The Great Outdoors Pt. 01

Part 1

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In the oral tradition of the Western ​​St̓át̓imcets First Nation, one day in high summer, after a moose had been hunted, two sisters were out collecting firewood so that they could smoke the meat before it spoiled. As they strayed further from camp, they sang to each other so that they would not get lost, and so that they would not surprise any bears. Suddenly one sister stopped singing as a massive hand covered her face. In the palm of the hand was pine sap, which glued her eyes shut. She felt herself get lifted up and placed into what she imagined must be a willow basket big enough to carry a whole lake of fish. She screamed in terror as her world accelerated in darkness.

Her sister looked for her all day and all night. She looked for her until the full moon came again, until the first frost came. Her sister searched behind every bush, under every rock, for three years. When she went to the river for water, she called her name. When she collected berries, she sang her half of their song.

Then, one day, as the mayflies swarmed for the first time, the missing sister silently walked back into camp. The missing sister had returned... different. changed. She had a full beard and moustache, thicker than any of the elders had, and dark red-brown hair grew all over her body and legs and arms. The hair on her head hung past her knees. She stood taller than any of the men in the camp. The warriors surrounded her with spears, clamouring that the Sasq'ets, the giants of the mountains, were attacking the camp, when they heard the singing of the sister returning to camp with a basket of fish. The giant sister, frightened and sad, began to sing out in response. The two sisters reunited in joy and tears as the men stood down. The giant sister removed the basket from her back and produced a sleeping infant in a moss bag. The baby was covered with thick woolly hair.

The giant sister returned to life in their camp and raised her son with the help of her sister, but she refused to tell anything about where she had gone, and what happened to her.

-from Legends of the Cascades, Axel Petersen, 1959

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The rented SUV hugged the coastal contours of the Sea to Sky highway, heading north from the concrete, glass and traffic of Vancouver into the lush coastal mountains. Emily grinned as she accelerated past a semitrailer. Finally some time off work for her and her girls to get out into the world.

Emily, Claire and Sushmita all worked for the City in administration, facilitating the riveting ups and downs of the City's Borgesian tax policies. They all went to the same anonymous office block, they all got lunch together at the same food truck, they all took the same train back to Burnaby (who could afford to live downtown?) they all fake laughed at their supervisor's borderline racist jokes. There were a lot of these because Steven Madison was a 56 year old white man with an uncanny ability to say something probably offensive but not actionable by HR, and he worked in an office with the Nigerian-born Emily and second-generation, parents-born-in-Chennai, Sushmita. Red-headed but not particularly Irish Claire occasionally got a potato famine joke tossed her way but you could tell his heart wasn't in it.

Grinding away your 20s in an office does have a few upsides, and if you can't even imagine buying a house, a lot of income becomes disposable. The three women had first gone to the gym together out of a collective fear of "office bod", but that eventually led to all sorts of fitness and outdoor activities: indoor rock climbing, kayak rentals, mountain biking, that kind of thing. But what really allowed them to scrub their soles of bureaucrat suffering was backcountry camping.

This particular weekend they were planning to summit Capilano Mountain and explore the nearby valleys, turning off the highway onto a service road that followed Furry Creek up into the thick forest.

"Whoa" said Sushmita as they pulled into the trailhead "look at the sign" The 8 foot signboard, which usually had a map and notices of trail closures or animal sightings, was, mostly, not there at all. Something had shattered the plywood and the 4x4 posts that it would have been attached to. Emily parked and they all piled out of the SUV.

"Must have been hit by a logging truck or something. Jesus."

"I hope the driver is okay" said Claire

"You hope the driver is okay?" said Emily "Sometimes I wonder how your brain works. You're too short to be so nice. Short people are supposed to be secretly vicious."

"I'm not short! I'm five foot one! Sushmita is the short one!"

"Perfect example. Sushmita will cut you if you look at her wrong"

Sushmita lowered her brow and cast her darkest, most dangerous, furious glare at Claire. The effect was somewhat undercut when her 4'9" body got knocked backwards by the pack she was pulling out of the back of the vehicle. Claire burst out laughing.

