Chapter Thirty Four:     Cobalt Calling

ROBERT BURNS reporting as of Monday, 7th of September--

FROM: newly established Nokhon Nation Project affiliate in Cobalt, Ontario, Canada
TO: the Nokhon Nation Project c/o "the Hacienda" based in Monroe, Washington, USA

ATTN: Adam Leroy Forest, Arthur Forest, Douglas Wielson.

Hi, Bob Burns here, the lawyer you set up to administer your new Nokhon Nation Project branch in Cobalt, Ontario in the beginning of last June this year:

I assume you will be wanting some sort of update concerning the progress of that group of Nokhons who decided to try out living among us humans in modern Canadian society. We began with six Nokhons, 4 males, 2 females. Since then another Bigfoot couple has joined ranks, Darrket and Mahama, so now we have eight... going on nine because the female is pregnant, hard to tell how far along, although she looks to be about halfway through the gestation process. (Is that also 9 months for Nokhons?) As you already know, Nokhons aren't any good at numbers so there's no use asking.

Speaking of asking, the language barrier between Squatches and Kanucks is still problematic, although I have learned about 50 words/phrases of Nokhontli and a couple of squatches are getting pretty good at English... well, Pidgen English. More about that later.

The newcomers brought news that there is a crisis of leadership among the original community--or mlønoli, as they call it--and that other Nokhons are also considering coming out to try living with us, mainly to escape an unacceptable situation.

It seems that the current guy claiming leadership back in their home area is a bit of a despot: a tyrannical male who's making life unpleasant for the younger Nokhons. His name is Dazar-haket and seems to be a rum sort, a deliberately cruel bully, from all reports. I've been told that he and Adam had a major conflict that got the buggar tossed out of the community for a while, but it seems he's wedged his way back into domination again by brute force.

I haven't been out to that mlønoli yet, and probably won't go there until the problem with this Dazar-haket fellow is resolved, I don't feel heroic enough to be going into battle against a big bad Bigfoot, thank you. I am also morally opposed to go out there toting some kind of large caliber weapon for protection against an unarmed opponent, a mighty Bigfoot though he be, so I choose to just avoid him. I'd say they need a Nokhon hero to step in, an authority figure. From everything I've read, someone like your very own Alutna-jii, Daklakht.

I would very much like to visit the mlønoli, maybe once the problem with that unfriendly tyrant is resolved. I've told Adam about my experience meeting two Nokhon males in the woods half my life ago, when I was 16, and have been more or less looking for them ever since. I assume they might have had connections with that local mlønoli and it could be great fun to meet them again now that I have a way to semi-communicate with them. I never learned their names, or I could try to ask Maliima if she knows them.

I was alone on a day hike in the woods of Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Provincial Park, an area I am rather familiar with. It was a hot day and I knew of a secret waterfall to take a dip in, so I went off the marked and trafficked nature trail, into the deep woods.

I used to do that quite a bit, since there's not much else to do when you live in Cobalt if you're not into sports, which I was not. Not that I was so much a loner back then, I'd sometimes go on weekend hikes along with friends, guys and girls I knew from both school and church, but this time I just happened to be alone on my way to meet those same friends for a weekend at a lakeside lodge.

I came to that waterfall and saw two Sasquatches approaching from the other direction just as they saw me. Surprised, we all stopped to look.

They were not ten foot tall monsters, as the myths insist, just a bit taller than me and definitely brawnier and all covered with shaggy brownish hair, so I knew exactly what they were. Historically, there have always been occasional Bigfoot sightings around the Cobalt area, although I myself had certainly never seen one before.

But this was happening about five years after Adam Leroy Forest had been found and become famous enough so that everybody knew by then that squatches were not only real but also a race of people, rather than dangerous wild apes.

So I wasn't scared. For one thing, they weren't as big as Adam is now, so they were probably just kids. They both had nice human faces, not ugly at all. They weren't afraid of me either, probably because I wasn't carrying a gun or any kind of weapon. We were all surprised, and then surprised again because we all three started laughing at the same time, in equal amusement.

So we just kept on walking towards each other, meeting at the waterfall. Of course I thought they looked weird, being naked but so hairy that you couldn't see any skin, I could tell they thought I looked weird too, with all my clothes and shoes. It was obvious they were just as amazed as I was.

They seemed to be about my age, maybe even younger. Of course, we couldn't talk or understand each other, but we tried to: sign language, pointing, gesturing. We must have spent a couple hours together anyway. They were enormously friendly and enthusiastic, fascinated by the things in my backpack, which I showed them. Also the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a bottle of Gator-Aid I shared with them.

I showed them my Scouts Canada pocket knife and tried to give it to them as a present/souvenir, since I could easily just buy a new one. But they wouldn't accept it, although they obviously really wanted to, but seemed to be conflicted about it. Now I understand that it was forbidden skesk for them and could have gotten them in trouble with the Alutna/cops.

