August 26, 2007
DEM BONES
The heroine in one of my upcoming romances (MANHUNTER — Silhouette Romantic Suspense) is a tracker who lives in the northern Yukon, and for research I’m devouring books on tracking and signs.
Now, when out on my daily runs or Nordic walks, you will find me looking downward, at the ground, watching for cougar, or bear prints. Trying to identify squirrel or chipmunk tracks in the soft mud. Finding evidence of feeding sites, dens, holes. The whole forest is coming alive to me in new ways, telling me stories as I grapple with the crude A, B, Cs of a new language. My heroine’s language.
And because I was head-down, scrutinizing foliage and soil, I came across a big old sun-bleached bone. I slowly turned it over in my hand, wondering what animal it came from, what death the creature had met. Why it was there. The novelist in me even flirted with the idea it might – conceivably — be human. I got to thinking of the names of all the people who had gone missing in these woods over the last few years. Just vanished. Searched for, and never found. Like Amy Tam, 33, last seen by her mother July 13, 1996. Never to be seen again. Yet another unsolved mystery of these mountains.
I placed the bone on a stump so that I might find it again. Just in case.
I went back two days ago to see if the bone was still there, and found another not far from the first, this one most decidedly ‘un-human’. I’m thinking maybe they are parts of a buck, and there is probably a whole skeleton scattered in bits around the area. Anyone have any idea what these bones might belong to? (pardon the slug that crawled into the photo)
And in the synchronicity that seems to be a part of my life at the moment, just as I was thinking of missing Amy Tam (I was among the media who covered her disappearance back then), the BC Coroners Service announced it has identified the partial human remains found by a hiker on Alpine Way as belonging to Amy Tam. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Her bones show up in a Whistler residential area 11 years after she went missing, not far from where her car was found abandoned with keys on the seat and the door open, and we still have no further clue as to what really happened to Amy, nor any idea why 40 search and rescue members, RCMP, police dogs and air patrols scoured the area for the missing School District Psychologist for two weeks and came up empty handed … if she was right there.
It bothers me that no one knows her story. That her remains cannot tell it. That she was all alone that day. That she has family out there who still need answers.
And … so novels are born.
Meretta Says:
I don’t remember Amy’s disappearance, which I find odd because though Canada is huge in area, it is relatively small in population, so when someone goes missing the entire nation usually hears about it.
I can feel the connection (and sense of obligation) you have to her, Loreth. I hope her family is able to find out more than they have.
As for your bones, the long one is an antler, but judging from the rounded end it looks like this came off while your guy was still in velvet. He needn’t have died for this to have happened though. Ungulates shed their antlers each year (not while in velvet though), but a good blow could have taken it off.
The other looks like a shoulder or hip joint to me, animal of origin - unknown. I’ll ask DH. Maybe he knows.
Loreth Says:
That’s what I was thinking, M. So maybe the bones are not from the same beast if the animal that lost the antler didn’t die.
PS: Do you remember Brain Faughan then? He disappeared in 2002 …
Others like Anne Marie Potton (hiking) and Claytom Demers (skiing) vanished while I was here, but were discovered some years later. Others disappeared before I arrived. I’d like to put together a file of these stories …
Meretta Says:
I didn’t remember Brian’s name, but I do recognize the picture on the far right of the link page. I followed to his brother’s blog and read some of the entries there. There are no words to adequately explain that kind of loss.
Incidentally RISING SIN is roughly based on the disappearances of foreign hostesses in Tokyo. One of them Canadian.