It was the mention of tunnels that lured me in. Miles and miles of underground tunnels. And what might that imply, all that subsurface work, up there in the frozen wastes? You got it. Mines.
So Shaun’s speculation of gold up there, in the Nahanni Valley, was plausible. Very, very plausible. The old prospectors corroborated and confirmed that for me. None had heard of Shaun or his pet theories, of that I was sure.
Yes, to describe it as cold up above the sixtieth parallel would be an understatement. It was damn near inhospitable – the wolves, the snow and the biting chill, the miles and miles of tree-shrouded mountain ranges. But the Valley was something special. All year round it was an oasis for those of the likes of us. It was warm. It was lush. It was said you could bathe naked in the zigzag streams and pools beneath ice-free cavalcades of rock. The hot sulfur springs did it.
They also gave the place an evil smell, Old Jeff swore. That, and the mists.
The Valley, with its hot spring engines beneath it, created some sort of anomalous weather vortex. The hot sulfur-tinged air rose hundreds and hundreds of feet, sparred with the cooler Arctic air blown down south from the pole, curled and curved back down. The process somehow spawned the mysterious mists that kept the Valley out of reach of more common men.
Of course none of the locals would guide us in. Even, apparently, all the young braves from the three local tribes were too cowardly to join the mission. Evil spirits, they cried, bad magic. No problem, really; Shaun volunteered to guide us armed with the school’s latest geologic maps. So we assembled a team, fast, because the Canadian government was going to nationalize the Valley into some conglomerate park in two scant years. Then how’d we get any gold out?
There’d be seven of us; seven ways to split the treasure. Me, of course, and Shaun. The money and the mind. We hired the Blinthe brothers, Cecil and Clive, as well as a mountainous old prospector from Nione, Tom One-Eye, for muscle. Tom Staffordshire would pilot the Argosy in to Lake Vannovaer, and we’d trek due east the seventeen or so miles to the Valley on dog sled under the whip of Harv Massik. Seven of us.
Seven heads to lose, Harv commented dryly, and, truth be told, perhaps a little ominously. Hackles rose despite forced bravado. Just the previous spring four hikers had gone missing in the Valley. So far, their bodies still hadn’t been found. Nor had their heads, either. But a good many down in Nione, and just about most of the Indians, were fairly certain what’d be found when those hikers were eventually recovered.
It started a little over a century ago, at least as far as the white man is concerned. Who knows how many braves and squaws perished through ages past? But sometime in the early to mid-nineteenth century explorers and, later, trappers and prospectors, began losing their heads in the valley.
Lured by tall tales of gold (weren’t we?) and splendid furs, the French and English explorers found the valley, and its mists. Disappearances quickly followed, and soon so did rescue parties. Months or years later, if at all, human bodies were found – skinned and decapitated. The local tribes vehemently denied any part of the killings; indeed, the only clue as to the identity of the murderers were sets of extremely large, manlike footprints found around the victims’ remains. Ask Old Jeff. He saw them himself when his own rheumy eyes were still young and strong.
A few years back the McLeod brothers lost their heads in the valley. The syndicated news wires carried the local story, and the unofficial name of the Nahanni Valley spread quicker than the mists: The Valley of the Headless Men.
We all heard the stories. Heck, Harv repeated them right up to the moment Tom Staffordshire sealed up the cargo door. The mists – that was the bad part. You’d find yourself walking on the lush almost balmy floor of the Valley, when the mists would come in, swirling around you, and soon you’d find yourself a little disoriented … then lost … separated from the others … and then that sensation of being watched would seize you … and then you’d see the shapes in the mist … forms … movement … then the panic, the gut-level panic … then every noise, every call in the distance, every crunch of a twig, everything and anything would escalate the panic … the panic rising up into your head, clouding all rational thought … then the shapes would near, coalesce out of the mists, and then, then –
So Shaun’s speculation of gold up there, in the Nahanni Valley, was plausible. Very, very plausible. The old prospectors corroborated and confirmed that for me. None had heard of Shaun or his pet theories, of that I was sure.