"Sushmita is good and nice, actually. We can't all be ferocious amazonian warriors "

"Five nine is amazonian now? Those amazons really lowered their standards lately. I should drop off an application at themyscira"

"At where now?"

"You know, the island of the amazons, from Wonder Woman."

"Nerd. Who remembers stuff like that?

"You're the one who wanted to go see it."

"Anyway it's not the height. It's the constant menace in your eyes. You'd kill a man for pizza. In fact isn't that what happened to Mike the pizza guy? Haven't seen him around since you broke up"

"I don't think she killed him" said Sushmita " If she killed him she also killed her free pizza connection. It's a net pizza loss"

"What about that Chilean guy? The photo archivist? What happened to him?"

"Why are we interrogating my love life? I don't see how any of this is pizza-related."

They locked the SUV and made for the trail.

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Search for Missing Nurse Called Off

Search and Rescue teams received the order today to come home as the 30 day search for Jennifer Alder has been called off. Alder, a management consultant from Maple Ridge, was last seen on January 20, on a backcountry skiing trip with friends Alice Thompson and Geoff Darrow to the Seymour Dam Lockout. Officials say they are concerned for the safety of the rescue teams in the harsh winter conditions.

Jennifer's friends say she left the tent while they were sleeping and they never saw her again. An investigation was unable to find even tracks in the snow away from the campsite.

After sending search teams, tracker dogs and helicopters up and down the valley, the RCMP have designated her missing, presumed dead, although they do not suspect foul play. The case has drawn a lot of attention and speculation on the internet due to the puzzling lack of evidence or suspects.

Ranger Captain Ed Telemacher said in a statement that the Seymour Dam Backcountry area would be closed until spring, and strongly discouraged other adventurers from going searching for the young women, although anyone who thought they saw her should call the emergency line as soon as possible.

Winter hikers, snowshoers and skiers in any part of the province should be careful of avalanches and the possibility of the uneven snow pack collapsing.

-David Carrigg, The Vancouver Sun, February 19, 2018

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It was a scorching June day. Under the cover of enormous cedar and douglas fir, the heat was bearable, but whenever the path was in direct sunlight, the girls found themselves sweating under the weight of their packs and trying to drink enough to stave off heat exhaustion but not so much that they would run out of water. As the trail sidled up a steep cliff, a turn in the track revealed that 50 feet of track had collapsed into the gully below.

"See, that's exactly the kind of thing we would have known about if that sign at the trailhead hadn't been broken. Fucking logging trucks. Think they own the road" Emily spat.

"You don't even know it was a logging truck" said Claire

"Fuck logging trucks anyway. They almost creamed us on the 99 on the way here"

"Look, it's not that big a deal. We can just climb down the scree slope and follow that little creek back up to where it joins the path. We just gotta keep Ledge Mountain up there to the left of us and we'll be fine. We should still make our first campsite by nightfall." Claire said, scrutinising the guidebook

"That should work. It might be nice to get out of the sun"

"Okay sure, there, Radisson and Grosseliers"

Sushmita blinked "who?"

Emily sighed "the explorers. You know."

"Oh, you mean Lewis and Clark" suggested Claire

"No, they were Americans. Radisson and Grosseliers were part of the early colonisation of Canada. You know, Grade 8 social studies."

"You're a nerd but we love you." said Claire as they started down the slope.

"Yeah, the joke lands better if you say Lewis and Clark instead of the 76th most famous explorers no one's ever heard of" said Sushmita.

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This detour trail was more of a suggestion, really, and saw more traffic from deer than people. Sushmita was walking in front, listening to Claire and Emily Chatter behind her, when she crested a small rise on the trail. Looking down she saw the figure of a woman ahead, a dark shape in the high-contrast shadows of the afternoon sun. Before she could really take in this visual information, the shape vanished. Must've been a trick of the light, she thought, If that was a woman, she would have been ten feet tall.

