Camp Monsters - Thunderbird

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

The Great Plains are known for their flat lands and big skies. There’s no place for a mysterious creature to hide in that great wide open … or so you thought. There’s something hiding in the flashing lightning and rumbling thunder at the very heart of the storm—the eyes and voice of the Thunderbird.

This is an REI Co-op Production. No matter where you are out there, you feel like you're on a hill. The land around you sloping gently off to a distant horizon, just laying down and admitting the sky's supremacy. You'll never know how the sky can hold you until you've walked along a field out there in an afternoon, an early summer with nothing else around but the sun and that infinite blue. You'll never know how cold you can be until you felt a January wind unroll without a ripple across a thousand miles of uninterrupted sky. And there's nothing in this world quite like watching a towering wall of textured darkness

shot through with lightning flow slowly across that enormous sky toward you. From indoors, a big plains thunderstorm like that is just impressive. But if you've ever been caught outside as one rolls in, caught out with nothing but a jacket or a tent for shelter, then you know what the story is about. You know that primal feeling of fear and helplessness that comes as the first dark clouds catch up with you. You understand why the old stories gave life and consciousness to the chaos that breaks so suddenly around you.

Called it the Thunderbird, it gave it a mind of its own. Nothing without a mind could ever be so crazy. But you can't hide from the sky on the great northern plains and when you have nowhere to hide from the things you can't control you may break or you may learn to call upon the things more powerful than fear you may begin to understand why the old stories gave so many different signs to the thunderbird so much power to hurt and help. The lightning that strikes me down may bring the thunder that wakes you up.

Welcome to the Camp Monsters Podcast. Every part of the country has its own legends to explain that sound you thought you heard in the middle of the storm or that figure that you swear you saw for an instant in a flash of lightning. So every week we'll be traveling the country, sitting around the campfire and trying to scare each other with stories about the things that live just beyond the firelight. While you listen, remember these are just stories. Sure, some of them are based on the testimony of people who claim to have seen these creatures, but it's up to you how much you believe and how to explain away what you don't. So come closer.

Let's hear this week's legend. Some kind of country out here on the Great Plains. Stretch out on your back away from the fire. The stars just envelop you. No trees, no hills, no mountains. Nothing to see but stars. No reason why there should be anything but more stars behind you. If I'd quit talking, maybe you could imagine you're just another star yourself.

No, never mind. Too lonely. It's lonely enough out here as it is. Funny for a land so wide open to be so empty. In the forest or the mountains, you're closed in. You can't see very far. You can feel alone even when you know there's another campsite just through the trees. But out here, when you're alone, you really are alone. You can see for miles, so if you don't see anyone, there isn't anyone around. Unless... Have you ever had that dream where you're doing something by yourself, and suddenly, in the dream, you know.

You know without seeing that there's someone or something else there with you. You're in a small room alone and all at once you know that there's something just on the other side of the only door. Something that's about to come in. Or you're outside of a building in the rain and suddenly you know there's something running toward you just around that corner of the building, running much faster than you'll be able to. Maybe you've had some shadow of that same feeling when you're awake. Watching a show by yourself on the couch, you keep looking down the dark hallway beside you, even though you know no one's down there. Or driving late at night, you catch yourself glancing in the rearview mirror, though you know the one's down there. Or driving late at night, you catch yourself glancing in the rearview mirror,

though you know the back seat is empty. There's nothing there. Nothing that we call real, anyway. But that nothing makes you leave the couch and go somewhere else. That nothing makes you pull the car over at the next all-night cafe. Because we can't observe it, we say it's nothing, it isn't real, but it influenced your actions all the same. Most ancient ways of thinking blurred that sharp distinction that we make between real and unreal. They gave the weight of existence to things we only feel or see in the shadows of our eyes or in dreams.

Speaking of shadows, do you see that? Way out over there, no? Watch. Watch for a while, closely. You'll see a star or two disappear. Watch longer, you'll see more of them wink out. And then you'll think you see them flicker, but it's not the stars, it's lightning. I'd say there's a thunderstorm brewing over there.

