1
00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:20,320
Speaker 1: If you've ever lived in the Pacific Northwest, the Upper Midwest,

2
00:00:20,839 --> 00:00:25,359
or anywhere north of New Mexico and east towards the Atlantic,

3
00:00:26,239 --> 00:00:31,039
chances are you've been snowbound at least once, trapped by ice,

4
00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:35,880
cut off by drifts, watching the world outside your window

5
00:00:36,159 --> 00:00:42,159
disappear beneath white silence. For some folks it's an inconvenience.

6
00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:47,560
For others, it turns into math. What you have, what

7
00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:52,479
you can stretch, what you can't replace. Now, imagine that

8
00:00:52,640 --> 00:00:56,799
pressure out in the frozen woods, where a survival means

9
00:00:56,920 --> 00:01:00,840
scavenging and stealing, and where a high hollow beneath the

10
00:01:00,880 --> 00:01:06,359
pines can be the difference between life and death. This

11
00:01:06,519 --> 00:01:09,560
is the story of what happens when an early winter

12
00:01:09,799 --> 00:01:12,959
traps both a man and a creature on the same

13
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:17,920
piece of land and forces them into a fragile, unspoken agreement.

14
00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:23,120
Winter came to northern Maine like a door slamming shut.

15
00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:27,920
The calender still insisted it was late fall, but a

16
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:31,159
cold front slid down out of Canada into the night.

17
00:01:32,239 --> 00:01:37,640
By dawn, the air had teeth, sleet rattled the windows,

18
00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:43,439
then turned to thick, wet snow that stacked fast. In

19
00:01:43,480 --> 00:01:47,239
a few days, The drifts around the tiny timbered town

20
00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:51,400
of Black Hollow were deep enough to swallow fence rails,

21
00:01:52,319 --> 00:01:57,159
and ice glazed the roads into dangerous glass. Two feet

22
00:01:57,159 --> 00:02:00,760
of snow wasn't unheard of up here, not later in

23
00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:06,640
the season, but this early, paired with ice, it changed routines.

24
00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:12,080
People stayed home, kept wood stoves going, and waited for

25
00:02:12,159 --> 00:02:17,319
plows that struggled to reach the outlying roads. Elliot Graves

26
00:02:17,360 --> 00:02:21,599
didn't mind being alone. He lived outside town limits, where

27
00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:25,479
the trees grew thicker and neighbors thinned out to nothing.

28
00:02:26,639 --> 00:02:31,560
His place was modest, a small house, a shed, and

29
00:02:31,639 --> 00:02:34,919
a stretch of land that ran back into spruce and

30
00:02:35,039 --> 00:02:40,159
pine before tipping up toward a rocky ridge. He worked

31
00:02:40,199 --> 00:02:46,319
from home, and the storm simply made the world smaller, house, yard,

32
00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:53,199
woods white. After long hours at his desk, the silence

33
00:02:53,319 --> 00:02:58,240
started to feel too deep, so he took short walks

34
00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:03,719
around the property, bundled in layers, checking for fallen limbs

35
00:03:04,280 --> 00:03:07,719
and listening to the ice grown in the tree tops.

36
00:03:09,159 --> 00:03:14,599
Three days after the storm, he noticed something that didn't fit.

37
00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:21,199
Behind a dense clutch of spruce, the ground dipped into

38
00:03:21,199 --> 00:03:27,039
a shallow bowl. Eliot knew the spot. In summer, it

39
00:03:27,159 --> 00:03:31,479
was just a low place where needles collected. In winter,

40
00:03:32,039 --> 00:03:35,800
it should have been filled, filled in like everything else.

41
00:03:37,039 --> 00:03:40,360
But now the snow there was thin and broken, as

42
00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:44,680
if some one had scraped it away. Pine needles showed

43
00:03:44,719 --> 00:03:50,919
through here and there, bare earth peeked out. Then he

44
00:03:51,039 --> 00:03:55,719
saw the trash, a torn bread bag half buried in crust,

45
00:03:56,560 --> 00:04:02,199
a crushed coffee can, a few shredded wraps, and snagged

46
00:04:02,319 --> 00:04:06,400
in low branches, A strip of cloth hung like a

47
00:04:06,479 --> 00:04:12,719
ragged flag, a bed sheet. Elliot moved closer, careful not

48
00:04:12,840 --> 00:04:16,959
to slip, and the scene resolved into something worse than

49
00:04:17,079 --> 00:04:22,319
scattered garbage. Stones had been stacked along the inside rim

50
00:04:22,360 --> 00:04:27,279
of the hollow. Branches were woven overhead in a crude arch,

51
00:04:28,199 --> 00:04:33,720
Pine bows layered on top like a roof. Inside lay

52
00:04:34,079 --> 00:04:39,800
thick bedding, pine needles pressed into a matted nest, layered

53
00:04:39,839 --> 00:04:45,839
with rags, scraps of clothing and torn fabric. And near

54
00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:51,439
the back, half hidden in needles, were bones, small ones

55
00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:58,000
at first what looked like rabbit, squirrel, maybe raccoon, But

56
00:04:58,199 --> 00:05:01,800
deeper in the shelter lay a dear skull with broken antlers,

57
00:05:02,600 --> 00:05:08,959
the eye sockets dark as empty pockets. Eliot backed out slowly.

