May 17, 1811

Today marks the third week I’ve been trapped here. When I first fell into this valley I thought I would die. The fall in killed my horse, or rather resulted in its death, and I too suffered a broken leg. It is a comfortably big enough area to get trapped in all right. There is plenty of space and oddly enough there is food in abundance. It seems that I am not the only fool unlucky enough to stumble down the walls into this fate. Small animals are roaming around as well. I’ve set up snares and this past week I’ve eaten like a king. One fear I’ve developed is that one-day I will wake up and discover that I’ve lost the top of the food chain to something else that descends into this home away from home.

May 22, 1811

It is apparent that I am not the first man to be held up here though. One of the first things I uncovered was the cabin. Overgrown and beat up, it hasn’t been used in years. For certain there once was a man who lived here and as I look around I see no sign of him now. The hope it inspires in me is that there is obviously an escape back out to the mountain paths. Probably just as the cabin was, it would likely be a hidden trail that just needs to be rediscovered or a crack in the rock walls that lies just beyond the bushes, out of sight. I will find it.

What gets me still is there must be someone else lurking around up above on the ridge. Someone must have tossed my tings down here before my arrival. This I know, as I stumbled upon them all immediately. All scattered about across the valley. In the days leading up to the accident I was experiencing theft of a sort. Every day when I would rise, a new item would be lost. At first I thought myself to be just a blundering idiot. To begin with, my rope, which I thought must have just fallen from the horse without me noticing. I thought I must have absent mindedly left my knife jammed into a log at the last campsite, but now I’m not so sure. And then the flint made me very suspicious at its disappearance. As the phenomenon became more apparent and I grew to be more cognizant of my wares and how I kept them, but it wasn’t until the halter couldn’t be found that I knew something was definitely going on. All that day and into the night I waited to stand guard over my things; but, I only cultured my anger towards the individual who kept absconding with my things, especially since I fell asleep and it happened again.

I guess that it is possible that there would be more than one foe at work here, but the logic escapes me. Why lead me in a direction to have me become a fixture down here? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just end me in my sleep and have off with the goods? Ah but who am I to decipher the minds of criminals and their inner workings.

May 29, 1811

I have long ago splinted my injury and since then found further a series of dried branches lying in wait seemingly just for use as a crutch for me. I hobble around remarkably well considering my lack of experience with the skill. Pain of injury is becoming easier to deal with these days. I don’t care to wonder how well the bones have been setting up. I don’t doubt that when I finally get to the coast where Kerry awaits me, that I will certainly be somewhat of a cripple. Damaged goods for her to whisper those magical words of life ‘I do’. Oh Kerry, if you could only see me now. How I long for the day we will once again embrace each other.

June 16

I still am yet to discover the path to freedom from this accursed place. The walls though covered in beautiful foliage, represent prison walls for me. Well over sixty feet and the better part of straight up only reaches out from the rest of it which leans back in on the valley like a large wave threatening to cascade down upon me. Unbelievably enough, this sweeping frustration encircles the area to the extent of seventy-five percent. The other quarter seems to be where my hope of escape lies. Like the family of frustrating faces that it belongs to, it too is steep and twisted; but this length, which is broken up into two stretches, has the soil and rooted tree growth to spell escape. Enough foot holds and anchors along either one of the runs to keep me going long enough to get topside. I didn’t give it as serious a consideration until now because I was so sure that I would find the path that the previous occupant used to gain his access with. But after weeks of searching I have come up empty handed and shaken to the core of my faith. I have to wonder if I’m even right about this mysterious predecessor. I think that the valley extends out some three hundred and seventy yards in length, and tops out at a modest eighty yards abreast. With the rudimentary maps I have drawn up I am attempting to dissect this valley, searching every corner and puddle for the crack in the fence.

June 27

Today I have been working on my mobility. If it comes to it, I have to be prepared to use this bum leg to scale a wall. I think that soon I will see to removing the splint all together, though I have now become accustomed to it and fear that with my lack of medical training there might not be any hope of this damaged leg being sturdy enough without the aid. I still spend my time looking for the elusive escape route, but all the while thoughts of Kerry have never left my mind. She keeps me going everyday. Without her I think that I shouldn’t bear to face waking up to yet another day in this valley. Oh what she must be going through with my unexplained delay. The poor girl. I will escape this predicament and return to you my dear Kerry.

I have the tingle of being watched all the time now. I can’t quite put words to it, but I am convinced of this for some reason.

