Early one morning last December I met my friend Tommy a couple miles up from the ocean on a river to go steelhead fishing. It was false dawn; the air was cold and misty, giving way to gray skies as the day progressed. The river was running high; the water stained from an early winter storm that had concluded 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 that were calm enough to hold fish. As we traveled further, the forested hollow the river ran through steepened on either side of us. Before long we approached the mouth of a gorge where the trail disappeared and redwood trees loomed high overhead. We continued onward, 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 tail out of a pool, and quickly realized it was our friend Jesse and his buddy Marcus. After we had greeted one another, we stood around discussing the best tactics and fly patterns for the river, then decided to continue on together.

We worked our way upstream as a group. The walls of the gorge that the river cut through steepened and towered over us. Crossing the river became treacherous in places where under normal conditions it would have been quite manageable. After some time, the river widened slightly and broke up into a small series of braids.

Working our way up the braids we came to a muddy island that was about a hundred feet long by thirty feet wide. Its surface was smooth and soft—fresh from the previous night’s rainstorm. As we walked up the island, suddenly we happened upon a trail of well-formed footprints in the fresh mud. We halted our advance, 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 years old 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 fifteen steps then stopped abruptly—their trail seemed to vanish without a trace in the soft ground. We all stared at each other, not sure what to make of it. “Did you guys see any other footprints?” I asked the group. Everyone shook their heads. We retraced our steps finding only our own tracks. There were no other footprints on the island. A spooky feeling set in amongst us.

It seemed that whoever left the footprints was an unaccompanied young child. Even stranger, the footprints spontaneously appeared in the middle of the island without any 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. The trail of tiny footprints started and ended in a most incomprehensible manner.

No parent in their right mind would ever take a barefoot five-year-old kid up that river in those conditions, and if they did, surely we would have found footprints of the accompanying adult. If a child had been alone out there, it certainly would have left tracks leading to and from the water—if it had managed to make it to the island without drowning. This feat would have involved navigating rough terrain and swimming across the river in places a grown man would have had a difficult time crossing that day.

Whatever left the footprints had been there not hours before we arrived to find them, as the heavy rains the night before would have washed away any tracks in the mud. After failing to find some 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 up ahead somewhere we’d likely find them; otherwise we would continue our pursuit of catching steelhead.

We didn’t find any more tracks or evidence of other people as we pressed on, so we resumed fishing. I took the upper run, Tommy fished below me, then Jesse followed by Marcus. We were spread out about a hundred yards apart. After working my way upstream, I returned to find Jesse and Tommy conversing on the bank. No one had caught anything save a few little smolts. Eventually one of us asked where Marcus was as we were getting ready to continue fishing upriver. 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 further up the gorge and fished for a while. After striking out, we headed downriver to turn in for the day. When Jesse, Tommy and I got back to where we all had parked, Marcus’s car was still there.

The next day I was talking to Jesse on the phone and asked him if he had heard from Marcus. “Yeah, I guess he went above us and kept fishing,” Jesse told me. This struck me as strange. Marcus would have had to walk right past all of us on his way upriver in a narrow section of the gorge, where we undoubtedly would have seen him passing by. I still hadn’t shaken the eerie feeling that the child’s footprints had left in me; this only heightened my state of mind.

The mountains that river runs through have long been known as a hotbed for unexplained phenomena and paranormal activity. Bigfoot sightings, UFO encounters, portals to alternate dimensions, and cults performing satanic rituals are all frequently reported to occur in those hills. There is also allegedly a secret facility run by a private military contractor in a hollowed-out mountain in the area. Rumor has it that research on alien spacecraft and the development of secret aerospace technology has been conducted there since the 1960s.

While I remain skeptical of paranormal activity, the bizarre circumstances of the child’s footprints we found that day make my imagination wander. Could the child have walked through a portal into our reality from a parallel universe, 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 too? 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 the child have been placed on the island by some otherworldly craft that had dropped them down onto the mud, where they walked a ways before being beamed back up to the celestial ship? Or were the footprints left there by some kind of inter-dimensional feral human living deep in the redwood forest, managing to evade human detection of its existence? Obviously, I can let my imagination run wild, but there really is no good or simple explanation for what my fishing buddies and I encountered that day.

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This article first appeared on CalFlyFisher.com