Yes, to describe it as cold up above the sixtieth parallel would be an understatement. It was damn near inhospitable – the wolves, the snow and the biting chill, the miles and miles of tree-shrouded mountain ranges. But the Valley was something special. All year round it was an oasis for those of the likes of us. It was warm. It was lush. It was said you could bathe naked in the zigzag streams and pools beneath ice-free cavalcades of rock. The hot sulfur springs did it.
They also gave the place an evil smell, Old Jeff swore. That, and the mists.
The Valley, with its hot spring engines beneath it, created some sort of anomalous weather vortex. The hot sulfur-tinged air rose hundreds and hundreds of feet, sparred with the cooler Arctic air blown down south from the pole, curled and curved back down. The process somehow spawned the mysterious mists that kept the Valley out of reach of more common men.
Of course none of the locals would guide us in. Even, apparently, all the young braves from the three local tribes were too cowardly to join the mission. Evil spirits, they cried, bad magic. No problem, really; Shaun volunteered to guide us armed with the school’s latest geologic maps. So we assembled a team, fast, because the Canadian government was going to nationalize the Valley into some conglomerate park in two scant years. Then how’d we get any gold out?
There’d be seven of us; seven ways to split the treasure. Me, of course, and Shaun. The money and the mind. We hired the Blinthe brothers, Cecil and Clive, as well as a mountainous old prospector from Nione, Tom One-Eye, for muscle. Tom Staffordshire would pilot the Argosy in to Lake Vannovaer, and we’d trek due east the seventeen or so miles to the Valley on dog sled under the whip of Harv Massik. Seven of us.
Seven heads to lose, Harv commented dryly, and, truth be told, perhaps a little ominously. Hackles rose despite forced bravado. Just the previous spring four hikers had gone missing in the Valley. So far, their bodies still hadn’t been found. Nor had their heads, either. But a good many down in Nione, and just about most of the Indians, were fairly certain what’d be found when those hikers were eventually recovered.
It started a little over a century ago, at least as far as the white man is concerned. Who knows how many braves and squaws perished through ages past? But sometime in the early to mid-nineteenth century explorers and, later, trappers and prospectors, began losing their heads in the valley.
Lured by tall tales of gold (weren’t we?) and splendid furs, the French and English explorers found the valley, and its mists. Disappearances quickly followed, and soon so did rescue parties. Months or years later, if at all, human bodies were found – skinned and decapitated. The local tribes vehemently denied any part of the killings; indeed, the only clue as to the identity of the murderers were sets of extremely large, manlike footprints found around the victims’ remains. Ask Old Jeff. He saw them himself when his own rheumy eyes were still young and strong.
A few years back the McLeod brothers lost their heads in the valley. The syndicated news wires carried the local story, and the unofficial name of the Nahanni Valley spread quicker than the mists: The Valley of the Headless Men.
We all heard the stories. Heck, Harv repeated them right up to the moment Tom Staffordshire sealed up the cargo door. The mists – that was the bad part. You’d find yourself walking on the lush almost balmy floor of the Valley, when the mists would come in, swirling around you, and soon you’d find yourself a little disoriented … then lost … separated from the others … and then that sensation of being watched would seize you … and then you’d see the shapes in the mist … forms … movement … then the panic, the gut-level panic … then every noise, every call in the distance, every crunch of a twig, everything and anything would escalate the panic … the panic rising up into your head, clouding all rational thought … then the shapes would near, coalesce out of the mists, and then, then –
I've always been fascinated by the Nahanni Valley. My dad told me many stories. Some fake, I'm sure. And back in the early 1990s we were suppose to accompany his friend, a renowned mineralogist to the valley. Unfortunately, his funding was mysteriously pulled and so the trip too was canceled.
ReplyDeleteSo I must ask you, did you make the trip? Was it all you could ever have hoped for?
feel free to contact me at allan_houghton@hotmail.com