The Legend of the Somsa Squatch!

Family genes are not the only thing we inherit.  We are given the stories of ancestors passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition while sitting on the front porch or working the land.  And for those that grew up in these mountains and hollers of McDowell; the tale of a Sasquatch comes as no surprise.

 So, from my family to yours, here is my best recollection of what was first told to me:

The air in the Linville Gorge always turned cold before any axe ever did. By four o’clock, the shadow of the western ridge would slide down the mountain, swallowing the hemlocks, and that was when the chopping stopped.

Pawpaw hadn't met Meemaw just yet, that was to happen in the autumn of 1864. But it was early July, and he and four other men from Nebo were camped out in the deep woods, clearing timber for the railroad. Their hands were calloused raw from the crosscut saws, and their lungs burned from a combination of exhaustion and the damp river fog. But it wasn’t the hard labor that made the men eager to drop their axes at dusk. It was the calling.

Every evening, just as the sun dipped below the rim of the gorge, a sound would echo across the rocky cliffs. It wasn’t a panther’s scream or a bear’s grunt. It was a long, hollow howl that sounded almost like a man trying to speak through a brass pipe. “Huuu-ahhh,” it would roll through the trees, vibrating right in the center of Pawpaw’s chest.

The other woodcutters would huddle closer to the fire, clutching their rifles and staring into the brush. But Pawpaw was more curious in nature - if not a fool at times.

One overcast day, when the call came early, Pawpaw dropped his wedge and crept toward the sound. He climbed a steep outcrop of granite overlooking a thicket of rhododendron. The wind shifted, carrying a musk so thick it tasted like copper and wet dog.

That was when he saw it.

Towering ten feet tall by his account, against the gray bark of an ancient oak, was a creature covered in matted, brownish hair. It didn’t look like a beast; it stood perfectly upright, its chest as wide as a blacksmith’s anvil. But its face was what Pawpaw never forgot. Where its left eye should have been, there was only a smooth, pale scar. The right eye, however, was massive, dark, and filled with an ancient, heavy intelligence.

The creature looked directly up at the rock where Pawpaw hid. It didn’t growl. It simply opened its wide, leather-lipped mouth and let loose that same mournful, ringing cry. It was a warning, Pawpaw realized. It was telling them that the forest belonged to the shadows, and their time for the day was up.  Afterward, the squatch turned and vanished into the dense laurel without snapping a single twig.  Only the imprints of some very large feet remained as testament to what had just occurred.

Pawpaw never raised a gun to the woods after that. He told his grandkids that the one-eyed old man of the gorge wasn’t a monster—just a lonely neighbor marking his boundary line before the night came on.