Speaker 1: If you've ever lived in the Pacific Northwest, the Upper Midwest,
Speaker 1: or anywhere north of New Mexico and east towards the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: chances are you've been snowbound at least once, trapped by ice,
Speaker 1: cut off by drifts, watching the world outside your window
Speaker 1: disappear beneath white silence. For some folks it's an inconvenience.
Speaker 1: For others, it turns into math. What you have, what
Speaker 1: you can stretch, what you can't replace. Now, imagine that
Speaker 1: pressure out in the frozen woods, where a survival means
Speaker 1: scavenging and stealing, and where a high hollow beneath the
Speaker 1: pines can be the difference between life and death. This
Speaker 1: is the story of what happens when an early winter
Speaker 1: traps both a man and a creature on the same
Speaker 1: piece of land and forces them into a fragile, unspoken agreement.
Speaker 1: Winter came to northern Maine like a door slamming shut.
Speaker 1: The calender still insisted it was late fall, but a
Speaker 1: cold front slid down out of Canada into the night.
Speaker 1: By dawn, the air had teeth, sleet rattled the windows,
Speaker 1: then turned to thick, wet snow that stacked fast. In
Speaker 1: a few days, The drifts around the tiny timbered town
Speaker 1: of Black Hollow were deep enough to swallow fence rails,
Speaker 1: and ice glazed the roads into dangerous glass. Two feet
Speaker 1: of snow wasn't unheard of up here, not later in
Speaker 1: the season, but this early, paired with ice, it changed routines.
Speaker 1: People stayed home, kept wood stoves going, and waited for
Speaker 1: plows that struggled to reach the outlying roads. Elliot Graves
Speaker 1: didn't mind being alone. He lived outside town limits, where
Speaker 1: the trees grew thicker and neighbors thinned out to nothing.
Speaker 1: His place was modest, a small house, a shed, and
Speaker 1: a stretch of land that ran back into spruce and
Speaker 1: pine before tipping up toward a rocky ridge. He worked
Speaker 1: from home, and the storm simply made the world smaller, house, yard,
Speaker 1: woods white. After long hours at his desk, the silence
Speaker 1: started to feel too deep, so he took short walks
Speaker 1: around the property, bundled in layers, checking for fallen limbs
Speaker 1: and listening to the ice grown in the tree tops.
Speaker 1: Three days after the storm, he noticed something that didn't fit.
Speaker 1: Behind a dense clutch of spruce, the ground dipped into
Speaker 1: a shallow bowl. Eliot knew the spot. In summer, it
Speaker 1: was just a low place where needles collected. In winter,
Speaker 1: it should have been filled, filled in like everything else.
Speaker 1: But now the snow there was thin and broken, as
Speaker 1: if some one had scraped it away. Pine needles showed
Speaker 1: through here and there, bare earth peeked out. Then he
Speaker 1: saw the trash, a torn bread bag half buried in crust,
Speaker 1: a crushed coffee can, a few shredded wraps, and snagged
Speaker 1: in low branches, A strip of cloth hung like a
Speaker 1: ragged flag, a bed sheet. Elliot moved closer, careful not
Speaker 1: to slip, and the scene resolved into something worse than
Speaker 1: scattered garbage. Stones had been stacked along the inside rim
Speaker 1: of the hollow. Branches were woven overhead in a crude arch,
Speaker 1: Pine bows layered on top like a roof. Inside lay
Speaker 1: thick bedding, pine needles pressed into a matted nest, layered
Speaker 1: with rags, scraps of clothing and torn fabric. And near
Speaker 1: the back, half hidden in needles, were bones, small ones
Speaker 1: at first what looked like rabbit, squirrel, maybe raccoon, But
Speaker 1: deeper in the shelter lay a dear skull with broken antlers,
Speaker 1: the eye sockets dark as empty pockets. Eliot backed out slowly.
Speaker 1: The cold was suddenly irrelevant. He tried to make it
Speaker 1: ordinary in his head. A bear, No bears don't weave
Speaker 1: bed sheets into nests. A person squatting, maybe, But who
Speaker 1: chose a hollow in deep snow when abandoned camps exist
Speaker 1: farther out, and the bones saved kept like someone had
Speaker 1: been eating here for a long time. The answer he
Speaker 1: didn't want pressed forward anyway. Bigfoot Black Hollow had its stories.
Speaker 1: Every main town did. Eliot had always filed them away
Speaker 1: as local color, something to smile at politely in the
Speaker 1: general store. Now he went home and tried to work
Speaker 1: with the image of that hollow stuck behind his eyes.