It may miss us, but... Well, say what you will about car camping, but it's nice to have a little extra shelter close in hand Those big storms can come up quick out here Let's sit and watch it come If it does get close, you'll see a real show Lightning flashes, one on top of another Thunder rolling continuously The eyes and voice of the Thunderbird

The Thunderbird is one of those things with the power to be real and unreal all at once. They say Thunderbird helped create the world. People have been telling stories of it ever since. From the Pacific to the Atlantic coast, right across the continent, Native Americans and First Nations people know about the Thunderbird. I say they know because it's a matter of knowledge, not belief. You don't believe in this campfire, even though it's something you can't touch or hold in your hands. You feel it. You see it. You know that it's real. And people saw Thunderbird regularly in the old days,

in dreams and daydreams, visions, in that place where strange thoughts and pictures suddenly jump into your waking mind. What we call the subconscious, but it's really much deeper than that. They saw Thunderbird in those unexpected, inexplicable encounters that you sometimes have when you're by yourself in a lonely spot. And of course, they saw Thunderbird in the sky during storms. Thunderbird appeared in many different forms to many different people. On the Pacific coast, tribes knew the Thunderbird to catch whales and carry them back to land and eat them. And where the whales struggled, clearings appeared in the dense forest for the people to come and gather camas roots. Here on the Great Plains, the Thunderbird came each spring to protect the people

by battling the great serpents that lived under the water, creating thunder in the process. And in the east, they knew that the Thunderbird was a messenger, able to fly behind the sun and back, to and from the land of the Creator. To some, the Thunderbird appeared as a creature to be seen. To others, it was a force to be felt and heard and known, but to appear only in visions or times of great need. If those big clouds on the horizon catch up with us and you keep your eyes open, you might see something.

But be careful. The Thunderbird is great power embodied with its own notions of justice and reward and sacrifice. It's an element of nature, sudden, unforgiving, like lightning or... well, like love. Love was mixed up some way in that story about John you might have heard a few years back. You might have heard the end of it anyway. That big to-do with the state fire investigators. Well, things started for John a long time back, and they started with love.

Oh, there's the first one. Way off in the distance. That first little roll of thunder. I'm starting to think we won't have to worry much about putting this fire out. That storm keeps coming on the way it is. It may miss us yet, but don't fall asleep or you might wake up wrapped in sheets of rain. We were telling that story about John, weren't we? That was a strange tale, the way the news people told it. The real story was even stranger and it started a lot further back. Didn't start out strange at all though. Started the most natural way in the world. John fell in love. This was years ago, long before all

the things that happened later when John and Mara were both just through being kids. Mara, That was her name. She was small and dark and quiet. She was smart. Serious. John didn't know what he was yet, but he knew he was crazy about her. I hope everyone has been young and felt that kind of love. Love so much bigger than you are. Love like a wild force inside yourself.

Like a storm. I hope we've all felt it, but I know... I know that only the lucky ones feel it returned. John and Mara were lucky ones. Once they found each other, they were inseparable. And they shared all the big moments that happened to you as you grow up. But it wasn't the big things that made the magic between them. It was smiling at the wind in their faces

when they rode their bikes along the dirt road down to the creek. It was the old smell of the car that they both spent all summer working for until they had enough to buy it together. It was being able to reach out, take each other's hand, and feeling sure they'd always know each other just by touch. Yeah, John and Mara were lucky. Maybe too lucky. When you find something like that so young,

you can't help but think it happens all the time. It's a big world from horizon to horizon out here on these plains, and knowing that there's a much bigger world beyond the horizon can turn a young person's head. It was on a night a lot like this. Pleasant, but with lightning on the edges. They were driving around, nowhere in particular, not saying much, just trying to be happy. And that was strange, because usually they didn't have to try. John kept watching the sky, worried that the storm was going to break.

Mara kept watching John, and when she laughed at something he said, it came out sharp, like a cry. The storm broke, all right. So heavy you couldn't see anything for the rain. John pulled off into an overgrown driveway. A little abandoned farmhouse jumped into the headlights in front of them and John stopped the car, switched off the lights. The rain went on and on, the lightning and thunder vying to blow the world apart, shake it back together. They sat in their car and tried to ride it out, talking long and loud around the roar of the storm.

Mara was bright. You see, she had promise. She had prospects. She wanted to test herself in the wider world out there. Of course, she wanted him to come with her, and of course he didn't want to go. He knew that this is where he should be, that this is where he belonged. He'd never find another place, another sky that suited him so well. He thought they belonged here, they both.

She promised to come back if that were true. The storm was at its worst when John got out and walked away into the mud and wind and electricity. Mara tried to stop him, but he disappeared behind the wall of rain, extinguished in the darkness. She waited there in the car, listening as the storm slowly lessened and the thunder rolled away. When she knew for sure that he was gone, walking home across the muddy field somewhere, she leaned her head against the steering wheel for a long, quiet time. As she sat up, started the car,

turned on the headlights, screamed and pushed herself back into the seat, staring ahead through the rain-distorted windshield. There was something. There was something. Something by the old house. Its shadow... There was a shadow that...