As it got later in the day I had to continue my hike or end up stuck in the woods overnight without a sleeping bag. Making a bonfire was not an option. When I demonstrated what my little box of matches was for, they got all conflicted again, like they were afraid of fire, so I didn't press it. So we finally had to go our seperate ways.

It was well after sunset when I finally made it through the dark to the lodge where my friends were cozily drinking beer in front of a blazing fireplace. Of course I told them that I had just met two Bigfoot on the trail and nobody believed me.

Not for a long time, even though I reminded them that the famous Baby Bigfoot in Washington State (Adam) was irrefutable proof that squatches do exist. Eventually a few people admitted that my story could mayby-might be true. Then last month Adam and his two squatch girl friends pulled their bus in front of Cobalt's Sunshine Diner for breakfast. A week later we had a colony of Nokhons living here and me assigned to be their legal agent.

To my disbelieving friends: told ya so!

At any rate, it was a defining experience, that changed my life, or at least my job. And now here I am, working for the NNP, in daily contact with Nokhons, just like it was Fate or something. How bizzare!

You might be glad to know that I am concentrating on learning Nokhontli: I listen to the CD's you supplied us with every day. I do have some necessary phrases down now, but still am nowhere near fluent. Lucky for all of us, the shaman-lady Maliima seems to have some natural ability for languages, she studies those Nokhontli-English CD's and is at least twice as good as me at communicating between races. Neither of us is reciting Shakespeare, but between us we can almost carry on a simple conversation. At least we can communicate some basics.

The entire town of Cobalt is quite enthusiastic about our new guests. After a history of being considered mythic monsters, the local Nokhons have been accepted as a variation of indigenous Canadians and are quite popular amongst the townspeople. Some of the males have been hired for simple physical jobs and are earning money already, which is so new to them that they consider it quite entertaining.

They are so physically strong and quick-learning that they could potentially become quite usable workers, although there is a problem with their perception of skesk. Some of them are almost traumatized by touching any tool or artifact. They hate petrol and grease-- understandable, being so hairy and all --but they love digital screens, if not trucks and chainsaws, so any really advanced clean technology with flashing lights and bright colors seems to appeal to them.

So far the most outstanding talent is a young Nokhon male named Dasharret, I'd guess he's a teen-ager but it's hard to tell; he's huge, about 8 feet tall, perhaps not quite so muscular as Adam (whom we all know to be 22 years old). A local speditions company experimented by offering the four males a day's work loading boxes onto tranport pallets, twelve boxes on each pallet, just to see if they could do it; a job physically demanding but intellectually simple. Three of them couldn't understand the concept of twelve, being four stacks of three boxes in alternating orientation and couldn't get it right. That problem they have with numbers, you know.

Neither could Dasharret at first, he had to study some pallets that had already been loaded, aware that he was doing it wrong. And then it went "click" for him and he loaded the next pallet correctly, then continued pallet after pallet until the job was done.

He even tried explaining it to the other three Nokhons (or at least it seemed that way). It took them all a while to catch on, but they finally did, and got real jobs, with Dasharret as their crew boss.

Cobalt is a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere-- or rather it used to be. Now Cobalt has eight Sasquatches living there and has become potentially interesting. TV crews and some tourists have been showing up. Other people, entrepeneurs, want to make money off our Nokhon guests, but the town isn't falling for it so far. We want to protect our new friends from the worst aspects of civilization.

There's already a company in Toronto that wants to sell bus tours and offer hotel package deals for tourists to come and see the real live Bigfoots. The problem being that the Nokhons aren't in cages and can't always be found, because they are free to go wherever they want, just like everybody else. Another problem is that they don't really sit down and DO anything of interest on a schedule, like making bead bracelets, such as indiginous Canadian Indians might do, or make tacos like Mexicans do. They're not especially entertaining to watch-- much like myself.

I think that company in Toronto would prefer that our Nokhons be enslaved or put in a zoo, but nobody here in town is in support of that... not yet anyway. I am glad that Adam and you people have already established the Nokhon Nation Project in the USA, there may be need for some international legal definitions before too long.

I feel I should mention that I have read your AooE Document, so that you know what I know, etc. It had become so notorious just after we in town had met Adam himself and involved the very same Nokhon Nation that I have now become abruptly associated with, so I had to consider it required reading. It was also easily available, one can download it for free almost anywhere on the Internet.

Now the news we hear is that Adam and his band are having problems with protesters and extremists. So I just want to let you know that I am in sympathy with your agenda, which is a good thing, since I now seem to be part of it.

As for local NNP finances, both Marty and I have received our salaries and the club house we've rented for the Nokhons is still being fixed up but is being used even now. Nokhons are not very fussy; to them a roof and four walls plus toilet and running water is more comfort than they've ever conceived of in their lives. They still sleep on piles of tree boughs rather than matresses and leave all the windows open. Of course, it's summer now, so why not? We'll see what happens in December.

So far so good.
B. Burns
NNP rep
Cobalt branch