Speaker 1: That night, around eleven, he heard something outside, a soft
Speaker 1: scrape along the siding, then a metallic clink, the sound
Speaker 1: of a trash can lid being lifted. Eliot killed the
Speaker 1: lamp and peered through the frosted window. The porch light
Speaker 1: threw a pale cone over the yard. Just beyond the
Speaker 1: edge of that light, a figure moved upright, hunched forward
Speaker 1: against the cold, arms long and loose. The trash can
Speaker 1: lid rose. The figure leaned in, rummaging. Eliot could hear breathing, slow, deep, measured,
Speaker 1: and then a faint clicking sound, as if the thing
Speaker 1: had found something it wanted. It withdrew without panic, slipping
Speaker 1: back into darkness as smoothly as it came. In the morning,
Speaker 1: he found the trash scattered, and not far from the
Speaker 1: porch a pie tin crushed and licked clean. He followed
Speaker 1: the marks back toward the spruce thicket and found fresh
Speaker 1: tracks near the hollow. They weren't the huge, impossible prints
Speaker 1: from campfire stories. They were big, yes, the size of
Speaker 1: a tall man with an extra wide foot pressed deep
Speaker 1: in the crust, heavy heel splayed toes an almost circus
Speaker 1: like tight rope gait with a long stride that went
Speaker 1: straight to the shelter. Elliot stared until his eyes watered.
Speaker 1: Then he did something he still couldn't fully explain. He
Speaker 1: gathered scraps into paper bags, apple cores, stale bread, a
Speaker 1: bit of meat, and carried it to the edge of
Speaker 1: the hollow, not inside the shelter, just close enough to
Speaker 1: be found. Then he backed away. The next morning, the
Speaker 1: bag was gone, no trash was disturbed, nothing near the
Speaker 1: house had been touched. He repeated it the next night,
Speaker 1: same result. Food at the hollow meant a quiet yard.
Speaker 1: He started thinking of it as a boundary, a toll
Speaker 1: paid to keep the dark at the trees instead of
Speaker 1: at his door. Then came the day he forgot it
Speaker 1: wasn't dramatic. Work piled up, a meeting ran late. He
Speaker 1: answered emails, heated soup, looked out once at the blank,
Speaker 1: white yard, and went back to his screen. The hours
Speaker 1: slid by. The hollow slipped his mind. Near midnight, the
Speaker 1: house reminded him. A heavy impact against the outer wall
Speaker 1: close enough that a picture frame on the shelf rattled.
Speaker 1: Elliot froze listening again, controlled, deliberate, Then a sharp crack
Speaker 1: as something struck the siding and bounced away a rock.
Speaker 1: He stepped to the window. In the porch light, a
Speaker 1: stone lay fresh on the snow, dark against white. Near
Speaker 1: the tree line. A shape shifted, partly hidden, as if
Speaker 1: it didn't want to be seen, but wanted to be noticed.
Speaker 1: Another rock hit, not hard enough to shatter glass, but
Speaker 1: hard enough to make the message unmistakable. A low, breathy
Speaker 1: exhale rolled out of the darkness, not a roar, but frustration.
Speaker 1: Eliot didn't open the door. He waited until the sounds stopped,
Speaker 1: and the shape withdrew. At first light, he carried food
Speaker 1: out more than usual, like an apology. He set it
Speaker 1: near the hollow and backed away. That night, the woods
Speaker 1: stayed quiet, so the pact formed. Not friendly, not safe,
Speaker 1: but consistent. When Eliot left left food, the creature kept
Speaker 1: its distance. When he forgot or left too little, the
Speaker 1: rocks came. Sometimes there was pounding on the siding, a
Speaker 1: heavy fist like thud that made the house tremble. Once
Speaker 1: he found a chunk of ice shattered on his porch steps.
Speaker 1: Never a broken window, never a forced door, just pressure,
Speaker 1: just accountability. As the weeks passed, the forest itself changed.
Speaker 1: Deer tracks thinned out, birds vanished, even the coyotes fell silent,
Speaker 1: and the hollow grew more fortified. The roof thickened, the
Speaker 1: bedding deepened with new cloth. One morning, Elliott noticed a
Speaker 1: towel missing from his laundry room and felt his stomach drop.
Speaker 1: The creature could get close when it wanted. Then a
Speaker 1: nice storm glazed everything in glass branches snapped under the weight.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, Elliot walked out to check the hollow. The
Speaker 1: shelter had been damaged. The roof partially collapsed under the ice.
