What We Leave Behind

hi-Kings, Cave Paintings, and Sasquatch Hunters

I started hiking in the mornings again. I think I stopped around June, when the humidity and bugs got oppressive on the overgrown trails at Timber Creek. Lately, it’s been a lovely 50°F at sunrise, getting into the 60s by the time I complete my hour-long loop through the twisty trails of the dog park. It really improves my mood. Last night I also went for a trail ride. And I saw a fox yesterday morning!

It seemed a little short, like a corgi, but it was running downhill toward the creek and had very pointy ears with white patches on the back. I don’t recall a brushy tail. Bobcats are uncommon but also lanky, and this wasn’t. There are beavers here, but no pointy ears. Same with groundhogs! It looked kind of fluffy and chunky and maybe I saw the tail held low and it looked like that. Maybe it was a rogue feral corgi.

Feral corgi as seen in the wild

Eyewitness testimony is unreliable. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Which leads to a confession I have to make: I’ve been watching Survivorman: Bigfoot on YouTube.

Les Stroud is the Canadian outdoorsman who looks kind of like Kevin Pollak, and isn’t way too eager to drink his own urine, like that Bear Grylls guy. He sets up his own cameras and operates mostly without a crew, which makes his adventures more interesting to watch. He’s a seasoned camper and survivalist and doesn’t gussy up his outings with false narratives, or take unnecessary risks. So, I was interested to see his take on following Sasquatch enthusiasts into remote sections of Alberta and British Columbia, and putting their claims to the bullshit sniff test.

“no human could do this” … but several could.

I’m not convinced, but watching an experienced tracker who’s been in the woods for years—and has no skin in the game—observe tree structures and markings that these “squatch hunters” attribute to their favorite cryptid does make you wonder. Sometimes a tree broken in half, higher than a human could do without tools, is just unexplained. Some of the structures are compelling, but it’s nothing a hoaxer could not do. And blowing off hoaxes by asking “why would someone go through all that trouble” is a non-starter. People do it because they are people. Humans love bullshitting each other! Almost as much as we love being bullshitted. Once we get emotionally invested, all bets are off. I’m seeing a bit of that in Mr Stroud, but he’s at least entertaining as he struts through the woods, wondering why there’s a turd stuck in a crevice of a cave.

And speaking of things humans do in caves, Judith Thurman’s article on paleolithic cave paintings in France is a wonderful read about art, humanity, and our search for meaning. This is the article on Lascaux, Chauvet, Niaux, and Trois-Frères caves that inspired Werner Herzog to make Cave of Forgotten Dreams, depicting the paintings of Chauvet cave. You can’t visit any of these internally except Niaux, which has a stable climate, but all have museums nearby that recreate some of the art, so you can experience them.

Some of the more evocative paintings in Chauvet.

I marked them all on Google Maps, and I am planning a road trip across southern France in the next year or two, to visit all of them. When I visited Germany in 2016, I stopped at museums that held the bounty from neolithic mass grave sites such as the Talheim Death Pit, which inspired my short story, “Truth Comes Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind.” The paleo- and neolithic era is one of my favorites to read about, because we know so little; writing did not exist until later, about 5,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia and China. (See my post on Gilgamesh, for more on that).

So these cave paintings, and some art objects like Venus figurines and cross-hatching and other art—on everything from ochre slabs to ostrich eggshells hollowed out as water jugs—are what we have left to visualize what our forebears, and their lives, were like. We also have the frozen corpse of Ötzi, found in the Swiss alps with an arrow in his back, murdered some 5200 years ago with a snazzy handmade wardrobe, a fancy bronze axe, and belly full of grain. These were not hardscrabble existences of constant hunting and gathering, we led rich lives even then.

And then it all went to shit, once one guy decided to built a palace and declare, “Me King!”

That’s what my Uncle Paul used to say as we philosophized over Sunday morning coffee, wondering who first decided that they simply couldn’t get along without ruling over other people. I suppose it’s as human as whatever made our ancestors make a torch out of a glob of animal fat, descend into deep and treacherous caves, and blow ochre powder through a reed, and leave an outline of their handprint that would remain twenty thousand years later. We know we’re going to die.

I won’t say that we’re the only animal that “knows” we must die. Animals mourn, and that’s enough for me; that’s enough of an understanding of death. But humans know what we can leave behind, besides our progeny. Sometimes it’s a cave painting. Other times it’s a hoax that outlives us. Both are forms of art.