A shadow. No, it was just a shadow. A shadow. Cast by the headlights on the wall, plants and grass waving in the wind, flapping darkness against the black eyes of the empty old house. Terrible, though, and terrifying, like a huge dark bird of prey. No. No, she thought as she looked at it more closely. Not terrifying, just wild and otherworldly.

Amazing, too, the way the shadow gave her the wind to look at. Like a living thing, intricate and ever-changing. A gust through the tall grass in front of the headlights made the shadow bird flap its wings again. It was beautiful, really, beautiful. And she was almost beginning to be comforted by it when she saw another movement, off to the right on the edges of the dark, coming toward the car. She heard the heavy footfalls in the gravel an instant before something was scrabbling against the door, searching for the latch.

She screamed again and shoved the car in gear just as the passenger door swung open onto a void of wet blackness. Her foot slipped off the gas pedal and then jabbed desperately for it again as something large and dripping flew into the car. Then, in the dim, reflected light, she saw. And she slammed on the brake, and it was John there on the seat beside her, dripping wet and looking at her strangely. Are you all right? he asked, and he closed the door. Yes, she said. Where were you?

He didn't answer. He was soaking wet, water streaming off his hair and clothes, but she thought she caught a brightness in his eye, and for a moment she had the absurd thought it was because he'd seen that beautiful shadow and she wanted to talk to him about it. But in a breath she knew that was silly, and when she looked to where the dark shape had been, she realized the card lurched when she was frightened and all the shadows were changed. She turned back to John, touched his arm, and was surprised at how warm it was, in spite of the water. She took his hand, but it felt different now. Her hand didn't recognize it.

And the next day she drove away, in the car that he'd insisted she should keep. She did her best to keep in touch for a while, and she came back to visit a couple times, but she and John never had the same things to say to each other. She missed it out here, she said. She missed the quiet, and the the people and this big night sky. She seemed happy to come back and sorry to leave, but there were things in the city that kept pulling her away.

She always had to go back. The visits got rarer and rarer, and after a while folks lost touch with her she was gone john was gone too in his way i mean he was always around but never here and he worked he hired out to the farms and ranches he ran and fixed equipment drove truck did a little bit of everything and did it well and did it tirelessly. He showed up early, stayed late, then helped out at the church or the community center afterward. But he was never really there to talk to. Not unfriendly, just distracted. Like he was dreaming about something you couldn't see. The first thing John did when he saved up enough money was buy that old abandoned

farm where he and Mara had talked that night. A broken down house and a sturdy old barn. He lived out there, I guess, but he never seemed to be around. He was out working. He kept working and not spending until he had enough to buy some of the land around the old house and set up on his own. Then he really disappeared and spent all his time working his own place. He got to be a bit of a local legend, and the kids made up stories about him. If you saw the shadow of John stealing through his fields in the evening, there was sure to be a thunderstorm that night. It seems he did have visitors, though.

On the rare occasions when someone would call on John out at his place, they'd always find him in the barn. It seems he did have visitors, though. On the rare occasions when someone would call on John out at his place, they'd always find him in the barn, working on this or that piece of equipment. And as they walked up, they'd generally hear John talking. Well, it's natural enough for a man alone, as much as John was, to talk to himself, but one or two folks swear that as they came closer they heard someone else reply. Someone with a low, very deep voice. Like distant thunder, they said. All right, so John had a visitor. But whoever it was must have been as quick as they were shy, because upon stepping into the barn, it was always just John, waiting patiently for whatever it was they'd come to say.

Most people, as they get older, their love spreads out. The group of people around them grows, old friends bringing in new ones, people getting married, children being born. For better and worse, most people forget what it was like to love the way they did when they first learned how. To love with an irresistible focus and intensity. To be pulled through life by just one big love. It's a great thing to experience, and a great thing to grow out of. I don't think John was ever able to grow out of it. Try as he might, I think Mara was always his north star, outshining all the other things that happened to him.