Speaker 1: The bedding inside was soaked. Bones were scattered, as if
Speaker 1: something scrambled out in a hurry. Tracks led away toward
Speaker 1: the rocky ridge, deep uneven closer together. The creature was limping.
Speaker 1: Elliot hesitated every sensible instinct, telling him to go back
Speaker 1: inside and let the woods handle itself. But he'd been
Speaker 1: living with his presence for weeks, hearing its messages in
Speaker 1: the night. He followed. The tracks threaded through thicker trees,
Speaker 1: where snow hung heavy and the air smelled of resin
Speaker 1: and cold stone. Here and there he saw small dark
Speaker 1: spots on the snow blood. At the base of the ridge,
Speaker 1: beneath a natural rock overhang, he saw movement in shadow,
Speaker 1: a shape that shifted, then stilled. The creature stepped partially
Speaker 1: into view. It wasn't the massive monster he'd pictured the
Speaker 1: first time he thought the word bigfoot. It wasn't eight
Speaker 1: feet tall. It wasn't built like a barrel. It was lean,
Speaker 1: about six feet maybe a touch more shoulders, narrow arms,
Speaker 1: long fur, dark and matted with snow. It looked under fed,
Speaker 1: in the way a hard winter can do to anything
Speaker 1: that has to earn every calorie its face sat close
Speaker 1: to human proportions in the dim light. Deep set eyes,
Speaker 1: heavy brow, a nose that wasn't quite ours, but wasn't
Speaker 1: an animal muzzle either. Its mouth stayed closed, it didn't
Speaker 1: bare teeth. It watched Elliot like a cornered thing watches
Speaker 1: a threat, alert, calculating, ready to bolt. Young Elliot realized,
Speaker 1: not a child, but not full grown. The lankiness had
Speaker 1: that adolescent feel, a creature still growing into itself, surviving
Speaker 1: without the bulk of maturity. And it was alone. Elliot
Speaker 1: felt that as surely as the cold on his skin.
Speaker 1: No other movement in the trees, no answering calls, just
Speaker 1: wind and the slow creak of ice. They held each
Speaker 1: other's gaze for a long moment. Elliot didn't raise his hands,
Speaker 1: he didn't step closer. He simply stood and let the
Speaker 1: distance stay. The creature shifted its weight favoring one leg.
Speaker 1: Its eyes flickered once towards Eliot's hands, then back to
Speaker 1: his face. There was intelligence there, not human, but unmistakably aware.
Speaker 1: Elliott took one slow step back. The creature didn't chase,
Speaker 1: it didn't threaten. It turned and slipped deeper under the overhang.
Speaker 1: Vanishing into shadows where rock met pine. Elliot went home
Speaker 1: that night. He left food at the hollow the way
Speaker 1: he always did, careful, measured, respectful of the boundary they'd made.
Speaker 1: The rocks never hid his house again that winter. When
Speaker 1: spring finally came, it arrived at a slow easing rather
Speaker 1: than a sudden relief. The snow receded in dirty layers,
Speaker 1: waters ran in thin lines, birds returned cautiously. Eliot checked
Speaker 1: the hollow one last time and found it empty. The
Speaker 1: bedding remained flattened and dark. The shelter looked abandoned rather
Speaker 1: than destroyed. Elliot told no one in Black Hollow what happened,
Speaker 1: not because he feared being laughed at, but because this
Speaker 1: story felt too private, like something that belonged to the
Speaker 1: trees more than to the town. And every year after,
Speaker 1: whenever the cold came early and the first heavy snow
Speaker 1: arrived like a warning, he would glance toward the spruce
Speaker 1: thicket and wonder not whether Bigfoot existed, but whether that
Speaker 1: lone thin juvenile was still out there somewhere beneath the pines,
Speaker 1: surviving in the hollow place of the world, Remembering that
Speaker 1: once in a winter that came too soon. A man
Speaker 1: may do, and so did it. You're listening to Bigfoot's wilderness.
Speaker 1: Some stories don't end when the telling stops. They settle
Speaker 1: in like cold air, in a low place, like a
Speaker 1: hollow beneath the pines, where nothing grows quite right. If
Speaker 1: what you heard felt unfinished, that's because it is. Not.
Speaker 1: Everything leaves tracks, Not everything wants to be followed. Some
Speaker 1: things only make themselves known by the way the woods
Speaker 1: go still. Wherever you are to night, listen carefully. When
Speaker 1: the noise fades, pay attention to what doesn't move. We'll
Speaker 1: be here again when the forest decides it's time. Good night,