Ledge mountain was still to their left, so they pressed on. They filled their waterbottles in a little crick, waiting only for the iodine tablets before gratefully emptying the bottles and refilling them again. It had to be 36 degrees out.Their bottles were empty after another hour of hiking

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"There's no trail" said Sushmita, returning along the narrow path toward Emily and Claire

"What do you mean? We're on a trail right now." said Emily

"It goes up to a little clearing, and then there's no way out. There's a cliff on one side, a canyon on the other, and everything else is blackberry brambles."

"Blackberries!" said Claire with glee

The clearing lay dark in the shadows of massive pine trees, whose needles had accumulated for centuries and acidified the soil to where nothing else could grow but a little lichen. The cliff face stood tall, catching the full 5:30 sun, which was just starting to think about setting. To Claire's disappointment, the blackberries were not ready yet.

"Look!" said Claire "we can climb up to that outcropping and follow it along the side until we get to the other side"

"Are you sure? What if it doesn't go anywhere?" said Sushmita

"It's that or we go back the way we came." Emily shrugged and started up the steep embankment.

They tracked along the outcropping for a half a kilometre, forest below, sheer rock above, and nothing but sky to their left side. There was no path as such, but the outcrop was mostly even and level, slowly ascending the mountain as it crawled along the side. It was blazing hot and there was nothing for shade.

The girls came around a blind corner, and the ledge they were on narrowed to a couple of feet. As they cautiously manoeuvred themselves around the sharp corner, they saw an unexpected and glorious site. A waterfall cascading down the mountain. No, it was three waterfalls, each fed by the mouth of a different small seepage up about 30, 60, and 80 feet above the outcrop. The water fell in six foot wide columns, splashing down the rocks and into the valley below.

The girls cheered and shrieked, although they could hear nothing over the roar of the water. They took off their packs and walked right into the spray, although the glacial melt was so cold they immediately backed out. Each filled her bottle at a different stream. They laughed and took selfies and drank until they were fully quenched. As they continued up the mountainside, Claire exclaimed how lucky they were that the main trail had washed out. Sushmita could not find any description of the triple cascade in her guidebook.

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"My feet are killing me" said Sushmita as they sat in their collapsible camping chairs, gathered around the campstove where Claire had re-hydrated their dehydrated meals. The sun set quickly in the mountains, and they had just barely climbed off the rock face and found a suitable space to pitch their tents before the forest started to darken.

"You're just lucky that Columbia makes hiking boots for kids. Now c'mon, eat up so we can get to bed so we can get up before the heat tomorrow." Emily punctuated her sentence by hitting her spoon on her cup. "C'mon gimme some I'm starving. Make we go chop."

Claire scooped the freeze-dried salmon-and-rice pilaf into her enamel cup "you must be hungry. You're talking Nigerian again"

"Nigerian's not a language. I'm just speaking English the Nigerian way. But man I dunno. I must've burned a whole lot of calories today"

The truth was they were all famished. Even the tiny, slim Sushmita put away her full portion, and then they all had powerbars for dessert. They stashed their remaining food high in a tree in case of bears, and then fell into a deep sleep. Claire woke up in the middle of the night, thinking she heard voices outside the tent, but she told herself she was dreaming and immediately fell back to sleep.

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Jennifer felt terrible. She should have done more. Thrown some stones. Knocked on some trees. She should have revealed herself purposely, and scared the girls away before they got to the blackberry patch. Everything was going wrong. The closed trail, A'heuk destroying the sign at the trailhead, the girls' uncanny ability to choose the exact wrong path, even the hot sun that had swollen the springs into a torrent. But she had been so nervous. She hadn't been so close to people, human people, for so long, and now she was scared. Scared what they would think of her, what they might do to her. If they saw her, they might come back with more people, looking for her tribe. What if they found her son?

It had been 5 years since she drank from the three springs. Five years since she woke up in a cave high above the frozen mountainside, watching the snow fall on a silent forest, with nothing but her sleeping bag and pyjamas. The cave was lined with pine boughs and cedar bark, but it was still below zero in there. Five years since she lay eyes on the massive beast who took her there. Given the circumstances she probably should have screamed, but instead she just stared at him. She felt like she was dreaming still.