That showed a few years later when word of Mara started to trickle back into the community. It was just a rumor, you know, she didn't write a letter or anything, but somebody ran into someone who'd heard from somebody else that Mara was having hard times in hard places. It's a big old world beyond the wide horizon, and some of it isn't as nice as sitting around this campfire. Most people who heard about Mara shook their heads and sighed and clucked, oh what a shame, I hope things get better for her. John did more. He went off looking for her. Fargo, Grand Forks, Minot,

on a lead or a hunch he crossed the line and tried Winnipeg, Regina, Brandon. He found places she'd been and people who'd met her and more rumors. Never Mara. And back here, people started talking. They understood his wanting to find her, but they were worried about him, too. He'd leave town without telling anyone, be gone for a week or more, and the first hint anyone would have that he'd come back was someone would find him walking on the side of the road or across a field in the middle of a thunderstorm. What kind of people was he getting involved with? He'd been seen around with a stranger that somehow no one ever got a good look at.

You'd see the two of them crossing a field, talking or arguing with one another, it seemed like, and then you'd look away for a minute and look again, and here would come John all by himself. Or you'd be driving behind John and another guy in his truck and see John parked by the hardware store and get out. You'd pull in a few spots away and when you walked past, notice that his truck was empty and John by himself in the store. The whole town couldn't be seeing things. What kind of person would hide out that way? Luanne was John's nearest neighbor. Nearest is a relative term, since it was a mile or more from her place to his.

Luanne is the only one who ever saw that stranger up close. It was too dark for her to see much. It was the night of the big storm, once in a century. The town really caught it. The nice thing about the plains is that bad storms generally blow through quickly. If you don't like the weather, just wait half an hour. But this storm kind of stalled and crawled its way along the sky, dumping rain, getting stronger all the time. When it hit, people took shelter as best they could. There was a tornado warning on. But Luanne came out into her living room when she heard someone or something pounding against her front door.

It was dark. Power was out. Luanne only had a little electric lantern to guide her way. The shadows jumped all across her walls as she walked slowly toward the door. She stopped in the middle of the room listening to the wind and the thunder wondering whether the sound she'd heard had really been a knock at the door or just something that had been blown against the house then it came again

bang bang bang bang against the front door she stepped softly over to it reached her hand out to turn the bolt felt her heart beating fast in her chest, and opened the door. The wind flapped darkly in her face, and the sound of the storm shrieked louder. There was someone there. Someone stepped in out of the storm toward her. She backed up and raised the lantern. It was John, in rain gear dripping wet looking wild i found her he said

half a shout and half a harsh whisper the weak electric light showed the smile on his face i found her he said again everyone knew about his search for mara luan didn't bother asking what he was talking about she just asked tonight said yes. He'd spoken to her on the phone just for a minute before they lost the connection. She was in a bad way. She needed help. She wanted help. I'm going to pick her up now, he said. Luann laughed in his face at that. No, he wasn't. Not in this. I'd have to wait a day or two. At least all the roads would be flooded that long. John stepped back like she'd slapped him, looked around as if noticing the storm for the first time.

Then Luanne saw that there was that other man with John, dimly outlined on the covered porch, tall and dark, with his hat jammed down low on his brow, wearing an old-fashioned black rain slicker with lots of overlapping flaps and folds. John locked eyes with the man and paused. Something unspoken seemed to pass between them. Then, without looking around, John said,

I'm going to help her, Luanne. I found her now, and I won't lose her again. I'm going to help her if Luanne. I found her now, and I won't lose her again. I'm going to help her if I have to learn to fly. Luanne said if he was going to take flying lessons, he ought to save for some coffee first. Her stove ran on propane, she could have coffee ready in a jiff. But John didn't seem to hear her. He stepped toward the dark stranger outside, and the door closed behind him. Luanne left it closed, sat down at the window, and watched the two get into John's truck and drive off.

She sat there letting the lightning trace patterns in her eyes, thinking about everything and nothing. She must have drifted off because she remembers having a dream about being young and in love, but her love was a dark bird that you could never get to stay. It would fly so high she couldn't see him anymore. A big clap of thunder woke her up. And that's when she saw the light in the sky out by John's place and knew right away what it meant. The phones were working again and she got through to the fire department. When the first fire trucks arrived, John's barn was already fully engulfed,

shooting flames from its windows in spite of the rain. There was no question of saving it, so they set up to try to keep the fire from spreading to the house. But that's when the screaming began. There's something about the scream of a horse and panic pain that'll set your teeth and make your blood freeze. Some of the firefighters swear to you that that's what they heard that night, louder and more desperate than they'd ever heard it before, like a scream from inside their own heads. Others aren't so sure. Whatever it was, it went on and on and on, barely pausing for breath,

getting more and more intense with every cry. And it drove everyone into frantic action. It was impossible to stand still in the midst of that awful, painful, pleading sound. They started to fight the barn fire, even though they knew it was hopeless. They pumped water up from the swollen creek, then lay in the mud and sprayed it at the flames that billowed from the windows of the barn. They pulled the ladder truck up and shot water down at the roof line.

