Early one morning last December, I met my friend Tommy for a day of steelhead fishing a couple of miles upstream from the ocean. It was barely dawn, the air cold and misty, giving way to gray skies as the day progressed. The river was running high, the water stained by an early winter storm that had ended hours before we arrived. The flows were strong enough that wading was difficult—even hazardous in places. But there were a few spots where the river could be forded despite the risk.
We worked our way upstream, fishing the seams, soft water, runs, and pools calm enough to hold fish. As we traveled farther, the forested hollow the river ran through steepened on either side. Before long, we approached the mouth of a gorge where the trail disappeared and redwood trees loomed high overhead. We continued, wading, bushwhacking, and rock hopping to negotiate the rugged terrain that led to better holes upriver. As we emerged from a thicket, we came upon two guys fishing the tailout of a pool and quickly realized they were our friend Jesse and his buddy Marcus. After we greeted each other, we stood around discussing the best tactics and fly patterns for the river, then decided to continue on together.
As we headed upriver, the walls of the gorge, carved by the river over millennia, steepened and towered over us. Crossing the river became treacherous in places where, under normal conditions, it would have been manageable. After some time, the river widened slightly and split into a small series of braids.
Continuing up the braids, we reached a muddy island about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. Its surface was smooth and soft—fresh from the previous night’s rainstorm. As we walked up the island, we suddenly came upon a trail of well-formed footprints in the fresh mud. We halted, disquieted by what we saw. The footprints were very small. They appeared to have been left by a barefoot child no older than five or six, judging by the size of the tracks. The footprints started in the middle of the island, away from the water’s edge. They continued for about 15 steps, then stopped abruptly—their trail seemed to vanish without a trace in the soft ground. We all stared at each other, unsure what to make of it. “Did you guys see any other footprints?” I asked the group. Everyone shook their heads. We retraced our steps and found only our own tracks. No other footprints were on the island. A spooky feeling settled over us.
It seemed that whoever left the footprints was an unaccompanied young child. Even stranger, the footprints appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the island, with no tracks leading to or from the water. There was no hard ground the child could have walked over to where the tracks began or from where they ended.
No parent in their right mind would ever take a barefoot five-year-old up that river in those conditions, and if they did, we would surely have found the accompanying adult’s footprints. If a child had been alone out there, it would certainly have left tracks leading to and from the water—if it had made it to the island without drowning. This feat would have required navigating rough terrain and swimming across the river in places where even a grown man would have struggled to cross that day.
Whatever left the footprints had been there not hours before we arrived to find them, because the heavy rains the night before would have washed away any tracks in the mud.
After failing to find a clue to explain the strange occurrence we had stumbled upon, we continued trekking upstream—the direction the tracks had led before they inexplicably disappeared. If there was a lost child somewhere upstream, we’d likely find them; otherwise, we would continue our pursuit of catching steelhead.
We found no more tracks or evidence of other people upstream, so we resumed fishing. I took the upper run, with Tommy fishing below me, then Jesse, followed by Marcus. We were spread out about a hundred yards apart. After working upstream, I returned to find Jesse and Tommy talking on the bank. No one had caught anything except a few small smolts. Eventually, as we got ready to continue fishing upriver, one of us asked where Marcus was. We searched downstream, then up a ways, and found no sign of him.
Since Marcus had been fishing below the rest of the group, we figured he must have trekked back to his car. We hiked upstream and fished for a while. After striking out, we headed downriver to call it a day. When Jesse, Tommy, and I got back to where we parked, Marcus’s car was still there. Somehow, we had missed him on the river.
The next day, I called Jesse and asked where Marcus had gone. “Yeah, I guess he went upstream of us and kept fishing,” Jesse told me. That struck me as strange. Marcus would have had to walk right past all of us on his way upriver, through a narrow stretch of the gorge where we undoubtedly would have seen him. I still hadn’t shaken the eerie feeling the child’s footprints left in me; this only heightened it.
The mountains the river runs through have long been known as a hotbed of unexplained phenomena and paranormal activity. Bigfoot sightings, UFO encounters, portals to alternate dimensions, and cults performing satanic rituals are frequently reported to occur in those hills. A secret facility run by a private military contractor is also allegedly located in a hollowed-out mountain in the area. Rumor has it that researchers have been studying alien spacecraft and developing secret aerospace technology there since the 1960s.
While I remain skeptical of paranormal activity, the bizarre circumstances surrounding the child’s footprints we found that day make my imagination wander. Could the child have walked through a portal from a parallel universe into our reality, taken a couple dozen steps, then traveled back through the threshold to the reality from which they came? Had Marcus unknowingly walked through a portal into a parallel reality, then traveled back through the fabric of spacetime, returning to our reality upstream of us—fishing all the while? Maybe that is why none of us saw Marcus pass by on his way upriver.
Could some otherworldly craft have dropped the child on the island, where they walked a ways before being beamed back up to the celestial ship? Or were the footprints left there by some kind of interdimensional feral human living deep in the redwood forest, evading human detection?
Obviously, I can let my imagination run wild, but there is no simple or satisfying explanation for what my fishing buddies and I encountered that day.
I still don’t know who—or what—left those footprints in the mud. Perhaps there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. But after all this time, I find myself thinking less about the steelhead we didn’t catch that day and more about the little barefoot traveler who somehow came and went without a trace.