He had to be 8 feet tall, and his face was not exactly human, but he seemed to defer to her and acted with caution. He gave her furs to wear, an enormous willow basket of mushrooms and dried fish, and water in a birchbark container. She shrank into her sleeping bag, wrapped up in the furs, shivering. She ate the fish and drank the water before it froze. She reckoned she might die either way, so she ate the mushrooms, which were surprisingly nourishing. Every day the beast brought fish, mushrooms and water.

Over the next several days, she grew accustomed to the cold, accustomed to this creature's presence and strangely at peace with the changes her body was going through. It happened fast. Her body hair thickened and lengthened in just a few days, until it covered everywhere but her face, palms, soles and nipples. It was shaggy and blondish brown, matching the hair in her short, professional haircut, which began to flow over her neck and shoulders.

She was at first upset about the stubble, but she had no way to shave and anyway it was coming in thick and fast. When she saw her reflection in a pool in the cave, she was astonished by how luxurious her half inch-long beard was. It felt like a natural part of her, soft and feminine, even if that didn't make sense. She smiled at her reflection and understood, almost serenely, what was happening to her and why.

In the first week her feet had swollen to where they would no longer fit into her socks. She was getting uncomfortable in her bedclothes with the hair underneath, so she started wearing just the furs, until she realized that she no longer felt cold. She also noticed that the big red sasquatch didn't seem so big anymore. One day when he returned to the cave with fresh fish and the birchbark full of water, she approached him, looking him in the eye. Her head seemed to be chest-high on him. Was that higher than it used to be? After all, she only stood 5'6", and this apeman was enormous. He looked back at her with an expression of depth and caring but also confusion. He began to vocalise, making sounds almost like parrot squawks and chirps, but pitched down. Perhaps he just seemed smaller because she was less afraid of him

In another two weeks, she had her answer: she was growing taller. she stood as high as his chin. She had explored outside the cave a bit but she had no idea where she was, and the ledge was not to be undertaken lightly. At least her new thick hair kept her warm. She was gaining a lot of weight. Her trim, professional figure was now hidden in not just her hair but sleek new muscle and a plush jiggle that had developed in her breasts and hips.

Her new body felt so powerful. She could easily climb down from the cave now, and followed her caretaker along the gullies and through the forests collecting food, sleeping in snow caves and hollows around tree trunks. She was constantly hungry, ravenous even. One day they ran down a deer and Jen had a sort of out of body experience as she ripped into it and ate it raw. Something inside her shifted.

In a way, Jen had always wanted out of the corporate world. In a way, the pressure of her life, her work, her family, were causing her to lose herself. The endless meetings, her tiny apartment, uncomfortable dates with overbearing, finance-obsessed men, even the gym where she obsessively and guiltily tried to regulate her body. She found a part of herself living in the mountain forests, and she decided she would never give it up. She felt balanced in a way that she had never felt before.

A month after that Jen stood eye to eye with the creature. She was terrified but secretly exhilarated. She must be the tallest woman in history. Her breasts were swollen and massive, her hips broad and womanly, and she began to feel that this body was made for her, that she was made for it. That thought made her kind of horny. In a private moment, curled up in the roots of a tree while the creature was off hunting, she reached down to pleasure herself, thrilling at the size and power of her body. She was momentarily shocked to discover that, after months of neglect, her excited clitoris was about the size of a baby carrot in her hand. This discovery made her cum over and over. She squeezed her dark nipples and let out a yell, so loud she surprised herself. Falling asleep afterwards she felt utter peace.

As the snow pack finally began to melt, she stood a head taller than A'heuk, the creature she would come to know as her guardian, friend, and, eventually, partner.

By spring, she was able to have basic conversation with him. He called her D'hennaha. It was close enough.

And now they had all drank from the sacred springs. She promised to herself she would keep looking out for the girls. They were going to need a lot of help in the next couple days.

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Scales get kinda funny once a woman is over 7 feet tall. The Characters don't always have a good idea what size things are. Figures are rounded.