58
00:05:09,480 --> 00:05:14,439
The cold was suddenly irrelevant. He tried to make it

59
00:05:14,879 --> 00:05:20,279
ordinary in his head. A bear, No bears don't weave

60
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:27,160
bed sheets into nests. A person squatting, maybe, But who

61
00:05:27,279 --> 00:05:32,279
chose a hollow in deep snow when abandoned camps exist

62
00:05:32,439 --> 00:05:40,360
farther out, and the bones saved kept like someone had

63
00:05:40,360 --> 00:05:44,800
been eating here for a long time. The answer he

64
00:05:44,879 --> 00:05:52,160
didn't want pressed forward anyway. Bigfoot Black Hollow had its stories.

65
00:05:52,959 --> 00:05:57,720
Every main town did. Eliot had always filed them away

66
00:05:58,480 --> 00:06:02,399
as local color, something to smile at politely in the

67
00:06:02,399 --> 00:06:07,000
general store. Now he went home and tried to work

68
00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:10,519
with the image of that hollow stuck behind his eyes.

69
00:06:11,959 --> 00:06:17,879
That night, around eleven, he heard something outside, a soft

70
00:06:17,959 --> 00:06:23,759
scrape along the siding, then a metallic clink, the sound

71
00:06:23,839 --> 00:06:27,879
of a trash can lid being lifted. Eliot killed the

72
00:06:27,959 --> 00:06:32,360
lamp and peered through the frosted window. The porch light

73
00:06:32,519 --> 00:06:36,759
threw a pale cone over the yard. Just beyond the

74
00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:42,240
edge of that light, a figure moved upright, hunched forward

75
00:06:42,279 --> 00:06:47,639
against the cold, arms long and loose. The trash can

76
00:06:47,720 --> 00:06:57,759
lid rose. The figure leaned in, rummaging. Eliot could hear breathing, slow, deep, measured,

77
00:06:58,560 --> 00:07:01,600
and then a faint clicking sound, as if the thing

78
00:07:01,680 --> 00:07:07,399
had found something it wanted. It withdrew without panic, slipping

79
00:07:07,480 --> 00:07:12,759
back into darkness as smoothly as it came. In the morning,

80
00:07:13,279 --> 00:07:16,639
he found the trash scattered, and not far from the

81
00:07:16,680 --> 00:07:22,079
porch a pie tin crushed and licked clean. He followed

82
00:07:22,120 --> 00:07:25,759
the marks back toward the spruce thicket and found fresh

83
00:07:25,839 --> 00:07:30,439
tracks near the hollow. They weren't the huge, impossible prints

84
00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:35,319
from campfire stories. They were big, yes, the size of

85
00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:39,720
a tall man with an extra wide foot pressed deep

86
00:07:39,800 --> 00:07:46,319
in the crust, heavy heel splayed toes an almost circus

87
00:07:46,519 --> 00:07:50,759
like tight rope gait with a long stride that went

88
00:07:50,879 --> 00:07:56,120
straight to the shelter. Elliot stared until his eyes watered.

89
00:07:57,399 --> 00:08:02,759
Then he did something he still couldn't fully explain. He

90
00:08:02,879 --> 00:08:09,120
gathered scraps into paper bags, apple cores, stale bread, a

91
00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:11,920
bit of meat, and carried it to the edge of

92
00:08:11,959 --> 00:08:16,959
the hollow, not inside the shelter, just close enough to

93
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:23,120
be found. Then he backed away. The next morning, the

94
00:08:23,160 --> 00:08:28,959
bag was gone, no trash was disturbed, nothing near the

95
00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:33,440
house had been touched. He repeated it the next night,

96
00:08:34,120 --> 00:08:38,399
same result. Food at the hollow meant a quiet yard.

97
00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:43,440
He started thinking of it as a boundary, a toll

98
00:08:43,720 --> 00:08:47,080
paid to keep the dark at the trees instead of

99
00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:52,960
at his door. Then came the day he forgot it

100
00:08:53,120 --> 00:08:58,399
wasn't dramatic. Work piled up, a meeting ran late. He

101
00:08:58,480 --> 00:09:03,879
answered emails, heated soup, looked out once at the blank,

102
00:09:03,919 --> 00:09:08,639
white yard, and went back to his screen. The hours

103
00:09:08,799 --> 00:09:15,399
slid by. The hollow slipped his mind. Near midnight, the

104
00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:22,559
house reminded him. A heavy impact against the outer wall

105
00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:27,759
close enough that a picture frame on the shelf rattled.