And someone got the idea of forcing the doors open. The barn was closed up. It seemed impossible that anything was still living in there, but the screaming went on and on. It was getting worse all the time. If they could could open the doors maybe whatever it was could get out one of the firefighters risked their life running up through the heat to the big barn door and passing a cable through an eye bolt that stuck out there once they had the cable secured they started the winch at first nothing happened the flames and the screams kept pouring out of the stricken building. Everyone near the winch took cover. Any moment the eye bolt would pull out of the door and fly across the barnyard, whipping the cable along behind it. But the bolt held, and the huge door began to move, pulling slowly outward from the bottom while the top stuck stubbornly in its old iron track.

Then something happened. They call it a blow-up when a mass of fresh oxygen hits a fire that's been starved of it. Well, in the instant when that big door came crashing down, the old barn blew up. Flames shot 30 feet from the windows and the roof immediately buckled and began to cave in. And from the doorway itself, well, that depends who you talk to. Some of the firefighters will swear that a horse came running out, a big dark horse, and ran off crazy into the storm. Some will tell you that there was someone or something on that horse.

A tall, dark man with blazing bright eyes. Or there were two riders, a young couple clinging to each other. Some of the firefighters don't remember anything about a horse, but they'll look you right in the eye and tell you that a huge bird, a bird of pure fire, flew out of the top of the doorway with one last horrible scream, transformed into black smoke and disappeared. Luanne, the next door neighbor, was still at her window watching the firelight flicker in the sky. Just after that blow-up lit the clouds like an early sunrise,

a car came flying down the road at top speed. Luanne recognized it. It was that old car that John and Mara used to run around in all those years ago. And by some trick of the fire's reflected light, she could see the two people in it. And Luanne will tell you that it was John and Mara in there, with the years smoothed away from them like the storm had washed them clean. No one has seen John since. The firefighters broke into the old farmhouse as soon as they got there, and when they looked it over more closely in the morning, they found no sign that anyone

had lived in it since long before John had bought it. When the barn fire finally burned out and cooled down, they picked through the ashes looking for signs of John or whatever had been screaming in there. They couldn't find anything. They brought in the state fire investigators with dogs. They could smell bone even once it's turned completely to ash. Nothing. The final report said that the fire had been started by a lightning strike, and that no person or animal had been injured.

John's disappearance was set down to causes unknown. Unknown to the state investigators, maybe. Everyone who was at the fire that night has their own ideas. At daybreak, while the barn was still smoldering and the roads in all directions were flooded, Mara showed up at her aunt and uncle's door. She was sick, very sick and confused. She couldn't remember anything about how she got there, but there she was. They took her in and managed to get her the help she needed.

If you mention John, her face lights up in a big smile. She says she knows that he's all right. She won't say how, but she knows that he's alright. She won't say how, but she knows. If we want to stay alright, we better get back in the car. Looks like that storm's coming in right on top of us. And the rain is starting. I don't think we want to stay outside for this one.

And if... if in a flash of lightning you think you see something that can't possibly be there, just stay where you are. If the Thunderbird wants you, you'll know soon enough. Camp Monsters Podcast Thank you. Studios in Seattle, Washington. Be sure to listen to the next episode of Camp Monsters when we'll take a very pleasant bike ride along the roads of Southern Ohio and point out a few places where

it might be better not to stop. And if you enjoy these stories, please subscribe, rate, listen, spread the word. It's your support that keeps us recording. Thank you for listening. Have you ever felt stuck on an idea you've wanted to do, but were a little scared to act on it?

I'm Shelby Stanger, and I felt scared countless times. But listening to stories of others going for it has always given me the courage to follow my passions. That's why I started Wild Ideas Worth Living, a podcast presented by REI Co-op, where we interview some of the top adventurers, scientists, health experts, and authors, everyone from Alex Honnold and Jimmy Chin to author Cheryl Strayed about how they've taken their wildest ideas and made them a reality. This year, we're focusing on themes like getting over fear, how to unplug, and mindfulness so that you listening, you can make your wild idea a reality too. Tune in to Wild Ideas Worth Living wherever you listen to podcasts.