foot tall brush.

During an autumn backpacking trip along the Resurrection Pass Trail system stretching from the Girdwood/Indian area toward Eagle River, a medical professional named Bailey and her younger brother Brian set up camp in a remote valley pocket. After hearing an identical series of sharp, crisp whistles tracing their trek, they pitched a bright neon yellow-green dome tent within a grove of black spruce and willow trees.

An Ahtna tribally enrolled woman named Mary recalled a profound historical account from her childhood in Chitina during the early 1970s, where a village elder shared an encounter from his youth on the eastern side of the Copper River. While hunting deep inland on an open flat situated directly above Horse Creek, the hunting party experienced an intense, creepy atmospheric dread and followed a strange chattering sound up a ridge line.

During the final cleanup phase of a seasonal placer gold-mining camp situated off the Yukon River drainage, an imported heavy equipment operator named Doug was running a loader in a deep mining pit. During his pre-dawn shift, he noted an edge-of-vision dark form darting into the tree line. At midday, while sitting in the camp smoking area, Doug heard a terrifying, screaming howl echoing from the pit, prompting him to ride a four-wheeler down to investigate under the assumption that a co-worker was injured.

In the fall of 2019, just before the pandemic, a local high school senior named Jane was babysitting five young cousins (ranging in age from roughly five to twelve) at a federal HUD housing unit in a remote northwest coastal village of under 500 year-round residents near the Bering Sea. After coming indoors, the two youngest children were caught staring out a bedroom window, giggling and waving at a 'silly man' standing inside the immediate willow and scrub brush lines. Assuming it was an overactive imagination, Jane dismissed the event.

Some thirty years prior to 2023, a Bristol Bay native woman named Julie experienced an encounter as a young girl during a combined moose hunting and salmonberry harvesting trip up the Kvichak River channel with her grandfather (Uppa), father, and uncle. Landing early before sunrise, Julie and her Uppa combed the tundra slopes for blueberries and blackberries.

Over forty-five years prior to 2023, an interior village native named Jonah was breaking winter trail with his six-dog sled team to transport supplies between a major hub and his 100-occupant home community. Armed with a moose rifle, Jonah spent hours packing the deep snow across flat muskeg segments that led into thick timber valleys. As his team negotiated a sharp 'dog-leg' curve on the packed trail, an immense, 350-to-400-pound dead beetle-killed spruce tree was violently hurled down onto the path directly out of the overhanging brush.

Beginning in December 2015, a resident named Sally endured ongoing seasonal Sasquatch activity at her rental home situated roughly 75 feet off the Delta Clearwater River bank in Alaska's interior, noting that events consistently peaked in April and autumn. While relaxing with her boyfriend in an outdoor hot tub on a small knoll 25 feet from the structure in -10°F weather, a massive multi-octave shriek-whistle erupted from the river slough, immediately accompanied by a heavy rock thrown forcefully against the hot tub's framework.

Following a successful solo caribou hunt the year prior, an Anchorage resident named Doug brought his wife Claire and their 15-year-old son back to the North Fork of the Gulkana River, traversing a steep, frosted trail past Swede Lake down to the river crossing. Seeking to avoid a crowded hunter 'shanty town' near the foothills, Doug steered his four-wheelers and an equipment trailer Due West along a rough, overgrown river slough trail, eventually establishing a 'glamping' site on a flat shelf at the base of a prominent tundra shale-rock Butte.

In July 2015, a military veteran named Brian worked a reconstruction contract to clear a helipad and migrate a field recreation camp from a low-lying, flood-prone lagoon island near Bear Glacier outside of Seward to safer high ground. On July 18th, while resting inside a small nylon tent with his head protruding to manage a severe knee infection, Brian was abruptly awoken at 1:00 AM under a dense, black coastal sea fog.

Around 2012, a man named Oscar returned to his family's traditional native homelands along a remote tributary channel feeding into the Copper River near Chitina. While harvesting fireweed blossoms for an elder auntie a quarter-mile from their rural cabin, Oscar witnessed a large brown form performing a series of strange, vertical bouncing movements through a 6-foot tall grass slough 30 yards out. Armed with a .357 handgun and believing it was a maimed, trapped bear that posed a community safety risk, he returned to camp to recruit his elder uncle, who brought a 12-gauge shotgun.

In the winter of 1987, an 11-to-13-year-old native youth named Joseph gained permission to drive his father's Arctic Cat Jag snowmachine, leading his two younger brothers (ages nine and seven) on a Yamaha Bravo 340 into the remote tundra islands west of Sophie's Landing along the Nushagak River. Armed with a heavy 8mm rifle and two .22s to harvest small game, the boys successfully dispatched a porcupine on an oblong island of black spruce trees. While processing the harvest, a dense, blinding winter sea fog rolled in rapidly off Bristol Bay.