106
00:09:28,879 --> 00:09:40,480
Elliot froze listening again, controlled, deliberate, Then a sharp crack

107
00:09:41,159 --> 00:09:46,440
as something struck the siding and bounced away a rock.

108
00:09:48,600 --> 00:09:52,720
He stepped to the window. In the porch light, a

109
00:09:52,759 --> 00:09:58,759
stone lay fresh on the snow, dark against white. Near

110
00:09:58,799 --> 00:10:04,559
the tree line. A shape shifted, partly hidden, as if

111
00:10:04,559 --> 00:10:08,279
it didn't want to be seen, but wanted to be noticed.

112
00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:13,879
Another rock hit, not hard enough to shatter glass, but

113
00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:19,559
hard enough to make the message unmistakable. A low, breathy

114
00:10:19,759 --> 00:10:25,919
exhale rolled out of the darkness, not a roar, but frustration.

115
00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:32,200
Eliot didn't open the door. He waited until the sounds stopped,

116
00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:37,600
and the shape withdrew. At first light, he carried food

117
00:10:37,639 --> 00:10:43,720
out more than usual, like an apology. He set it

118
00:10:43,759 --> 00:10:49,000
near the hollow and backed away. That night, the woods

119
00:10:49,159 --> 00:10:56,519
stayed quiet, so the pact formed. Not friendly, not safe,

120
00:10:56,720 --> 00:11:02,679
but consistent. When Eliot left left food, the creature kept

121
00:11:02,720 --> 00:11:07,120
its distance. When he forgot or left too little, the

122
00:11:07,200 --> 00:11:12,639
rocks came. Sometimes there was pounding on the siding, a

123
00:11:12,679 --> 00:11:16,840
heavy fist like thud that made the house tremble. Once

124
00:11:17,399 --> 00:11:22,440
he found a chunk of ice shattered on his porch steps.

125
00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:27,840
Never a broken window, never a forced door, just pressure,

126
00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:36,000
just accountability. As the weeks passed, the forest itself changed.

127
00:11:36,960 --> 00:11:43,759
Deer tracks thinned out, birds vanished, even the coyotes fell silent,

128
00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:50,039
and the hollow grew more fortified. The roof thickened, the

129
00:11:50,080 --> 00:11:55,360
bedding deepened with new cloth. One morning, Elliott noticed a

130
00:11:55,399 --> 00:11:59,720
towel missing from his laundry room and felt his stomach drop.

131
00:12:00,679 --> 00:12:05,120
The creature could get close when it wanted. Then a

132
00:12:05,159 --> 00:12:10,279
nice storm glazed everything in glass branches snapped under the weight.

133
00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:15,440
That afternoon, Elliot walked out to check the hollow. The

134
00:12:15,519 --> 00:12:20,519
shelter had been damaged. The roof partially collapsed under the ice.

135
00:12:21,759 --> 00:12:26,679
The bedding inside was soaked. Bones were scattered, as if

136
00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:31,759
something scrambled out in a hurry. Tracks led away toward

137
00:12:31,840 --> 00:12:38,720
the rocky ridge, deep uneven closer together. The creature was limping.

138
00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:45,639
Elliot hesitated every sensible instinct, telling him to go back

139
00:12:45,679 --> 00:12:50,720
inside and let the woods handle itself. But he'd been

140
00:12:50,799 --> 00:12:55,039
living with his presence for weeks, hearing its messages in

141
00:12:55,120 --> 00:13:01,120
the night. He followed. The tracks threaded through thicker trees,

142
00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:05,399
where snow hung heavy and the air smelled of resin

143
00:13:05,639 --> 00:13:10,399
and cold stone. Here and there he saw small dark

144
00:13:10,480 --> 00:13:15,799
spots on the snow blood. At the base of the ridge,

145
00:13:16,360 --> 00:13:20,960
beneath a natural rock overhang, he saw movement in shadow,

146
00:13:21,799 --> 00:13:28,440
a shape that shifted, then stilled. The creature stepped partially

147
00:13:28,600 --> 00:13:33,519
into view. It wasn't the massive monster he'd pictured the

148
00:13:33,559 --> 00:13:37,840
first time he thought the word bigfoot. It wasn't eight

149
00:13:37,879 --> 00:13:43,080
feet tall. It wasn't built like a barrel. It was lean,

150
00:13:43,879 --> 00:13:49,879
about six feet maybe a touch more shoulders, narrow arms,

