The Legends and Lore in the Ryland Creek Saga, Part 1

A forgotten roadway deep in the forests of Painted Post.

When first envisioning the Ryland Creek novels over eight years ago (even longer in some respects), I had some specific goals:

• Tell the saga of those who chase raccoon and follow their hounds into the forest at night—particularly an entire family who’d been raising hounds for several generations and then in the same place. Establish this family and their dogs’ unique mix of passion, grit, and the natural stoicism so inherent in houndsfolk.
  
  
• Tell the story of Upstate New York—its forests and farmlands that are an entire world apart from what New York State is arguably best known for: New York City.
  

 
Interesting note: Once, while stationed at Robins Air Force Base, I was pulled aside by a co-worker (himself from Vidalia, Georgia) who  asked me if there were two different states: New York State and Upstate New York?

He was partially joking, but it was a fair question.

• Wrap in the history and legends of a special and uniquely named place called Painted Post. After serving the Department of Defense for nearly three decades—and taking a lot of good-natured ribbing about my hometown’s name (which my fellow comrades-in-arms often morphed into “Painted Stick” or “Painted Rock”)—the Ryland Creek saga became an equally good-natured, if-long-in-the-coming retort.

It’s that last goal I’d like to focus on here.

And what a goldmine of legends to draw from in this little corner of the world!

So let’s begin.

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An Artificial Intelligence (AI) image of Scar Paw I generated on Midjourney.

The Legend of the Great Bear.

Somewhere, long established in our human psyche, there’s a natural fear of bears. And that’s not necessarily an unfounded or irrational fear as these animals are powerful and when cornered or wounded, sheer fury.
The character Scar Paw, a huge black bear with something of an attitude, is formally introduced in An Exceptional Hound: Book II of the Ryland Creek Saga, although some clever readers correctly deduced this same ursine villain made a cameo appearance in Book I, The Last Coon Hunter.

There are different versions of the Great Bear legend, and I’ll hastily add that several Native American Indian cultures have comparable stories of a huge bear terrorizing a village.

In keeping with local lore in the Ryland Creek saga, much of Scar Paw’s characteristics draws from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) legend of the Great Bear—a particularly nasty, vengeful beast.

Per my one of my astronomy professors at Corning Community College, the Haudenosaunee legend of the Great Bear explains the origin of the constellation Ursa Major (of which, “the Big Dipper” is a part), and why the leaves turn color every fall. It’s important to note many other cultures throughout the world have looked at those very same stars and envisioned a bear—a collective, imagined construct of our humanity, I suppose.

Here’s one entertaining version of the legend of the Great Bear (read time ~5 minutes: http://www.native-languages.org/cayugastory.htm).

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An AI image of the Gandalark I generated on Midjourney (the AI platform)

The Gandalark.

Scary things and the forest at night naturally go together. Did you know New York State often ranks quite high in the number of Big Foot sightings every year? (Here’s one source—but know that there are many others: read time ~ 2 minutes: https://wpdh.com/where-does-new-york-state-rank-for-bigfoot-sightings/)

Here’s a Big Foot sighting even closer to home (literally) in 2022 on Erwin Mountain, a place where many scenes in the Ryland Creek saga occur: https://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=74487 

Quick aside: I’ve hunted Erwin Mountain many, many times—oftentimes just me and my hound, Seth. For my part, I have never seen any such creature.

If Seth has seen a sasquatch, he’s not saying.

As for the Gandalark: In the late 1860s near the town of Woodhull, NY, (~25 miles west of Painted Post), a “wild man” purportedly haunted the woods and involved a massive (well, 'massive' for our area) “creature hunt” to find this beast.

Here’s the original news article, which I find to be quite entertaining: read time, ~3 minutes: https://hatch.kookscience.com/wiki/File:Wild_Man_(of_the_Woods,_New_York,_Woodhull)_-_1869-07-30_-_National_Opinion_(Bradford,_VT),_p._1.jpg )

The fictional creature called the Gandalark is first alluded to in An Exceptional Hound with the monster later playing a significant role in The Legends of Ryland Creek. As for the monster’s name, well, that was all me. (I’m a novel writer, after all.) I made up the moniker in part because the last syllable of Gandalark rhymes with many words—especially “dark.”

There is another “story within a story” about the Gandalark in The Time of the Backroads, which adds much to the reason behind why the Gandalark does what it does.

Yes, I personally know some coon hunters who have scared themselves out of the forest at night.

No, I’ve never been scared out of the forest.

But I have seen things in the forests of Painted that (well, prior to the writing of the Ryland Creek saga) you won’t find in books.

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And somewhere close by in the forest dark —so very close now—the all-absorbing silence shattered
to the snapping of a single branch.