The Yeti I Met: A Tale of Liberation by Francesca Quarto
I'd been a Field Research Anthropologist for eight grueling years. In my Post-Doc days in England, I snatched at any assignment the University threw my way, like a hungry dog under the dining table. Too often, these were well-below my capabilities as a researcher and clearly smacked of male chauvinism as clearly as an auto-repair shop's wall calendars!
But, I slogged on through the crappy assignments, waiting for the one that would establish my name in a male-dominated field.
Two months ago, I was certain the gods had finally smiled upon me!
I was sent to the rugged mountains defining the borderlands of Tibet, to investigate rumors of Yeti sightings. These stories were very persistent around a cluster of villages in one of the more remote areas. Before embarking in an ancient Land Rover, I manged to hire a local who spoke moderately good English, paying him a month's wages in advance as an enticement. It seemed my destination had the odor of death around it, and no one was willing to travel into the territory.
I was greeted with suspicion the minute we entered the main village, though I had brought along a generous load of staples for the villagers. The food stuffs quickly disappeared into the head- man's hut to be divided up later among the families.
After my transport departed, I was left standing like a lost suitcase at the rail station. I was only able to attract the attention of these extraordinarily shy people, by shouting my introduction.
"Hullo, to all of you! I am Pamela Martindale-Hunt. I've been sent by the University of London's School of Anthropology, to look into the reported sightings of the Yeti."
They were unimpressed with the entire introduction, but when I pronounced the word "Yeti," there was a great in-drawing of breath of the people surrounding me. Suddenly, curiosity turned into a palpable fear among the adults, making the children cling to their parent's trousered legs, in response to the tension.
The head-man stepped closer, saying something totally unintelligible to me. I turned to my well-paid translator. He was squinting at the wizened face of the village leader like he'd suddenly become near sighted!
"Don't you know what he said?" I asked brusquely, annoyed that he was straight away falling down on his job.
He didn't reply at first, but turned a rather ashen colored face to me saying in halting English, "The head-man say, "Yeti already take many from villages around them. Three, four,maybe more women and girls." He not want to make picture for monster to see and come to his village too."
I interpreted all of that into, "They didn't want to draw attention to their village and somehow, my searching for the "monster" as they called it, might bring undo notice of the small village, to the creature. I gave the translator quick instructions.
"Tell the elder, that I will not need to involve any of his people in my search. Tell him I will only need a map of locations where the Yeti was reported seen."
Obviously, this was translation over-load and my translator ended up making a map himself, in the hard dirt with a sharp stick, reflecting the boundaries of the village. Then, he turned to the head man, and spitting out more gibberish, handed over the stick for him to mark locations the Yeti had been seen.
It was getting colder the longer we stood outdoors; the head man gesticulating and stabbing at the ground, while I was copying into my notebook, the crude, and only map, I would ever get out of that lot!
I was settled into a guest hut after the chickens, various mongrels and one goat were removed. The translator was housed with one of the families.
The night was long and dreadful. Noises, sounding like bands of howling banshees, road the night winds almost constantly. I had been in some primitive settings during my time in the field, but this village, clinging to the side of a blue, cloud shrouded mountain, was the most challenging to my peace of mind.
The next morning, after a fitful sleep, I rose, bleary-eyed, but ready to make my first foray into the surrounding mountain villages. The sightings seemed to have occurred randomly, until I realized they followed the lose circle the villages sat in, one after the other, like a string of prayer beads.
The earlier reports, had the Yeti coming in the darkest, pre-dawn hours, kidnapping the women and girls, and carrying them off as quietly as a cloud moves across the moon.
I took the translator with me to the first village struck by the creature. Here, we ascertained the head-man of this community, had lost his wife in what was the first raid by the Yeti in his spree.
The translator told me how the wife had been beaten severely many times, for disobedience.The head- man said she deserved her fate, to live with a monster.
We walked over rugged trails leading from village to village and heard much the same story. Women who were often punished for some infraction and girls who were just about to enter into marriages arranged by fathers for profit, or status, suddenly taken from their sleeping mats by the Yeti.
The consistent belief by the villagers I met, was that these women were being punished for their insubordinate attitudes and defiance of their husbands, or fathers.
I went back to the guest hut that evening, exhausted by my excursions, my mind filled with the most extraordinary stories.
The Yeti was described at every village as seven feet tall, robustly built and covered in a downy pelt of reddish hair. The stories never varied, but when I probed more closely through my translator, I found no one had actually clapped eyes on the beast.
"How did they come to this description," I asked him while we trekked back that evening.
"The other women of the villages have seen the Yeti, miss. They go up into the mountains often to gather berries and firewood and have seen the great beast cavorting like a monkey with all the women and girls in a circle. They are laughing and singing and seem very happy with the hairy man."
I had to see this outlandish scene for myself. Finding the Yeti would provide another link in our own evolution, I told myself as a scientist. I wanted to see why these women were all so gleefully happy, I told myself as a woman.
After midnight, I left my hut as quietly as I could, though the snoring and grunting coming from the closely surrounding huts would cover any slight sound.
I was half way up the rough trail leading away from the sleeping village, when a figure stepped out onto the path directly in front of me. It cast a long, dark shadow that covered me where I stood, frozen in fear. I watched, fascinated as it glided like a graceful dancer toward his partner. There was a strong, musky odor coming off its body, but rather than being offensive, I found it strangely alluring.
I shook my head once to try to clear it and allow the "fight or flight" instinct to kick in. The beast was standing close enough to me now, that I could see its muscular form was well proportioned, the covering of rusty colored hair or fur, was glistening like smooth seal skin under the scant moonlight. I looked up, up until I found its eyes watching me like an artist would a portrait he just finished.
Suddenly, the heavy silence was broken by a beautiful, lilting voice that caressed my ears like a lullaby.
"Welcome to my mountain, English Lady. I was coming for you this very hour. Do not fear me. I am blessed by the gods with abilities of discernment. I am aware you have not suffered from a brutal husband or overbearing father, but your own life has been limited at every turn by heavy-handed males. Among the women, you will be a servant no longer to male egos. Among our family, you will find acceptance and honor. I know all these things about you and offer you this gift of freedom from a narrowly defined life. What say you?"
I knew instantly, I could never allow knowledge of this meeting be released into the world. The Yeti was female. She was both intelligent and sensitive, destroying all the long-established theories.
Introducing such a phenomenal creature to the human conundrum, would only worsen the myth of females as inferior, minor players on the world stage. She was, after all, a beast.
I turned around and fled back down the trail.
She never pursued me into the village. I was packed and ready to leave the same day. The interpretor looked perplexed when I told him my mission was complete, but seemed content to be relieved of his duty.
Now, I sit in front of my fireplace, watching the wood crackle and smoke and wonder how life would have been for me up there, in the pure mountain air, answering to no man, needing no male in my life. No romance, no lovers, no husband, no yin and yang...no way.