151
00:13:49,919 --> 00:13:55,720
long fur, dark and matted with snow. It looked under fed,

152
00:13:55,919 --> 00:13:58,759
in the way a hard winter can do to anything

153
00:13:59,080 --> 00:14:03,600
that has to earn every calorie its face sat close

154
00:14:03,639 --> 00:14:07,919
to human proportions in the dim light. Deep set eyes,

155
00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:13,120
heavy brow, a nose that wasn't quite ours, but wasn't

156
00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:18,679
an animal muzzle either. Its mouth stayed closed, it didn't

157
00:14:18,679 --> 00:14:23,639
bare teeth. It watched Elliot like a cornered thing watches

158
00:14:23,919 --> 00:14:31,440
a threat, alert, calculating, ready to bolt. Young Elliot realized,

159
00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:37,480
not a child, but not full grown. The lankiness had

160
00:14:37,559 --> 00:14:43,480
that adolescent feel, a creature still growing into itself, surviving

161
00:14:43,759 --> 00:14:49,519
without the bulk of maturity. And it was alone. Elliot

162
00:14:49,519 --> 00:14:52,399
felt that as surely as the cold on his skin.

163
00:14:53,639 --> 00:14:58,799
No other movement in the trees, no answering calls, just

164
00:14:58,960 --> 00:15:03,720
wind and the slow creak of ice. They held each

165
00:15:03,759 --> 00:15:08,679
other's gaze for a long moment. Elliot didn't raise his hands,

166
00:15:09,279 --> 00:15:13,320
he didn't step closer. He simply stood and let the

167
00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:19,840
distance stay. The creature shifted its weight favoring one leg.

168
00:15:20,879 --> 00:15:25,879
Its eyes flickered once towards Eliot's hands, then back to

169
00:15:25,960 --> 00:15:33,960
his face. There was intelligence there, not human, but unmistakably aware.

170
00:15:34,799 --> 00:15:39,720
Elliott took one slow step back. The creature didn't chase,

171
00:15:40,480 --> 00:15:45,679
it didn't threaten. It turned and slipped deeper under the overhang.

172
00:15:46,799 --> 00:15:53,080
Vanishing into shadows where rock met pine. Elliot went home

173
00:15:54,840 --> 00:15:57,840
that night. He left food at the hollow the way

174
00:15:57,879 --> 00:16:04,759
he always did, careful, measured, respectful of the boundary they'd made.

175
00:16:05,320 --> 00:16:09,720
The rocks never hid his house again that winter. When

176
00:16:09,799 --> 00:16:14,919
spring finally came, it arrived at a slow easing rather

177
00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:19,519
than a sudden relief. The snow receded in dirty layers,

178
00:16:20,679 --> 00:16:28,320
waters ran in thin lines, birds returned cautiously. Eliot checked

179
00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:32,480
the hollow one last time and found it empty. The

180
00:16:32,519 --> 00:16:37,960
bedding remained flattened and dark. The shelter looked abandoned rather

181
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:43,519
than destroyed. Elliot told no one in Black Hollow what happened,

182
00:16:44,519 --> 00:16:48,440
not because he feared being laughed at, but because this

183
00:16:48,519 --> 00:16:53,360
story felt too private, like something that belonged to the

184
00:16:53,440 --> 00:16:57,840
trees more than to the town. And every year after,

185
00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:01,879
whenever the cold came early and the first heavy snow

186
00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:06,480
arrived like a warning, he would glance toward the spruce

187
00:17:06,519 --> 00:17:12,160
thicket and wonder not whether Bigfoot existed, but whether that

188
00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:17,319
lone thin juvenile was still out there somewhere beneath the pines,

189
00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:22,279
surviving in the hollow place of the world, Remembering that

190
00:17:22,519 --> 00:17:27,039
once in a winter that came too soon. A man

191
00:17:27,759 --> 00:17:39,880
may do, and so did it. You're listening to Bigfoot's wilderness.

192
00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:45,559
Some stories don't end when the telling stops. They settle

193
00:17:45,599 --> 00:17:49,519
in like cold air, in a low place, like a

194
00:17:49,559 --> 00:17:55,559
hollow beneath the pines, where nothing grows quite right. If

195
00:17:55,559 --> 00:18:00,559
what you heard felt unfinished, that's because it is. Not.

196
00:18:00,799 --> 00:18:06,319
Everything leaves tracks, Not everything wants to be followed. Some

197
00:18:06,519 --> 00:18:10,799
things only make themselves known by the way the woods

198
00:18:10,960 --> 00:18:17,640
go still. Wherever you are to night, listen carefully. When

199
00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:23,279
the noise fades, pay attention to what doesn't move. We'll

200
00:18:23,279 --> 00:18:41,200
be here again when the forest decides it's time. Good night,