July 2 or 3

Today I attempted my escape up the walls that grow the trees. It looked like a good plan to me at first. How could it go wrong? Well apparently those trees are holding on for dear life themselves. No more than saplings, it is clear to me now that anything that could grow big enough on this slope would face the fate of it’s weight pulling itself right out of the loose soil that it uses as anchor. As I began to climb anything that I grabbed would just pull free. Bush, tree, rock, anything. It all plucks out like a garden vegetable and causes me to fall to the ground with it. I tried to dig through the soil to find a bit of rock or solid surface. As I dug the pounds would fall from above to fill the void that once supported it and now had been pulled away by me. Nothing for about ten feet and then that all too familiar rock face that stretched around me on the other sides appeared to stare me down again. A curse on this place. I am now discouraged.
July

I have seen people up the wall from me. They move in and through the bushes. When I looked up I could see them in the shadows moving by and instantly I called out to them for help. Help. Help. Again help. I watched as they held still under the shade of spruce and further mountainous rock bearing up behind them. Nothing. They watched me. Must be Indians. Stupid savages. I guess I’m better off here anyway. They would probably have just killed me and eaten my flesh, like the tribes of Guinea that I remember reading about. They are all the same, savages are. Not an intelligent bone in their body. This makes the feeling of being watched ease a bit though. Now I know that it is true. No more worrying about it. They don’t seem to be too interested in coming down here so I believe myself to be safe for the time being. I guess that now if I plan escape I should also plan a safe passage way from them as well to avoid the dubious fate that would await me up there right now.

August

The heat of summer reaches me even way down here. Not even the shade provided by the overhanging prison walls is relief enough. I found how the trickle of a stream escapes from here by hiding in the shade. It runs down in to here as a waterfall off of a rock face at the high end of the valley (I call it the high end because it obviously is or the water would pool up over there instead), and through the bushes to finally get dumped like irrigation across the deep end (you can guess this one). It struck me strangely one day that even though it pools up a bit, it still seems to be coming in much faster than it would get soaked up by the mossy mountain soil. Today I sat by the new snare that is catching me most of nothing, waiting patiently for something to come along, and I could hear the waterfall echoing around the valley. It isn’t a large waterfall, but I won’t complain of aesthetics here. And I realized that I could hear more than that waterfall, but the trickle of moving water behind me. When I turned to examine it I discovered that at the base of the cliff was a fissure. Large enough to allow my fingers to probe cautiously beneath. And I’ll be damned but that water runs out before it comes back in here again. There must be some kind of cave or cracks all along this face. What I can do about this revelation I am still not sure, but rest assured that I won’t sleep well until I come to a conclusion.

Fall 1811

I’ve really begun to loose a track of time down here now. I am only estimating based on the season, with the reactions of the foliage surrounding me I’d be confident that it is fall. Possibly October. It could be All Hallows Eve for all I know. I wonder if I should now get superstitious about the curses and dangers surrounding the damned thing. I think not. I found this journal again and reread it. I was pretty full of ambition a few months ago. It is conical to look back now, but it appears that this is not as short a term as I once made it out to be. The natives above on the ridge try to conceal themselves from me. I can see them now as I am remembering where to look, but I must say they are quite good at hiding. I still quite resent the lack of simple human compassion shown by them though. I doubt that they would sit back and just let one of their own rot away down here. In fact logic states that if they live so close as to have the time to come out and observe my solitary progress, then there must have been a few of them also unlucky enough to have fallen down here before I. Bastards. It makes me boil just to go over it in my head again. Just when I think that I have accepted them as the equivalent of wild beasts that couldn’t string together the thought process to help me out anyway, I allow myself to dwell on it again like this and I find myself wishing terrible things on my would be captors. When you live alone, deprived of simple freedom, even in a prison as beautiful as this, you don’t have a lot of emotional release. It takes its toll on me now as I feel the hope of liberation slipping away.

Fall

It has been only one week since my last entry. I apologize for the lack of accuracy in this detail. Today as the leaves have been falling, I made a disheartening discovery. I uncovered something near the southern reach of the valley. A bush that was normally quite occupied with foliage had become no more than an assembly of twigs and branches, revealing directly underneath it and slightly in the rear, an old weather worn cross. Marking the location of two graves. At best my observations thus far have revealed the existence of no more than one previous occupant. Yet there lie two. Two who never escaped. Two who must have lived together, at least keeping their sanity in check. Two who now lie buried in my valley, unknown and never to be named, mysteriously lost to all who loved them and all they loved. While this makes me feel lost forever, it also makes me question something. Who lay them to rest? Of course if one had gone first it would logically have been the second to do the labor of digging and respectfully burying him. But when the second fell, who deposited his bones to the ground? I suppose that if I were to die where I stand there would be no one to cover me up, and subsequently I would be at the mercy of the elements and the natural dissection provided me of nature. Possibly there might be a third set of bones here, waiting for me to find them. It is hard to think that I have not yet seen it all down here, but there in front of me lies the evidence of my failure to scour every inch of this place.

It grows colder every night and I assume that up within the confines of my mountain hideaway, I will be subject to the frigid temperatures of a winter served at high altitude. I must prepare for the winter now. With my handicap I struggle to even walk the length of the valley, but life has indicated to me that if there is no supply to feed my fire, then there will be no fire to keep me alive. Do I really want to survive this? I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I will return a verdict in that. How bad could it be really to expire as the snow falls down to your face? Pain free I suspect. I would just quietly go to sleep, never to wake. Could I bring myself to do this? Can I stop it even if I wanted to?

Winter

Well I still am able to write my tale. This tells me that I have not perished yet. I can’t bring myself to face the reality of this life even now. I still live with a spark of hope in the eventual escape from here. I noticed today that the wind down here picks up the snow to redeposit it along the same areas that grew the trees and bushes I removed during my escape attempt up the hill. This is possibly the reason for the deposit of loose soil on the otherwise uniform wall. It would likely have consisted of much of the fallen leaves and any loose soil already existing down here. Compost essentially. And from the looks of this drifting, it must get a good supply of moisture in the early spring from the tonnage of melting snow.

Still winter

I have rekindled my escape hopes. The drifting grows higher each day, almost to the extent of my ability to walk out of this valley. I have attempted already to scale this monster drifting, but as it is simply tiny bits of crystallized water, it won’t support my weight on the relatively sharp points of my feet. But I have devised a plan to outsmart this. Once the drift becomes high enough, I will take the leather sheet that I salvaged from the carcass of my horse cut it in half, and tie them up to branches to create a couple of small sleds. The first one I will step on in the middle. The tension of the frame will spread my weight out across the sled and hopefully prevent it from sinking. Then the nest one will be placed further up and I will step on that one. The first one will be brought forward and so on until I reach the crest of the drift, high enough to finally escape this hole. I got this idea from a fur trader that I encountered early in my journey, just west of the city. He carried the strangest footwear I have seen. He called them snowshoes and proceeded to explain to me the theory behind the idiotic looking things. At the time I laughed and thought him a fool. He mentioned that it was an Indian invention, and though I don’t think highly of them currently, I pray now that they aren’t the imbeciles that I have made them out to be. Another day or two of snow and wind should afford me the opportunity to test the theory. If it works, then this should be my last entry. Good riddance to this place and all of the memories it holds.

Still here, still winter

The damned weather cleared up. I am only waiting now. Could you ever imagine someone wishing for unfortunate weather upon a mountain in the winter? I must be mad.

I made the top of the drift. I was home free. All I had to do was not fall back in. I screamed out in joy and my laughter was felt throughout the mountains. And then I saw, him. Through the falling snow he came to me. He looked like a man, but not the same as any man I had ever seen before. I estimate him to have been over seven and a half feet tall, covered in hair head to toe. His large feet sunk deep into the snow but never did that slow him down. Straight at me he charged, arms reaching out to me, as if to contain me. I froze. What was I going to do anyway? His speed through this snowdrift made my sled shoes useless. It was obvious to me that he was still approaching on solid ground though. There was no way this drift could have supported him alone. So I waited for him to get closer to me. With any luck the creature would fall through the snow as he crossed over into the valley and I would be able to crawl away knowing that he couldn’t possibly recover from that. But the strangest thing happened. He stopped his charge about five to ten feet short of the edge. Just like that he stopped, almost as if he knew exactly where it was. I couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from him now and with him holding still, I got a really good look at him. Like the biggest bear I’ve ever seen, he stood on two legs, covered in shaggy brown fur. His face was not that of a man, or a bear. More like an ape, but lean and with yet more grizzly hair hanging from it. Even from this distance I trembled with fear. If this strange animal man wanted to, I felt sure that he could almost reach me from his position with those long arms he sported, but he only stood to gaze at me. I am certain that this was to gage my next move, but I was to frightened to make one. My only hope was to wait him out and maybe with some luck he would fall into the trap. Then he raised his arm and pointed to the cabin down below. It was as if he wanted me to go back. But that was ludicrous. An animal giving me orders. So I waved my own arms and howled at him hoping to scare him off. But instead he looked at me puzzled and then raised his arm again, only this time it was to first point it at me and then down to the cabin. There was no mistaking this and out of fear more than anything else I turned to go back down.
The next day I tried again, thinking that he wouldn’t have stuck around to prevent me from escaping.

Unfinished as of yet - Chris

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